“Long distance relationships must be so hard.” I’ve heard this almost every time I tell anyone that my boyfriend lives 350 miles away, but in fact it really isn’t.
I am no stranger to long distance relationships, and in my previous relationship it was indeed very hard. It felt forced almost. I never knew what he was doing, or who he was with. We would always schedule our phone calls, texts, and FaceTime dates to no avail. It felt more like making an appointment than talking to my (now ex) boyfriend. Even with planning it was impossible to get a hold of him.
It’s partly my fault that I always wanted to talk to him because I was NEVER busy. My sophomore year of high school I very reluctantly moved to the middle of nowhere inhabited by racially biased citizens. Before moving I had lived in a progressive suburb outside of Miami. I made no effort to make any friends or have any sort of life while surrounded by a population that hung their confederate flags high, so naturally I was always bored. I would spend hours on my phone waiting for that call or text.
This semester, when I realized I would have to leave my liberal college town, and go back home to the land of radical conservatives for summer break I panicked. Not only was I saying goodbye to any type of social life, I was saying goodbye to my boyfriend. I figured that it would be just like before. Three months of barely talking, and locking myself inside of my room, like the racism in my new city was some sort of virus that could potentially infect me if I stepped outside.
Thankfully I was pleasantly surprised, and I realized that the distance wasn’t the issue in my first long distance relationship, it was the guy. With my new wonderful boyfriend, Antonio, I am no longer anxious. In fact I am very at ease. We talk all day long, and no matter what, he makes time for me. Even in the busiest of moments, he checks in on me and lets me know exactly who he’s with and what he’s doing. The only real problem that can arise during a healthy long distance relationship, is lack of communication, not lack of interest. Times can get busy and it can be hard to always be in contact, which is understandable, but detachment is not an excuse. I made the mistake in my first relationship of thinking that disinterest was normal when two people are apart for an excessive amount of time. This is actually far from the fact, because the distance between Antonio and I has only made me more interested in him. We can’t go out on dates like we used to, so we spend all day talking to each other without complaint. I have learned so many new things about him in such a small amount of time. There’s actually a beauty in the distance, to yearn for someone so desperately, and to spend days instead of hours enthralled in conversation.
So many people face the same fear that I did this past summer, leaving their significant other and dreading every second of it. Not EVERY long distance relationship fails contrary to what most people have heard. If you are with the right person, then the distance can never hurt you; it might just help your relationship. If you’re feeling anxious or nervous every time your significant other takes more than an hour to answer your text messages, that’s probably a good indicator that you have some issues with trust, not with being apart.
