Long-distance experiences?

[Badeand]

I am in a long distance relationship at the time being, and it's going to last for another year before we'll be able to live together. Meanwhile, we keep in touch using mostly MSN and webcameras (we talk like this every day, all the time we're not out with friends or at school, or have other things we need to do), and every now and then a phonecall. We've aldready been doing this since january, and although every new meeting is as wonderful as the ones before, the time inbetween is getting hard to handle.

Using chat-programmes, a lot of things get limited. It's not easy to show just how engaged you are in what the other one is saying, you can never be a part of what he does, and it gets very predictable how the conversations will run. Recently, we had a talk about these things. I had noticed that the past weeks he'd not talk to me all that much, but do other things instead, and when we talked, he didn't seem all that interested in hearing what I say or in telling about his own doings. We both worry about these things and miss how it used to be, but we don't know how to change it for the better. We can't force ourselves to be content with something we find to be too predictable and boring, can we? We talked about it for hours, and communication always works wonders - but wonders enough to last a whole year?

I want to know if any others have experiences from relationships such as this, with the same means to stay in touch - and if they can tell me how to handle the long months of waiting. How to make it less boring? How to stay interested in what the other has to say, and keep looking forward to tell her/him all about your own doings? How did you manage to stay involved and keep the other a high priority, even when he/she never was around?

I hope someone has experiences to share. Thanks.

 

[Recidiva]

I met my husband online 13 years ago. Took us years to get together, even though we were loopy in love with each other. He was married, then when he was free, I was married.

We did manage, though. It's awful at that distance...we've seen each other through each other's divorces.

But yes, the phone bills suck. We used to watch TV together, like first run Buffy The Vampire Slayer sort of thing. Awful phone bill.

We lived in sin for about five years before getting over the marriage oogies, our first wedding anniversary is coming up next month.

You can't always keep each other first priority at a difference, and that's the hardest part, when they're sick or sad and you can't help them in person. Or when you're lonely and sick and they can't get to you either.

It can work. You need patience, something to grind between your teeth so you don't wear them out, and a very good sense of humor. And a lot of money to pay phone bills.

I think the best thing a person at a far distance can do is to keep themselves as happy as they can, as amused as they can, but be honest about how hard it is without tearing the relationship up in the process and blaming the other person for the distance.

But there are some good things. When you finally do get together, you know how hard it was when they weren't with you. You know you worked hard for what you have.

It's hard to take a relationship like that for granted when you finally do get together.

 

[Ravin the Poet]

You both need to get a life. As blunt as that sounds it's true. I know form first hand experience that talking every night really only makes things worse. You both need to get out, socialize, have fun, but still keep in touch, just not every night for hours. I always tell people who have to wait a year, maybe you should try playing the field. You have a year to find out if this person is really worth waiting for. I know for me, I wouldn't want to wait a year to be with someone, and give up a chance with someone else. I know your answer "but we love each other deeply" or something along those lines, but even love can be beat when you don't see each other.

I'm not going to pad my answer and say it will be easy. Fact is, if your going through problems now, they are going to get worse unless a dramatic fix happens. Do you really want to give up on another person that could be there? Really think about this. As powerful as love is, you always got to think "Can I do this" because if there is any doubt, you should look elsewhere. I am not trying to say break you up, just trying to save you some unneeded pain that I went through. Good luck!


Ravin

 

[LadyJeanne]

Ravin gives good advice. I know you miss each other, but if you spend every night talking to each other, you're putting your life on hold to a certain degree. If you don't go out and do things that are fun and interesting to you, you will cease to be fun and interesting. There is such a thing as over-communication!

Aside from taking more time to live your life (which will give you plenty of things to talk about), try spicing things up a little. Write a fantasy story for him every now and then, or pick something from Lit that turns you on. Go online together and spend some time picking out a new vibrator to use when you see each other. There's also phone sex, webcam sex, chat sex...talk about your turn-ons and find out what his are - in great detail.

