Long distance is never something that a person wants going into a relationship. When my boyfriend and I started dating ten months ago, I never really thought about how we would manage during the summer because I didn’t care. I just wanted to get through the school year first. But once the school year started winding down, I began to experience this lingering dread. Everyone was asking us questions.

How are you going to keep it going?

Are you staying together or breaking up beforehand?

And here’s the kicker:

Long distance relationships normally don’t last.

I kept trying to refute this with optimism, but I seriously didn’t know. Being a girl with abandonment problems and some serious insecurity, I experienced a severe lingering dread. I didn't think I could handle it mentally, and I was initially right. My first few weeks of summer were a living nightmare emotionally.

But here’s the good news:

my relationship is stronger now because of the distance than it ever was.

To go from seeing my boyfriend every day to never seeing him was a jerk of reality that I desperately needed in order for our relationship to progress. I had been so used to seeing him every day that sometimes I took his presence for granted. But once we got split apart and had to continue our lives separately from each other, all I could think of was what I would do to have him around again.

I also had to reevaluate my love for him, whether it was strong enough truly for him or just having him around. The timing of being separated had us right at eight months, when the "puppy love” hormones begin to die down in a relationship. That could have worked against us. We could have not been able to handle it. Yet, in this time apart, he has become the person I went to for anything and everything because I was comfortable. He was the same way.

I can honestly I have learned much more from our text conversations and long FaceTime calls that consist of doing nothing or having small talk about him than I could have imagined. Long distance has made me fall more in love with him on such a personal level.

Being in a long distance relationship has made me stronger as an individual when dealing with our relationship with other people’s perspectives. Everyone likes to have an idea of how a relationship should be, but if it’s not theirs, they don’t really have the right perspective on it to dictate what should and shouldn’t happen. I had to be strong and comfortable in the decisions I made regarding my relationship because we both had to have faith in order for us to work. We had to know what it was about our relationship that made it so healthy and to keep doing what we were doing despite anyone else’s ideas.

I’m ready for him to be close again when school starts up, but I can’t help but be very thankful for the time apart. Absence did make us grow fonder of each other and have a more adult relationship instead of just two college kids killing time.

A long distance element in a relationship does not mean the end of the world, but perhaps a new opportunity. Relationships are about overcoming obstacles a team unit and distance is definitely an obstacle that can make or break a relationship. Overcoming that obstacle is a major accomplishment. Through this experience, I have gained so much more respect for those couples who made it work and defied the odds. You guys are the actual definition of #RelationshipGoals