I've been in a long-distance relationship for a long, long, long time now. My boyfriend and I are actually nearing our fourth anniversary come this October. We've been through a lot and endured a lot of scares. My LDR is across an ocean and yours may be across a state. Both are difficult, and both can have you frustrated, asking yourself, "Is our relationship strong at all?" I'm here to help explain that yes, it's still going alright.
You have days when you don't talk.Â
Depending on how long you've been together you might've noticed that your calls together might just be complete silence. This isn't the end of the world, and it certainly isn't a sign of the end of your relationship. It becomes hard to talk to one another as vigorously as you might've when you first began dating. Odds are if you're talking on the phone or through the computer you're multi-tasking, and that will ALWAYS take up some of your attention.
If you're genuinely concerned about it try bringing it up with your partner or try to come up with things you can do together.
You/They are anxious about telling their family about your relationship.Â
To be completely honest, I didn't tell my family about my relationship until a couple months before my boyfriend flew out to the States to come and visit me. I was scared that they wouldn't like him, wouldn't see our relationship as a REAL relationship. Even in our digital age, there are plenty of people who just don't "get" online dating.
I went to the extremes of telling my mother about my boyfriend in a public restaurant to deter her from getting too angry with me. I was scared that my relationship would somehow disappoint or anger her, when in reality she was just curious and wanted to know more about it. Please don't wait years to tell people about it. Odds are you or they are just like I was and simply over thought it.
Your plans to hang out tend to fall through.Â
Now, this is something that is highly dependent on your relationship. If plans ALWAYS fall through and what kinds of plans fall through. Things like deciding not to video call that night, or call at all, for that matter, are small things you really shouldn't worry about (unless you've never actually held a video call with them before and haven't met them in real life). However, if you're a bit closer to your partner than I am, and plans to drive out for a physical date are constantly being discarded then you should definitely look into it.
My boyfriend is seven hours ahead of me, time-wise. We have days when we say, "We should watch "Room" on Netflix tomorrow," and then hardly text one another come tomorrow. Time zones can make things harder and cause people to misjudge when they'd be free to actually hang out.
They don't drop what they're doing or who they're hanging out with to spend time with you.Â
Honestly, this is something that took me a while to come to terms with. I felt as though I was entitled to his time before every and any other person. Even if we're dating and don't talk as often as we used to that doesn't mean that he loves me any less for deciding to play a game with a friend he had been hanging out with before I had even messaged him. Our partners have lives outside of our own and in any relationship, long-distance or not.
