I wanted to write this Blog as a way of helping those who are either in Long Distance Relationships or separated from their spouse/loved one for a period of time. I am currently engaged and planning a wedding with a distance of 4666 miles. Me and my fiancé have been dating about 18 months and got engaged at Christmas. We have been long distance for the entirety of our relationship.
Ride the Ups and Downs Like A Rollercoaster
As with any relationship you will have the moments where you feel like the you are a Disney prince and princess or Romeo and Juliet. (before the whole death thing) You are the most in love couple on the planet and everything is amazing, nothing about each other annoys you and your love will last an eternity. In other words, The Ups.
However, those moments will not last and there will be moments where you feel like any complimentary attributes you saw at the beginning are so far removed from the current struggle. The things that you once didn’t see will be at the forefront of your mind. Try nat even wonder if you can keep making it work. In other words, The Downs.
The main thing you have to realise is you have to ride these ups and down on a cart of love. Love is more than just an emotion you feel because if you just feel love the emotion, when you hit a down you might as well give up because you don’t feel love in that moment. However, if you choose ‘to love’ if love because a choice not a feeling then when up comes you are the most secure you can be but even when a down comes you won’t give up because the baseline is choosing love.
Look Forward and Plan the Future while Enjoying the Present
This can be particulary hard because you can focus so much on ‘its so many days til we are together.’ However, the key to a fruitful long distance relationship is yes planning those vists, counting the days and planing the years ahead. This is all good stuff but i think that to grow a meaningful relationship you have to be present and not live in the future. I have been guilt of this so much as my fiance will no doubt tell you if you ever meet her. I especially early on in the relationship, i would dream of what the future looked like. I would get so caught up in the fantasy of us being together for more than just a couple weeks. i began to live there and neglect her needs in this present moment.
I think that the key to this is plan date days/nights, where you watch TV/movie over skype together. Where you can dream of the future together. look at dream houses together etc. but most importantly ask those deep questions that don’t just address the surface level issues like food, music, TV, movies, dream vacations and if you are feeling daring politics. Ask the questions that hit deep like:
What is your relationship with your parents like?
What are your opinions on God?
What is challenging you most this week?
What is the biggest encouragement of the week?
What’s your biggest fear?
What makes you sad?
Where do you see yourself in 5 years time and how are you getting there?
What’s your opinion on adoption?
Are you ok not having our own kids if we can’t?
This is the stuff that will build a foundation of love and not a foundation of infactuation.
The bible talks about a man that builds his house on a rock and a man that builds his house on the sand. This story originally means building everything you have on Jesus. I want to reapply this to LDRs if you build your house on infactuation its like building your house on sand. When the rain and floods (Hardships) come it will fall and get pulled out to sea. However, if you build your relationship on love, its like building a house on the rock. When the winds and storms come it will stand. I believe the reason me and my fiance are still together is because we built our relationship on God first and foremost, then on this foundation of love by dealing with the hard deep questions.
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