"It will never work." "It'll strain you." "It takes commitment." These things are what I hear all the time when I tell people I'm in a committed long distance relationship. They're things that often signify people's doubt as many feel that any long distance relationship is hard, and they're harder still when you're "just kids."
Two of those three claims aren't wrong; long-distance relationships do take commitment and sometimes they are straining. There are days where you want to see each other but you can't because you're 100+ miles away. There are times when you need to be together to communicate and have body language to communicate but all you have is your voices. It takes a couple who wants to push forward to make long distance work. It takes a couple that has strength and connection to stay together despite the fact that time is not a commodity that they have a lot of.
However, having a long distance relationship isn't isn't as bad as people make it out to be. I know for me that having challenges upfront is going to make the relationship seem stronger as it endures because many tough challenges will have been faced already. I think the hardest thing for many couples is that they don't have these challenges for a very long time so they don't know what to do when they encounter them. Further, being long distance means that the time missed makes the time you have much more valuable. When you see each other, you don't take moments for granted. You spend your time purposefully and meaningfully because you want the time to be special.
Make no mistake, long distance relationships aren't ever easy. They take constant work and constant nurturing to work. They take sacrificing some things in order to make time for the significant other that's many miles away. However, if you love someone enough then the miles are nothing but miles. It's a distance that separates a concept that isn't at its root physical. Love knows no boundaries and it shouldn't.
