Advice for Long-Distance Relationships
Are you looking for tips on how to keep long distance relationships alive while traveling? No matter whether you’re traveling the world as a digital nomad or studying abroad, these guidelines can help you keep your long distance relationship strong.
Ryan relocated from New York City for a period of 12 months in order to travel and work remotely as part of a program called Remote Year. Professionals that desire to travel and experience the globe are the target audience. Since I like traveling, I encouraged him to take the plunge and work from anywhere in the globe. He would never be disappointed.
What occurred when Ryan departed was that we went on a long-distance relationship for a full year, which was a tough year indeed. We gained a great deal of insight about ourselves, our independence, and our connection with one another.
A man in a black shirt and a girl in red shorts stand together with their arms around each other on a green hillside surrounded by palm palms. In Mina Clavero, Argentina, a young woman trekking on a rocky outcrop with a rucksack.
We get a lot of inquiries from individuals who want to travel but are in a relationship. What we believe is that two individuals in a relationship should be supportive of one another in their endeavors. To be sure, it’s not always so straightforward when one person wants to take a break from work and the other person either does not want to or cannot make the trip happen due to other responsibilities such as family, personal life, or other obligations.
We are not advising you to pursue a long-distance relationship if it is not going to be beneficial to you and your circumstances in the long run. This article is about how we survived a year of long-distance dating, which took us from New York City through Europe, Africa, and Latin America. We hope it may be helpful to others who are dating long-distance.
Maintain the highest level of candor with your significant other.
One aspect of Dan’s character that I grew to love very soon was his straightforwardness. I was certain that if I contacted him when he was in Valencia or Lisbon and asked him what he was doing at the time, he would always tell me the truth since he had no motive to lie to me.
In the end, we were completely honest with each other over a period of twelve months, even down to what we were eating. When it came to gluten-free dairy-free dessert, Dan was well aware of my overindulgence. Dan would be the first to know if he missed a day of training for one of his marathons.
The question I was often asked was, “How can you trust each other when you’re separated by such a long distance?” “It’s the same reason you trust anybody in your life, no matter where they are situated,” I would add. Putting your faith in someone should be met with the same level of trust in return. If they don’t, they’re not worth your valuable time!”
It was a bright autumn day in Argentina when this silhouette of a guy gazed into the horizon in las Sierras outside of Cordoba.
You may communicate as often as you wish.
To begin, look at some new communication apps that are available. You may think of a phone conversation, a video conference, or a text message, but there are a variety of methods to keep communication flowing.
We’ll never forget the night we had a late-night phone call at 11 p.m. for me, while I was on my friend’s rooftop in Washington, DC, and Ryan was out enjoying a proper European weekend at 6 a.m. in Serbia, while it was 11 p.m. for me, while I was on my friend’s rooftop in Washington, DC, and Ryan was out enjoying a proper European weekend at 6 a.m. in Serbia. A typical phone conversation would take place when I was working out and riding after my day at the workplace finished and Dan was getting ready to go to bed in his Prague apartment.
Our longest long-distance contact took place during a business trip to San Francisco, when I phoned him from eight hours in the ‘future,’ when he was in Rabat, Morocco, and I was in San Francisco.
GChat was something we used to do all day at work (don’t tell our supervisors! ), and when we weren’t at work, we were constantly checking our phones for WhatsApp messages from each other. I’d send him emails in the middle of the night when he was away in Europe, knowing that he’d be awakened by them. Fortunately, while Ryan was in Latin America for the other half of the year, we were all in the same time zone, which made life a whole lot simpler.
One thing we did was schedule time to talk through Google Calendar, which was a great help. We’d send out invitations to see whether the other could make it, and then we’d set up a certain time to talk on the phone with each other.
Being apart is the most difficult aspect of long-distance relationships, yet being apart may also be the most beneficial aspect of long-distance relationships.
Unless Ryan had spent two months in Colombia, we would have missed out on exploring Salento and the world’s largest palm palms, as well as the architecture and culture of Barcelona, which we would have loved. As autumn and winter descended upon New York City, I was fortunate in that I was able to avoid the snow by traveling to warm-weather sites that had already been included to his itinerary.
