Ah, long-distance relationships- famously infamous among people everywhere. It’s easy to talk about how hard being with someone hundreds or even thousands of miles away is and why these relationships often crash and burn, but what about the ones that do work? Could being in a long-distance relationship actually be a good thing?

In my experience, long distance is, in fact, possible and actually really great. I’ve been in my current relationship for over a year, and 7 months of it have consisted of countless texts, phone calls, and face times from 1,083 miles apart. I’m not going to lie, doing long-distance can be hard, lonely, and sad, but it has taught me some of the most important life lessons and made me stronger than I ever thought possible.

We're all familiar with the downsides of long-distance relationships, but it wasn’t until being in one that I saw good things can come from it, too. Here are some of the less discussed benefits of these relationships and how going through one could actually make your life better.

First off, you’ll learn the true meaning of honesty and trust. Not seeing your significant other daily means being an open book when you do talk to them and never assuming things you don’t know. Once you learn to believe your partner over Snapchat stories and horoscopes, you’ll understand them even better than you did when you could actually see them 24/7.

Long distance also keeps you balanced. It allows you to spend time with other people and focus on yourself for once. If you’ve never bought yourself a nice dinner before, you will once you have a bae that lives across the country. You’ll figure out how to fight for your own happiness while keeping your significant other in mind, and that’s a pretty important lesson in itself.

Basically, it’s just a lot easier to tell whether YOUR one is THE one while looking at your relationship from the outside. Everything that’s wrong becomes blatantly obvious, and everything that’s right becomes so much more important. You’ll start to appreciate all the little things, not only in your relationship but in your life.

The moral of the story is if you want to be with someone, hold on to them- don't let distance decide what happens in your relationship. Long-distance relationships can be scary and unknown, but like everything, they have their benefits too. If fear is the only thing holding you back, kick that fear out the door and go for it. Who knows, you might even learn something from it all.