You'll get through this. A year is really not that long in the grand scheme of things.

Good luck!

 

[Lovernotkiller]

hmmm

Well, my 2 cents is :

To keep things together you just need : Love, trust, communication

You need all of those for a long distance relationship.

Love splits up into a lot of catagories though, attraction(physically and or mentally) ....love of their character.....love who they are.

Well, jus a 2 cents and things summed up. It can always work if you have those 3 things(careful of obsession if it comes to that) .

Gud luck matey

 

[silverwhisper]

badeand:

sounds to me like you two are talking too much w/out actually communicating. i think there's a risk in predictable interactions, that you start to take 'em for granted. that's a very, very big danger in any relationship. a long distance one is hard enough. if i were you, i'd look for ways to make it easier. remember, the key to good communication isn't quantity, it's quality. like orgasms. :>

ed

 

[chris9]

We were long distance last year for 5 months. We communicated almost only by e-mail. Once a week a phone call of 30 minutes at the most. We saw each other maybe every 5 to 6 weeks for the weekend. It was not fun, especially at first, when I didn't know anybody (I studied in Italy for that time).
It was a great time I had. I went out, made lots of friends, learned Italian, enjoyed life. He had a good time here, with his friends, talking classes at university, doing volunteer work at the university.
We wrote each other at least one long e-mail. The more busy we were the more we had to write the less time we had for actual writing the more appreciated was what was written.
We didn't do any phone/cyber sex, even though we did write about our fantasies. Our sex life certainly improved by talking about what we want.

It helped us a lot to know that after those 5 months we would move in together for the first time. It helped our relationship to be without each other for that time, because we know we can function as individuals, be independent, but prefer being together.

So on the whole I second some of the advice given before. Do more each on their own. You might miss him sometimes during such activities, but you'll have something to tell. Yes, it does feel strange to be telling him about friends he never met and never will meet, because you want him to be part of your life. But by telling him he will be as much as he can.
Right now you are probably talking more (as in longer) than you ever will when you live together. There just aren't so many things to say all the time.

I know my best friend who was in a long-distance relationship for years, starting before the internet was so common, had 'phone days'. They calculated the money they could spend on phone bills and the time that would allow them and would talk at first every 3 or 4 days, later on every other day. That left them time to keep on living, but still time to be with each other.

 

[His_pita]

Yes, a long distance relationship with someone your madly in love with is very hard. I’m a little over five months into mine and we got another five months to go before we get to real life and can communicate by other means then typing. God I can’t wait for that day!

Talking on the phone is expensive if you don’t have a good plan. I see you’re on MSN. Have you considered going over to Yahoo? The new messenger they have now has a new voice chat that works great. All you need is a microphone and the two of you can have your cams and voice going at the same time. In my opinion Yahoo messenger is hands down better then MSN for their features like voice, stealth settings and the ability to leave off line messages.

As for keeping things from getting boring, you have already gotten some great advice. I also think having a list of things to talk about is a good idea. I often jot things down during the day that I want to talk to him about later that night. Since we are very intense trying to get to real life and spend so much time dealing with all that, it can become tiring. We will take breaks to just have fun. Other then the obvious Cyber sex. LOL. We will go online window shopping. We will send each other links to clothes and other items of interest to discuss.

What has also helped us is having mutual online friends. We have a private message board that we go to and are very close to the members there. We talk about them and that makes us feel more like a couple. We talk about current events, religion, politics and all sorts of things that don’t directly affect our relationship but at the same time we learn more about each other and where we stand on major issues.

Mostly, remember that the more you get to know each other the relationship will evolve and change. In the beginning we were so new and everything was so exciting. Now it’s still just as exciting but there is new comfort level. Good luck and have fun.

 

[The JoZ]

I'm currently in one of these. I live in the States, and she lives in jolly old England. Yeah, try that for long distance

Anyway, I know for me...sure the actual waiting itself is a real pain in the ass. But quite honestly, I know the wait will be worth it. We both already talk about marriage, and our future family together, and stuff like that...so we both already know that the wait is ultimately going to be worth it.

