Relationships July 20, 2017
Wi-fi connection becomes your life essence.
Are you here because you’ve recently heard “Long distance relationships just don’t work, everyone knows that!”
The successful long distance relationship (LDR for short) has become an urban legend in today’s culture… a unicorn, if you will. However, I choose to identify LDR as more of a narwhal; it’s definitely a thing, but people find the concept so ridiculous that they immediately dismiss its existence.
However, that does not mean maintaining a long distance relationship is by any means easy. Here are a few lesser-known tidbits that most people don’t know about long-distance relationships.
Imagine you haven’t eaten for days, and you’re walking by donut stores, over and over, all week. The sweet aroma would torture you, but that’s not even the worst part.
You can’t complain about it all. Don’t even talk about being hungry, no one wants to hear about your hunger nonsense.
This is what it’s like being apart from your S.O. and constantly seeing other happy couples in love. You subconsciously stare at them with envious rage, fighting the urge to throw your beverage over them every time they do something adorable.
And honestly, no one really wants to hear about how much you miss your boyfriend or girlfriend. Quite literally no one. And it’s the worst.
When someone asks you questions about your long distance relationship do they always have that cloudy veil of pity shading their eyes? They’re not expecting a positive response, and the statistics tell us why.
A survey of over 2,000 adults revealed that of the 62 percent of Americans who have had an LDR, only 30 percent have lasted longer than a year. On top of that, only 11 percent beat the five-years-or-more mark.
So it’s not impossible… but literally everyone you talk to will probably act like it is.
Let’s say you’re traveling without data, and you finally find a cafe that gives you wi-fi. The employees say you must buy something to get the password, so you find the cheapest mango on the shelf and pay your internet dues. They give you the password, and you watch the familiar three lines appear at the top of your phone.
But nothing’s happening.
Even when something does happen, nothing is loading. Then you have to go through the painful process of being able to hear everything on your S.O.’s side of the phone, but nothing on yours.
You literally bought a guilt mango just to hear their voice.
Yep. It’s pathetic.
You don’t know the meaning of awkward until you have to tell a joke, wait five seconds, and then hear the corresponding laughter on the other end. The delay is painful, and the delay is real. You basically both have to talk in paragraph form, with obnoxiously dramatic pauses in between.
The silver lining is when the bad connection turns your voice into a robot voice. ‘Cause that’s hilarious.
You wish, for some reason, that you had made more voice recordings of conversations between you two. You can’t explain it, but it’s something you’re really mad that you don’t have. Also, you literally only have one video of the two of you because your iPhone is definitely out of space.
And it’s two seconds long.
And you’ve watched it 4,000 times. Casually.
Ironically, research shows that more time away from your partner increases the trust factor in your long distance relationship. It might seem easier to trust someone when you have literally 24/7 access to their social media accounts (and even their messages, though it’s not like you have looked at those), but it actually gives more opportunities for doubt.
Clinical psychologist Lisa Firestone explains how constant access can lead to constant suspicion:
“When we end up searching our partner’s cell phone for suspicious texts or restricting our partner from having friends of the opposite sex, we may be acting on old self-doubt and mistrust that has nothing to do with current circumstances.”
So in a way, when you’re never with them (or when you’re traveling without data), you have no choice but to trust them. Sometimes it’s much easier said than done.
So long distance is never easy. However, with a lot of perseverance (and a good wi-fi connection), it’s not the end of the world. If you make it, it will definitely bring the two of you closer together.
