Long distance relationships

[regexcellent]

Here's a "Me" thread, in the long tradition of the Poly Advice Column. Today's question is, is it worth dealing with 2,400 miles of separation with no end in sight?

Lately I've been dating a certain young lady up here in Rochester who unfortunately is from San Jose, California. She's going back there in about 10 days; I'm going to Fairfax, Virginia around the same time. She wants to keep it going. I do too, but I'm uncertain about it.

Moreover, like me, she has a twin sister to whom she is equally attached and, despite not having a job, said twin seems unlikely to leave the Bay Area for the foreseeable future. My firm has an office in Oakland and I'm considering working out of there periodically. That might be prohibitively costly; there's no way I'm getting compensated on the travel expenses.

More than just advice about whether to avoid the situation entirely (though that's welcome), I'd like to know any suggestions about how to make it more manageable if anyone has them.

[Imran Siddiqui]

I've been in two (though in one of them, the relationship was already fraying at the long distance just severed the ties). It's tough. It takes hard work. And you really have to have a goal that both of you are working for. It doesn't seem that's the case here.

Now, if there is an option for more of a casual thing. Kind of, when you are in town, etc. and you talk every once in a while. But other than that, I'd say its too much work.

[Bereta_Eder]

a friend of mine had a long distance relationship with a girl on the other edge of the continent for 7 years.
it took a lot of commitment, patience, traveling, money
in the end they married (and divorced a year later)

[Lorizael]

There's nothing especially bad about long distance relationships in and of themselves. The difficulty is that they tend to exacerbate problems that already exist. If trust is an issue, then long distance makes it worse. If jealousy is an issue, then long distance makes it worse. If reliability is an issue, then long distance makes it worse. The key is patience and understanding, especially because you cannot always see, hear, or otherwise be in contact with your partner, which makes it all the more difficult to know when you're doing something wrong. The practical way to do this is to make checking in with your partner a regular thing--not necessarily a scheduled thing--but just a part of how you interact with her. That way you can catch problems and deal with them early before they become magnified by time, distance, etc.

(My second girlfriend was long distance. She was in Pennsylvania. I was in Maryland. We saw each other a couple times a month and dated for a little over 2 years.)

[pchang]

Skype/Facetime is your friend.



That and learning to like getting kinky over video chats.

[Imran Siddiqui]

a friend of mine had a long distance relationship with a girl on the other edge of the continent for 7 years.
it took a lot of commitment, patience, traveling, money
in the end they married (and divorced a year later)

Not surprised by the parenthetical. Long Distance is a very different animal than Regular Distance. You get used to the relationship being one where you basically talk on the phone a lot and visit each other a bit, but mostly you live a solitary life, free to do basically whatever (well, except sleep around). And then you live together and all of a sudden come the invariable conflicts of trying to live with someone and the way you lived your long distance relationship changes, because you can't be free to do basically whatever - you are in close quarters relationship now.

[regexcellent]

I should go into a tad bit more detail.

The two of us have a lot in common, more than I could honestly believe. A lot of it I think comes down to the shared experience of growing up with a twin. Her degree is in computer science and statistics; we're interested in the same things. She's pretty low maintenance too. And she has a job. In other words, without the distance I think the prospects would be promising.

I'm graduating from RIT but she doesn't graduate until next spring. She has one more semester, so starting January next year until late May she'll be in Rochester, which is a lot closer but still not close; it's within driving distance once every month or so.

She'll be living with her parents in San Jose. If I can board with them, traveling isn't expensive. $600 round-trip. I can afford that. But I'm not counting on it.

The end goal, I think we both agree, is to try to last out the next year and hopefully one of us will be able to move, either me to California or her to Virginia if we get that far.

[Bereta_Eder]

exactly Imran.
living together is something very different and while one can be very compatible in a long distance relationship, then discover that in living together they are not so much

[pchang]

Has no one brought up the possibility of a double twin orgy?

[regexcellent]

You'd be the first.

[pchang]

Youth is wasted on the young.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

No, but we all thought it.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Well, you can try it. It's just going to be hard... and take what I and Bereta are saying, a relationship that grows and changes over long distance may be completely unrecognizable over short distance. And if that realization hits when one of you moves from where you wanted to be to somewhere else, that's going to suck hard.

[Lorizael]

The end goal, I think we both agree, is to try to last out the next year and hopefully one of us will be able to move, either me to California or her to Virginia if we get that far.

It's not clear from what you say here, but I'd recommend being fairly explicit with her about the end goal and making sure you do, in fact, both agree. Ambiguity about the future is one of those little problems that long distance can balloon into a bigger problem when you're not paying attention. You don't need a precise plan, but you need an idea of where the relationship is heading. (This is all predicated on the relationship being a somewhat serious thing, which it seems to be from what you say. If it's not serious, forcing seriousness on it can **** **** up.)

[Imran Siddiqui]

It's not clear from what you say here, but I'd recommend being fairly explicit with her about the end goal and making sure you do, in fact, both agree. Ambiguity about the future is one of those little problems that long distance can balloon into a bigger problem when you're not paying attention. You don't need a precise plan, but you need an idea of where the relationship is heading. (This is all predicated on the relationship being a somewhat serious thing, which it seems to be from what you say. If it's not serious, forcing seriousness on it can **** **** up.)

All of this is true.

To build on the last point (slightly) - the 'end goal', so to speak, can be to keep it casual.