Girl going through a tunnel of Gaudi arches in Barcelona’s Park Guell, photographed by Depositphotos. The inside of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona has soaring arches and a rainbow stained glass decor.
As soon as I had a ticket booked, I was able to start going through Lonely Planet and researching lodgings, as well as deciding what to take and how to prepare for the trip. The best part was that Ryan allowed me take the lead on the most of the planning since it was my source of enthusiasm.
Discover new and innovative ways to remain attached.
Our primary means of keeping in touch was via a variety of popular online platforms, including WhatsApp, GChat (now Google Hangouts), conventional e-mail, and video conversations, which were mainly conducted through WhatsApp.
The length of our e-mails varied; sometimes they were lengthy, such as a recap of “What I did this weekend that you should know about,” and other times they were brief, such as “Remind me of your arrival date in Cordoba?”
We had the impression that we were constantly connected, with the exception of the time Dan went trekking in Morocco and was essentially ‘off the grid’ for two days straight. His destination was clear, but since he hadn’t planned the trip and hadn’t looked into the nuances of Mt. Toubkal (which is the highest point in Morocco), he hadn’t anticipated or considered the possibility that he would lose Google Fi international mobile coverage almost immediately.
At the peak of Mount Toubkal in the Atlas Mountains, a man with a black jacket sits on a rock at the summit of the mountain. In the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, a silhouette of a man gazes into the distance.
As a frequent traveler myself, I quickly concluded that this had to be the situation. Whilst in the back of my mind I wanted I had received one last farewell and a note that I would hear from him 48 hours later, I had to work on the premise that he was OK and on his way to the top of a really difficult walk!
The final method we remained in touch was by checking in on each other’s whereabouts via the Swarm mobile application. Swarm is a social networking program that was developed by Foursquare, therefore it is centered on the locations you visit. When you visit a location, you may “check in,” and your friends who also have the app will be able to view and remark on your visit to that spot. It’s also a great method to recall areas you’ve been but have since forgotten about, such as vacation spots. That’s mostly what I’m using it for these days.
Make a positive statement about your decision to be in a long-distance romantic relationship.
The subject of my connection with Dan was often brought up by my friends, family, and coworkers. They’d voice their worries or be perplexed, and it was up to me to reassure them that this long-distance technique of remaining together was a consensual decision between Dan and myself and Dan.
Together with your boyfriend/girlfriend/SO, devise a long-term project.
If you’ve been following us on Instagram, you’ll already know that we’ve begun working on a project together.
we had a project we could both contribute to, despite the fact that we lived thousands of miles apart. In fact, the fact that we were so far away made our endeavor conceivable.
Our presence in diverse locales was critical, as seen by our arm-in-arm photographs in Colombia and Spain, as well as close-up photographs of our spectacles taken on separate continents.
Having a project to work on together provided us with discussion starters, tasks to do, and notes to share. It also demonstrated to all of the skeptics that we were capable of being productive and innovative as a group despite only meeting each other five times in a calendar year.
Send actual mail instead of junk mail!
The first thing we did when we moved into our first apartment together in Brooklyn Heights was create a bulletin board in our kitchen to display the postcards we had written to each other throughout our time apart. Notes that carried us back to certain locations and times, as well as humorous anecdotes like how, for some reason, a postcard from New York took almost six weeks to reach Bogota, Colombia, were scattered throughout the collection.
We didn’t send packages to each other since sending packaged mail including items from another nation is subject to customs scrutiny when it reaches a new jurisdiction. Alternatively, if your long-distance relationship is inside the United States, you may Amazon-Prime your significant other with a surprise package in the mail.
When it came to our cross-country romance, we relied on letters and postcards. While on our different journeys, we would collect the free sorts from restaurants and museums, as well as purchase them from merchants. It didn’t matter if the postcard was visually appealing or not; what mattered was that the person who received it would be pleasantly delighted.
Share some of the activities you have planned for when you get back together.
