ldr

As a recent victim of LDR, long distance relationship, I have to look back as to what it was all about.

In one of my peak moments, someone asked me how it was dating someone far away. I told them it was flat out awful, why would I say such a thing? When it blows up in my face, how would I describe it then? Well let me try. LDR’ers good luck! You’ll need it.

Even in the good moments you only partially share them. You might hear a voice or see a tiny video, some letters on the screen, and they can represent true feelings, they do a mediocre job at best. A lot of the gaps are filled in with imagination or trust, you believe someone is conveying a certain heartfelt message from the words on the screen in addition to the faith or belief that existed already.

Words alone, faces alone, voices alone have little value or impact to me. I have to dig deeper and plant roots over time so that these methods of communication resound, or resonate into something meaningful. I can think of all the times when people would say fantastic things, stuff you might hear in movies, but did not have any credible foundation to support that. They were silly and immature. (We talk for an hour every month or two and you love me? No, you don’t. Grow up.)

I do believe being discerning on how much something actually means applies to anything, but long distance relationship requires more trust. I have heard this before and I thought it meant to trust that the other person wasn’t dating ten people, or really married with kids, or a one legged monster. The trust goes beyond that. Every word needs more trust if you aren’t there in person. All claims, all statements, all questions, concerns, facts, stories, are harder to prove when there are miles between the communicating parties. That is not to say it is impossible, it just takes an extra amount of trust, and openness. I think because this trust needs to be greater, information needs to be given more freely and communication needs to be much clearer. It is not fair to expect trust to be increased without putting the work or provide evidence to build trust up.

The other thing I believe about LDR is the danger of being distant. In a dating couple relationship, at some stage I think that the bf/gf should be the closest, the one to primarily turn to, share things with, and so on. I definitely believe at the marriage point they should be the closest, it is not specific when family or friends get pushed to the second row. But nevertheless, in a LDR because the physical closeness isn’t there, then the emotional closeness needs to be even stronger. Extra efforts and commitment need to be made to preserve this closeness and the return will certainly be less than someone there in the flesh. Three hours with someone online or on the phone might equate to two, or one hour in person? I don’t know the scale, it can’t be quantified so clearly, but the point is, that the remote time needs to be extremely important, and without it, it is a lot easier to drift apart or let other things / people / thoughts drift in that are more immediate in proximity. If it isn’t booked in as actual time, and kept to times when people are free, it can easily get crowded out. A scheduled face to face date has high schedule importance, why wouldn’t a scheduled phone/internet date be high also? I would argue it should be even higher. This increased effort can lead to an imbalanced life neglecting friends or family or work. It takes extreme time management skills, or just an unbusy life to make it work.

Lastly, its a big challenge to include outsiders in a LDR; how do you introduce someone to your friends if you talk on a phone or in a little computer box? I don’t know how this is supposed to happen, and this valuable resource of outsider opinion gets really lost. If outsiders are involved, they almost certainly have a really contorted view of whats going on since the nature of communication doesn’t involve them directly and they have to find out second hand, with significant details or tone missing. I don’t know much about this exactly since I tried to spread my communication and networking efforts and I’m not sure if it was working or not? It definitely is something to consider. My friends definitely had concerns and they didn’t know what was going on very accurately because they weren’t really included in the first place. I dont have much of a solution here, it just sorta sucks and it feels like my “outsider support” arm was tied behind my back somewhat.

Boom shakalaka transition.

However, LDR can be good because it is based primarily on talking. I think this is my #1 discerning factor to meet women. How well do we talk? If we can talk without being bored, or starting conflict, then its great. If we can talk about everything, then its great! with an exclamation point! LDR allows this, in fact it is built upon this talking. If you can’t talk LDR, then you have nothing. The nice fun things to do in person are great, but I’m glad I kept them secondary. This might be my value system though, with enjoying conversation being vital with my relationships regarding everyone, including family and friends. I know others are more about shared interests and activities and to them LDR seems impossible, and it probably is.

I don’t necessarily want to pursue a long distance relationship in the future, but I am not really sure what I want for a short distance relationship either. Bleh. It’s just hard. Can I get a fast forward? Or buy me a teleporter so I can be anywhere in a moment? I could move to iceland and work from there? On okcupid, a dating website, that’s where my profile says I live. Needless to say I don’t actually use that profile except to see really blonde and exotic looking people that I don’t want to flirt with because they are just too far away.