When transitioning from high school to college, there are many choices regarding what to take with you and what to leave behind. Contrary to what many people believe, you do not have to leave your high school relationship behind along with your childhood swing set and kindergarten crayon drawings.
If you are very much in love and going to separate colleges, you can still make it work. With the technology in this day and age, there are plenty of ways to keep a relationship alive, even with a lot of literal distance between you two.
Of course, on the other hand, if you have already become distant, or are not sure that this person is someone you want to hold on to through the next few years, you may want to reevaluate your relationship and talk to your significant other about what they expect out of your relationship.
Maybe they feel the same way that you do, and want to continue on your separate paths over the next few years. This is totally natural and should be considered before moving on to a more challenging form of a relationship — the long distance relationship.
In order for a long distance relationship to work well, a few items need to be present in the relationship. The number one thing is trust. If you two do not trust one another, it will be very difficult to live in different places. Anxieties will plague your phone calls and texts, and neither of you will be able to enjoy all of the awesome aspects of being a freshman in college.
The second thing that needs to be present, almost more than the first, is willingness from both parties to put extra effort into communication. When you do not have the option of simply stopping by with coffee to say “Hi,” you have to try a little harder to reach out to one another. You may have to schedule time to have a lengthy Skype call every night. The point is that both of you have to have your hearts in it, or someone is going to end up feeling hurt and ignored.
The last thing is that you each have to care for the other person. No, I am not talking about loving each other, hopefully that is a given. I mean that you both have to care enough for the other person to let him or her go out and do their own thing without you there. You are going to miss each other, but you cannot spend all of your time complaining about being far away.
If you trust each other, put effort into making each other feel connected, and truly care about each other, there is no real reason that you as a couple cannot survive a long distance relationship.