We ended up organizing a vacation to Asia while Dan was in Chile, despite the fact that I immediately began thinking of things we might do together once we were back in the same area, such as ideas for dates, little excursions I wanted to do, and people I wanted us to hang out with.
Probably one of those evenings when I discovered tickets for us using our United points and said, “We have to book this now, or we’ll miss out on the opportunity to fly nonstop round-trip to Hong Kong,” so we went on the phone and booked it all at the same time as each other.
Even if it isn’t working out how to plan a vacation as a pair, brainstorming friends of each other’s who you may have never met before in a double-date scenario, or if you will be living together again, brainstorming parties you want to hold and new dishes you want to try are good options. These suggestions can help you to maintain a happy outlook on life with your spouse or partner.
Be forthright in expressing your concerns.
There was never a period in our relationship that I thought we ‘weren’t going to make it,’ but there were times when I questioned if Dan felt the same way I did about certain aspects of our relationship. For example, did he envisage a future with me in the same way I did? Was he approaching this year as if it were a test to see how well we got along? There were a slew of things that I considered since he wasn’t there, and I couldn’t question him in person until I saw him the next week.
If you have legitimate worries, whether they arise from communication (or failures in communication), doubts about your ability to trust one another, or even whether you should be in a committed relationship, express them to one another. As soon as you are able, express your problems so that they do not get bottled up and cause you to go insane.
Also keep in mind that sometimes you might have the same worries and problems about your ‘person’ who lives across town as you do about your ‘person’ who lives across the planet.
Things’s an amusing way of looking at it. Even if they were twenty minutes away rather than twenty thousand, you’d still call or FaceTime them as soon as you could to share your thoughts with them.
Consult with friends who have successfully navigated long-distance relationships in the past.
Oh my gosh–absolutely, chat to people who have gone through this process previously. I texted my cousin, who had dated her now-husband long-distance from DC to NYC for a while, my friend who had dated her boyfriend (and now-husband) from Shanghai to Germany, and my friend who had dated her boyfriend from Minnesota all the way to Shanghai on the same day I said goodbye to Dan for I-wasn’t-sure-how-long. I was fortunate in that 90 percent of the couples I knew who had ‘done distance’ had done it in a fantastically successful manner.
All while being committed to the person they love, most couples I know who have experimented with long-distance dating believe it has made them stronger and/or given them more time of independence while learning more about themselves.
Heck, I even have a buddy who is involved in a long-distance relationship! His wife is following a lifelong ambition of hers to learn about winemaking, and despite the fact that they were married just a year ago, they are determined to make it happen! Relationships are all about giving and taking, and just as I was eager and glad for Dan to explore international travel while I remained at home in the City that Never Sleeps, I was equally excited and happy for Dan to pursue world travel while I stayed at home in the City that Never Sleeps (not a bad deal)
Keep in mind why you decided to remain together in the first place.
Although we had been apart for a year, I never forgot why we had decided to be together despite the distance. In the end, we decided to remain together because we wanted to continue learning about and admiring each other’s abilities as well as personalities, and because we didn’t want one year of our life to have an impact on the rest of our lives (in an adverse way). We decided to give it a go, and we’re so pleased we did!
Couple cuddling at the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial, a popular picture location in Taipei. Limerick’s stone bridge across a river is adorned with smiling bearded men and women who wear sunglasses to keep the sun off their faces.
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6 Ways a Long-Distance Relationship Increases Your Love
As soon as you mention the words “long-distance relationship” to any couple, the images of time zone differences and four-hour phone conversations send shivers up and down their backs. When you’re in love, it’s difficult to envision without seeing your significant other on a daily basis.
However, the majority of us will find ourselves in a long-term care facility at some time. In recent years, an estimated 14 million couples in the United States, as well as 75 percent of all presently engaged couples, have said that their relationship has involved periods of time spent apart. With SMS, DMs, and Facetime, it’s not impossible to believe that we’re more in contact with our cross-country BFF than we are with our Sunday brunch buddies on a regular basis. The year 2013 revealed that over a quarter of all relationships include an internet component that keeps things moving forward. However, according to a recent set of studies, being in love from a distance might really be beneficial to your relationship rather than detrimental. That’s right: there are some advantages to long-distance relationships.