If things are seeming to be boring, or you're not happy, or you wonder how things will work out...it may be time to reevaluate your relationship. I think this goes for anyone, long distance or not. But especially here...if you're going to plan your life around someone who's time zones away, I think you have to fully believe in it, and in them. If you're having doubts, you might want to think about another course of action.

 

[Private_Label]

the key to good communication isn't quantity, it's quality. like orgasms. :>

ed

advocate time for one reason - I have a darned difficult time reaching any orgasm at all so I will take any quality. Likewise, you can't have every single conversation be "deep and meaningfull."

I do agree with Ravin, however, on getting out and doing more things than sit in front of the computer every minute that you are not doing something important. One reason I didn't get any of the IM, ICQ programs is because when I go on line I usually only have a couple of hours durring the week, and chatting with people just to be chatting takes time away from that.

I was a child of a single parent family - mom worked we had school, but there was a specific time we spent together - dinner. At that time we talked about our days dealt with any problems worked out schedules and things. After dinner we went off to do our own thing (school work, play, watch TV).

Now that I am many years older and have lived away from home and moved back - that is still something we do to some extent. Usually the two hours after everyone gets home we talk about our day, eat dinner, talk over concerns (my current nag rant- a portable generator that we all agreed we needed last September after two hurricanes without power for a few weeks - but the purchase has continued to be pushed back... and back...). Also durring our time together argue, make jokes, laugh at idiots together, go through various moods, are tired and cranky when we don't get enough sleep... I also can spend time in the same room with them, and not have to do a lot of talking. Quiet time is important too.

Use this time to pick up on his moods - if he seems distracted, or not paying attention, say something like "you probably have things to go do" that gives him the opening to tell you about one thing he finds important currently. Say good night - then sign off and go do something else that isn't on you list of important meeting/work/dinner with relatives.

As was suggested, write him letters/e-mail about your day, the things you found funny, the co-worker who is irritating. That way, you are still up on all the small talk and can use the "face time" for flirting

Another thing you can do is to try and schedule a few days together now and then if you can - maybe meet somewhere halfway between where both of you are - or a scenic place that would lend itself to breathtaking views.

Just my ininformed opinion. ^shrug^

 

[Badeand]

Thanks for bunches of good replies, there were many good points to pick up on. Someone mentioned over-communication: that's probably a big part of the problem, and what we discussed the most when we talked about this the other night.

Here comes the long version, look underneath for the short one:
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This is not something I think will break us up, and hasn't become a grave problem for us in any way. Our relationship is not boring, MSN is. We're still very engaged in each other, we're just tired of seeing each other on a camera, wanting to go outside and play, but being able to do nothing else but chatting. We've noticed that this has gotten worse the past weeks, and we've talked it over. Because we do that, I think we'll manage to cope with it fine - communication is one very important key to solving problems, sometimes even before they've become a problem. That's also why I ask for advice now - maybe someone's got inputs we didn't think about already, and which can come in handy when we try avoid that this becomes an issue.

The talk we had has helped already - our attitude has changed a lot. I think our need for more diversity increased without any of us wanting to admit it to ourselves, and it came to the surface in the shape of increased boredom with MSN and less proper talks. Now that we're aware why these "symptoms" came at all, they're disappearing. The mind works in strange and mysterious ways. Having talked with each other about it, we realise that it is, and has always been, perfectly OK to live more and chat less - and we're for instance going to do more phonecalls instead of MSN (phonecalls get more limited in time, and hearing one another is more "real" than MSN, too). I can't make the microphone-tingy work on my too old computer.

