Thriving in a Long-Distance Relationship ? Complementarian Loners

Always toward absent lovers love?s tide stronger flows.

I found this article at The Frisky and thought I?d offer a different version (since we all know how much I like pointing out what?s wrong and correcting it).

1.?????? Establish ground rules from the start.

Yes, do this if you?re already in a relationship and will be having a period of separation, but otherwise, from the start might be too artificial. Furthermore, ?[o]penly discuss topics such as whether to remain monogamous? is poison. You cannot maintain a ?strong bond? if you are off screwing other people. This is just the dumbest thing anyone could do if one is expecting a strong bond to survive over physical distance. Ground rules are good though, and probably necessary to prevent later conflict or emotional distance, once you have established exclusivity. Exclusivity of ?seeing? other people should not be assumed until stated, but this does not mean it is OK to screw around if there is a hope for the relationship to grow into something exclusive.

2.?????? Discuss a mutually agreed-upon end goal for your relationship.

Again ?exclusivity? or lack thereof is an advised topic of discussion. If one is planning relocation, one needs to be certain that this isn?t just some loose binding ?maybe? shit! As for ?end goals?, that also depends. If the ?end goal? in having relationships isn?t total commitment, why on earth would you put yourself through a long-distance relationship? What is the connection based on? Again, discussing ?end goals? at the beginning is artificial beyond figuring out if the two of you are of like mind (i.e. marriage-minded or fling-minded). With an attitude of ?maybe? the odds of maintaining a meaningful relationship with long periods of separation are slim.

The reason I put ?end goal(s)? in quotation marks is because the very idea of a relationship having such a thing is questionable in the first place, not to mention crass. Thinking of it this way, rather than as a shared journey, is setting yourself up for much discontent. An objective, but not the ?end goal,? is finding a mate to for the journey. The journey of life as we know it ends with death; the only thing you have is the road on which you travel.

3.?????? Avoid excessive communicating.

Define ?excessive?. Scheduling only a one-hour phone call per week as suggested here leads me to ask, are you really so boring that this is the only way you?ll have ?exciting updates? to share? A relationship is not about ?exciting updates? but about heart connection, meeting the emotional needs of the other, supporting and helping one another. Talking about the routine events of life and personal opinions is the means of getting to know each other. This takes more than one-hour per week. While there may be no need to text every five minutes through a work day, frequent communication does maintain a connection and, if you do get bored, it may be time to re-think the whole thing. If daily chats grow stale, imagine living together for twenty years! Avoiding communication in order to stimulate excitement artificially does not speak to a lasting bond. Typically in a budding relationship, there is a lot of communication because there is attraction and this is the means to get to know the personality of each other. The template (or ?rules?) of communication (what can be talked about, openness, honesty, not overreacting), are established early in a relationship and are difficult to change later.

Less-frequent communication will not only keep you from growing dependent on each other, but also will provide you both with the freedom to grow independently and have your own lives and hobbies.

A good relationship includes interdependence but not co-dependence. Even an hour each day should not prevent one from having a life outside the relationship. Keeping up communication does not negate hobbies. Why the emphasis on independence anyway? What about growing together? Some things can be learned better through relating than by working alone. I would say it?s pretty difficult to over-do this aspect in a LDR and that daily communication is pretty well essential unless there?s some real reason not to. Deliberately avoiding it would be counter-productive. If you both want to touch base daily, why shouldn?t you?

4.?????? Alternate visits on each other?s turfs.

I do not see the necessity of this either, although it?s not in and of itself a bad idea. There are no hard and fast rules to this and each person must be flexible enough to accept the circumstances. This isn?t about fairness or being equal, it?s about the love (and respect) you have for each other. If there is a genuine connection and genuine love, it won?t much matter where you meet periodically, so long as wherever it is, you can do things you both enjoy. This smacks of score-keeping to me as well. The idea that one person doing most of the travelling might ?not only create an unhealthy and unbalanced relationship, but [...] also lead to a partner?s resentment? is just silly and petty. Do whatever is most convenient and don?t worry about it. The financial cost should be shared and the which has more flexibility and time to travel should be taken into account.

5.?????? Raise your trust level significantly.

YES to this, however, the advice to stuff your feeling of jealousy is not good. To do this misses the opportunity to build trust. Trust does not come out of nowhere. There is a certain amount of choice involved here just as love is also a choice, but one can easily misplace trust. The key is to be honest about those not-so-great feelings (which are more or less inevitable) and not to accuse each other of things you have concocted in your imagination. Conversely, you have to be able to accept your partner?s feelings and not get defensive or tell him he shouldn?t feel that way (a mistake men often make with women). Without open, honest discussion, trust will not build and destructive feelings will fester. Don?t be afraid of difficult conversations to determine if such things can be discussed without emotional escalation and accusations. These conversations increase the trust or could reveal that trust is not warranted. Also there will be occasions of insecurity where trust will be tested. The solution is frank honest conversations and the level of trust will increase on the next upswing. Life is not a constant, but there should be a foundation to avoid falling into an abyss during the normal emotional connection cycle of a relationship.

6.?????? Keep it sexy and spicy.

The advice here is weird (watching the same movie at the same time is ?sexy and spicy??) so I?ll bypass the obvious (?make the most of your physical time together?, although this seems to imply ?shag loads? and not much else) and suggest that flirting is always possible. Act ?as if? and get the imagination going as a way to discover more about each other. Have video chats in the nude that aren?t necessarily sexual. This engenders comfort and trust once you get over the initial apprehension and strangeness. This is a culture that reserves full nudity for the sexual arena and normal natural nudity is uncomfortable for most people, so they don?t even consider it. (It is difficult to be dishonest during a nude non-sexual conversation). We?ve all heard it said that the most important sexual organ is the brain, and this is certainly true. We should express our desire for each other and allow it to build over the distance.

7.?????? Live your life!

This is probably the one part of the advice offered that I don?t have much of a quibble with. Of course, this is much easier to accomplish when you have built a high level of trust so that you don?t have a desperate need to be all wrapped up in your partner. I?ll add in this section that doing things at the same time is a nice way to have some spiritual connection ? anything from eating (assuming you?re not in distant time zones) to prayer. Use your imagination! In order to maintain or build a strong connection, you want to include your partner in your life.

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Mutual total sharing is necessary to avoid the pitfalls of a LDR. If letting someone know the details of your daily life feels intrusive to you, this may not be a relationship for you. This requires emotional fortitude, acceptance, the willingness to listen and share, and also to accept the natural ebb and flow without worrying that in the ?off? times one of you will turn to someone else for connection. One of the benefits of having to work over distance is that it can foster more intimate communication. You are forced to confront and evaluate in a way that doesn?t happen when your nightly routine is to flop on the sofa in front of the TV, physically close but emotionally distant. If you view it as an opportunity to work to build a good foundation without the temptation to plaster over the faults with sex or to isolate yourselves from each other with electronic distractions, a LDR can be fertile ground indeed. Initially relationships better develop depth without physical sex, but this doesn?t imply that sexual attraction is absent.

Have any of you had a long-distance relationship or periods of separation from your spouse? How did you manage?

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Source: http://curmudgeonloner.wordpress.com/2012/02/04/thriving-in-a-long-distance-relationship/

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