As if the gap between you and the other person wasn’t enough to bring you closer. Literally. Contrary to popular belief, research have shown that couples in long-distance relationships build stronger, more intimate attachments than their close-couple counterparts. spouses in long-distance relationships not only romanticized their partners’ behavior more, but they were also more sensitive and confessed their feelings to their partner, according to a study conducted by the University of California at Berkeley.
Many of these phone conversations, according to the experts, are simple and straightforward. In her practice as a couples therapist in New York City, Rebecca Hendrix observes that individuals are more vulnerable when communicating over the phone. As a result, “you may get to know someone a little bit better than you do when you’re dating in the same place because, if you’re taking the time to connect on the phone or over Skype, you tend to have longer chats.”
Affirmatively dedicated and linked – demonstrating that absence may can make the heart grow fonder.
As soon as you mention the words “long-distance relationship” to any couple, the images of time zone differences and four-hour phone conversations send shivers up and down their backs. When you’re in love, it’s difficult to envision without seeing your significant other on a daily basis.
However, the majority of us will find ourselves in a long-term care facility at some time. In recent years, an estimated 14 million couples in the United States, as well as 75 percent of all presently engaged couples, have said that their relationship has involved periods of time spent apart. With SMS, DMs, and Facetime, it’s not impossible to believe that we’re more in contact with our cross-country BFF than we are with our Sunday brunch buddies on a regular basis. The year 2013 revealed that over a quarter of all relationships include an internet component that keeps things moving forward. However, according to a recent set of studies, being in love from a distance might really be beneficial to your relationship rather than detrimental. That’s right: there are some advantages to long-distance relationships.
You’d assume that the distance would cause you to become more distant from one another. Literally. Contrary to popular belief, research has shown that couples in long-distance relationships create stronger, more intimate attachments than their close-couple counterparts. Couples in long-distance relationships not only romanticized their spouse’s behavior more, but they were also more vulnerable and confessed more to their partner, according to a study conducted by the University of California, Berkeley.
Many of these phone calls, according to the experts, are made by people who are still using their landlines. “People tend to become a bit more vulnerable when they’re talking on the phone,” says Rebecca Hendrix, a couples therapist in New York. “Because you’re taking the time to connect on the phone or over Skype, you’ll be able to get to know someone a little bit better than you would if you were dating in the same place,” says the author.
It’s no surprise that couples in long-distance love are better communicators than the rest of us when their Skype date schedule is so on track. All of that phone time spent cultivating closeness is really making you more effective at communicating in general. Being separated compels you to hone your communication skills to a razor’s edge, or else you’ll face certain doom. (It’s one of the options.)
According to the findings of the Cornell research, long-distance spouses go to greater measures to overcome communication obstacles.
In this approach, Hendrix explains, “you’re learning about each other’s communication patterns while also making it seem less intimidating to the other person.” “Both individuals must be aware of what it is that they need in order to feel connected. As a result, long-distance couples make an effort to show their affection for one another.”
Relationships between married couples who live apart may be more personal, dedicated, and linked, demonstrating that absence can indeed make the heart grow fonder.
As soon as you mention the words “long-distance relationship” to any couple, the images of time zone differences and four-hour phone conversations send shivers up and down their backs. When you’re in love, it’s difficult to envision without seeing your significant other on a daily basis.
However, the majority of us will find ourselves in a long-term care facility at some time. In recent years, an estimated 14 million couples in the United States, as well as 75 percent of all presently engaged couples, have said that their relationship has involved periods of time spent apart. With SMS, DMs, and Facetime, it’s not impossible to believe that we’re more in contact with our cross-country BFF than we are with our Sunday brunch buddies on a regular basis.
The year 2013 revealed that over a quarter of all relationships include an internet component that keeps things moving forward. However, according to a recent set of studies, being in love from a distance might really be beneficial to your relationship rather than detrimental. That’s right: there are some advantages to long-distance relationships.