And to whoever told me to "live my life" (now I mean that as in "fool around", I can assure you I'm living my life, having more friends and more fun than I've had in a long time, despite the relationship I'm in): I'm really not going to let go on this one - and as we've all heard "because I simply LOVE him" a thousand times before, I'll give a more "real" reason why I think we'll last: We communicate (in the true sense of the word, we talk things over rather than arguing and we can tell whenever we feel bad about something), and we can trust each other. Of course, I'm filled with all the usual romantic feelings - I know I really do love him with all my heart, and that I couldn't go on without him, and that he's probably even my soul-friend (if I believed in those) - but I know that simply loving isn't all that is needed, especially not when you try explain it to strangers. We've heard beaten wives say the love-thing, haven't we? My point is; I'm not going to look for someone else or someone better while I wait. I've been in a relationship like this before, and then I did that a lot. Now I know that I don't need it. What I need, is to go for this one. He's the most wonderful man I've ever met, in every way I can think of.
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So, when that's settled: more thoughts on this? Phonecalls and less chat-time has already been put on the agenda, and I'm welcoming more ideas. Right now I'm also trying very hard to get a job besides school, so we can meet in weekends sometimes. I've sent him surprise-packages in the mail before, and he's sent me surprise-letters, and I think I'll do it more often. More ideas? Bring it on.

 

[TinyTheGyant]

Oh man, could I tell you a story...

Suffice it to say, my LD romance failed, and failed miserably.
This is MY horror story:

We met on AOhelL in Jan, Y2K. She in Tennessee, me clear across the country, in Washington.
We chatted for a couple of weeks, then the phone calls started.
Had a $300 phone bill.
We did the 3 hour talks, the phone sex, the long e-mails, the short e-mails, the instant messages, etc., etc.
Then one day, I asked her what she was doing on a certain day in May, '01.
I'd managed to round up enuf $$ for airfare down to TN.
Finally, I was going to meet the woman that had occupied my every waking moment (and many a wet dream, too).
Would she meet me at the airport? After many details were worked out, she agreed.
Then.....
About 4 days before I was to fly down, she disappeared!
I couldn't reach her at all. My phone calls and e-mails went unanswered.
The day came, I boarded my flight(s) anyway, cuz I just had to know... Was she even real? She sure sounded real on the other end of that phone line.
Anyway, I fly down south, and hoping against hope, I look around the airport, but don't see her. I have her paged, no answer.
Finally, I rent a car, and being the stupid love-sick male that I am, I drive to the address of where I thought she worked, and they'd never heard of her. Then I drove to the local police station, to see if they can help me, to find out if she was even real. No such luck. They send me to the local county sherriff's office, which of course, is now closed for business.
I drive around, seeing if I can spot a street name that she may have mentioned. No go. Finally, it's getting dark, so I find a motel. The next day, I spend almost 6 hours at the airport, calling, and calling her phone number, no answer.
I fly home, heart-broken and just a little bitter.
About 3 days later, lo-and-behold, who should appear online? You guessed it, there she was, plain as day, and telling me she WAS at the airport, but couldn't summon the courage to come inside. I'd turned left, and she was parked on the right.
So now it's her turn to come up to me. Yeah, right.
Two month's of excuses later, and once again, *poof* she disappears.
Changes her screenname, changes her phone number.
The only way I can reach her is thru her "brother" via e-mail, asking him to forward stuff.
Then she calls, and tells me she had a heart attack (at 25?).
Next, she says she has breast cancer, and has had a mastectomy.
Then, she had some other type of something-or-other, and has now "lost her womanhood" (histerectomy).

Finally, 3 long, frustrating years, and more money than I care to count, I send her an e-mail (thru "brother"), "OK, fine, you win, I quit. I can't do this anymore. You don't want this relationship, I'm gone."

That's been over 2 years ago, and I still think about her every day.
And I still wonder, "What if...."

 

[His_pita]

TinyTheGyant that story is so sad, but you just need to move on and put this woman out of your head and find a new love. She was never worth it to begin with. She should have had the decency to tell you the truth.

 

[TinyTheGyant]

I have moved on, but I STILL think about her every day.
Just can't help it, she was one beautiful woman... if the pix she sent WERE her, that is.

The heart (and the dick) wants what it wants. Whatchagonnado?