In almost all relationships, there’s a period at the beginning known as the honeymoon phase. During this time, you’re discovering lots of things about each other and there’s a sense of excitement. There are a lot of ‘firsts’ — the first time you admit you like each other, the first time you open up about your anxieties and dreams, the first time you realise you both love the same movie/book/song, the first time you say ‘I love you’ and so on.
In short, there’s a sense of progress and growing intimacy.
After that period, things get a bit mundane. You’re in some kind of routine, and you’re probably discussing important-but-not-exciting things like your day-to-day life.
In a relationship where you are physically close, this period still includes hugs, lying on the sofa together watching Netflix, having them stay over sometimes… in short you form and reinforce your physical bond as well as your emotional bond.
In a long-distance relationship, you don’t get that. And, if you don’t have a timeline for when you might become physically close, there’s a sense that the relationship just stalls. A lot of the intimacy in a longer-term relationship comes not from talking, but from developing day-to-day routines with each other. By anticipating needs, celebrating wins, providing comfort after a hard day.
But in a long-distance relationship you do have to keep spelling out your mood, your feelings and so on because there’s an absence of non-verbal communication. It’s much harder to provide feelings of comfort, safety and affection without touch.
Long-distance relationships, therefore, often tail off once the honeymoon period ends, because there simply isn’t enough after that first thrill to keep you both invested.
- Suzie Hunt
Long distance online relationships do take a lot of work from both sides and if one partner does no longer have the energy to do so, there is more or less nothing that the other side can do but to accept it.
Also, I do not think they are sustainable over an extensive period of time. But they can and some do work out, but only by both sides finally coming together. As example, my long distance online relationship came to visit me for two weeks, that way we could see if we were compatible in “offline” behavior. After that, I moved to where she was and we’re married for 20 years now.
- Robert Danielzik
I had a boyfriend from the UK. We were so in love and all and we would communicate everyday. So when he came to my country. We only managed to see each other once and l take the blame on my self after all. I apologised and he said it was fine. Before coming to see me he was already starting to pull away and l thought l should fix it.
I tried talking to him everyday. Making up for not being available when he came. I asked him the reason he was pulling away and he say he was just too depressed he cannot share his issues. I love my boyfriend and now l dont know if we in arelationahip or not.
I could text him everytime so that we can connect but he would sometiomes ignore my messages. I realized if l did not text first he would go even for a month without texting.
So when your long distance relationship is pylling away and you try all efforts to make it work. I advice just let the flow like that. Whata more important is to focus on yourself after all therea more to life.
Because some of us rely on our boyfriends and make them our all. Instead build a relationship with God. Pray and know yourself and discover yourself. That way life moves on after all if you are fated he will come back much better. Man dont want to be pushed when they not interested in you they pull out so instead of pressurizing him give him space and foxus on yourself more.
You deserve to be treated like a real woman. You deserve to be happy. Never let someone bring sadness. We should put a smile everyday for our beauty to remain. All the best guys. I did this it worked.
- Tsitsi Sithole
Break up. There probably is no future in this long distance relationship. When will the long distance be over? What is your solid plan for living in the same town again? If you don’t have a solid plan, then this is a waste of your time, especially if your relationship began online and you’ve never really even met in person or spent substantial time together in person.
Date people you can see in person. Date someone you can hold hands with and go out for coffee with, someone you can kiss and sleep next to. This long distance relationship business is crap. You don’t even know if you are compatible with someone if you can’t be in the same room. Don’t spend years of your life in a long distance romance with someone you wouldn’t go on a second date with if you’d met in person.
- Lori Jones
Because LDR is not for everyone. I have tried it a couple of times and for me it really sucked.
I can live seeing my girl once or twice a week. But not seeing for months is a really different thing.
You get used to not being with that person that your life changes dramatically. Your priorities change until the time that your partner is no longer a part of your ‘main priority’.
If there is such a thing as ‘it takes two to tango’, then definitely being in an LDR is the epitome of this.
Very few would be able to succeed in this setup and to them I give my high commends.
- Rej Cea Maranan
I think the most important thing to consider about a long-distance relationship is the list of things that don’t happen as a result of your situation.
Think about the dynamics of a relationship when the only time you spend together is spent chatting over Skype or something similar. In every interaction, 100% of both of your attention is on each other and you are doing nothing but talking. Your window into each other’s personalities is exclusively the way you each behave in this exact circumstance.
You never find out what this person is like when they’re doing their hobbies, or if they have hobbies. You don’t find out what they’re like around their friends. You don’t know what they’re like when they’re bored at home and have nothing to do. You don’t know how they touch you, kiss you, or have sex with you. You don’t know how they smell. You don’t know what they’re like when they encounter you without having expressly planned on talking to you.
There are a lot of things we take for granted about an in-person relationship that happen without us even thinking about them that dramatically influence how we judge compatibility and how our relationships develop. With a long-distance relationship, you never encounter these things until the moment you meet in person for the first time. When that happens, a lot of these relationships immediately self-destruct. They functioned only in the online vacuum when all of these other elements important to attraction and romance were impossible to discover.
In short, the toughest aspect of a long-distance relationship is overcoming the absence of everything that’s natural and taken for granted in an in-person relationship that most people aren’t even aware are factors. Your emotional connection grows rapidly, but every other aspect of the relationship remains inchoate. Without a way to address those elements, it will never be as fulfilling or as secure.
- Howie Reith
I’d rather be single. A long distance relationship is having a person in your life you can’t be with. I’d rather leave my door open to the possibility of having someone walk into my life than leave it permanently closed while I video chat.
I’ve only been in one long distance relationship and it was at a point in my life when I didn’t want to actually be with anyone physically. In essence, I was using the relationship as an excuse to avoid relationships rather than feel like I was in one.
- Raum Bances