You’d assume that the distance would cause you to become more distant from one another. Literally. Contrary to popular belief, research has shown that couples in long-distance relationships create stronger, more intimate attachments than their close-couple counterparts. Couples in long-distance relationships not only romanticized their spouse’s behavior more, but they were also more vulnerable and confessed more to their partner, according to a study conducted by the University of California, Berkeley.
Many of these phone calls, according to the experts, are made by people who are still using their landlines. “People tend to become a bit more vulnerable when they’re talking on the phone,” says Rebecca Hendrix, a couples therapist in New York. “Because you’re taking the time to connect on the phone or over Skype, you’ll be able to get to know someone a little bit better than you would if you were dating in the same place,” says the author.
It’s no surprise that couples in long-distance love are better communicators than the rest of us when their Skype date schedule is so on track. All of that phone time spent cultivating closeness is really making you more effective at communicating in general. Being separated compels you to hone your communication skills to a razor’s edge, or else you’ll face certain doom. (It’s one of the options.)
According to the findings of the Cornell research, long-distance spouses go to greater measures to overcome communication obstacles.
In this approach, Hendrix explains, “you’re learning about each other’s communication patterns while also making it seem less intimidating to the other person.” “Both individuals must be aware of what it is that they need in order to feel connected. As a result, long-distance couples make an effort to show their affection for one another.”
If you’re in a long-term relationship, the commitment is rather obvious. You can’t precisely be ambiguous friends who profit from being on separate sides of the country. In therapy, therapists refer to this as “intentionality choosing” rather than “sliding” – your decision to remain in the relationship is deliberate rather than something you just slip into over time. “If both partners are required to recommit on a daily basis, then more work must be put into it,” Hendrix explains. “This drives individuals to take their time in a relationship since you can’t move too soon in a relationship. When things move too quickly and too quickly, things have a tendency to explode up.”
Investing excessive amounts of time in one another may limit your progress as a relationship and as people — and it’s all too easy to become stuck in the rut of seeing someone who lives just down the block on a regular basis — According to Matt Lundquist, a relationship expert, “I think that individuals in partnerships should cultivate a life outside of the relationship.”
When you consider all of the negative aspects of long-distance love (such as not being able to join your intelligent S.O. for Tuesday night trivia), there is one huge advantage: you have a lot of free time to spend in yourself and your own personal growth. Creating a separate life allows you to bring back the different types of stimulation, friendships, and experiences from your separate lives, according to Lundquist. “Part of your job is to create a separate life so that when you do reconnect with one another, you can bring back the different kinds of stimulation, friendships, and experiences”
It sounds interesting: According to the experts, distance does not always spell doom and gloom for your romantic life. Obviously, the concept of monogamy is thrown into disarray when a couple lives apart. The temptations of living apart are real, whether or not individuals want to acknowledge it, according to Lundqvist.
Therefore, this is an excellent opportunity to express yourself creatively. It compels couples to get to know one other sexually in a new manner, regardless of whether the relationship is spanking new or you’re dealing with distance years after the commitment began. (Consider trying one of these, which allows your spouse to regulate your sensations from a distance, or one of these other options.
Also, don’t underestimate the importance of this step in your journey. Research shows that having frequent orgasms (either alone or with a partner) may significantly lower the risk of coronary heart disease and type 2 diabetes by as much as 30% and 40%, respectively.
The over-the-top claims that our relationship is on its last legs could possibly have some validity. Scientists at the discovered that married couples who lived apart from one another were less sad and worried, ate healthier, and were more physically active than cohabiting couples.
Even while being apart from your partner is emotionally draining, it may be beneficial to your health in other ways.
According to the results of a 2013 research, long-distance relationships are actually less stressful than short-distance partnerships (say goodbye to fighting over who left the seat up or getting pissed about someone showing up 20 minutes late). Another advantage of not going out to supper every other night is that you may save money. According to a study on portion size, you eat lesser servings when you’re not with your boyfriend.
