5 Things You Should Know to Build a Strong Long Distance Relationship
I dated my husband for 6 months before we met in person.
I met my husband at work, like a million other husband-wife duos have done before us. We met in early 2021 on a Zoom call, surrounded by workmates and a bunch of strangers from our creative agency.
Here’s the fun bit: I was in America and he was in Australia, but the spark was undeniably there. We discovered a real connection in a world gone virtual. The challenges of living 7,500 miles apart on different sides of the Pacific Ocean hadn’t occurred to either of us at the time. The whole world was in lockdown. Whether he lived on the other side of town or on a completely different planet didn’t matter much.
Long Distance Relationships Get Complicated
As we moved from flirtation to something more serious, reality sank in. Australia was in a serious pandemic shutdown and no one could enter or leave the country. We had no way of meeting face-to-face anytime in the foreseeable future.
Love makes us do some pretty wild things. It made us choose to complicate the hell out of our lives and we went all-in on our relationship. Along the way we adapted to a 17-hour time difference and 7,500 miles of ocean between us. Sleep deprivation became a familiar part of daily life. I learned to balance early morning work meetings and long late-night conversations that often lasted well past midnight. Coffee and I became best friends.
I speak from personal experience; long distance relationships aren’t easy. Almost half of all long-distance liaisons end after less than six months. It’s tough enough when you have the benefit of time spent together face-to-face. Not knowing what it’s like to physically share space with someone adds a new dimension to the equation. It took trust, dedication and good communication to stay connected before our first in-person meeting.
When 2021 came to an end and the world opened back up for travel it was a huge relief. In January 2022, after months of waiting, we were finally standing face-to-face, ready for an incredible week together. From there, it was game-on and we spent 2022 traveling between San Francisco and Sydney. He proposed. I accepted. The rest is history and we married in January 2023.
While it wasn’t ideal, beginning our relationship apart strengthened our commitment. The challenge of time and distance made us work at building a deep emotional connection. The long-distance aspect of the relationship ended up being a plus and along the way, I learned how distance can make a relationship stronger.
5 Things I Learned About Long Distance Relationships
Distance means replacing physical intimacy with emotional connection:
One of the hardest parts of a long-distance relationship is a lack of physical contact. Something as simple as holding hands or cuddling on the sofa is out of the question.
The upside is that the distance keeps you from moving to a physical level before you really get to know your partner. We’ve all experienced the early ‘lust’ phase of a relationship. The heightened physical attraction and desire to jump into bed with a new partner feels blissful early on.
Getting physical too early can also be a huge distraction. Sex has a way of interrupting the process of building a solid foundation based on the whole person. Without physical distractions, the focus turns to the emotional and mental relationship.
Good communication is essential in long distance relationships:
For six months our main form of communication was WhatsApp with its text and talk features.
Without visual cues, you learn to focus on what the other person says. Other verbal cues like volume, pace and tone of voice become important parts of communication.
We got good at fostering conversation with open-ended questions and listening without interruption, skills that are keys to the success of any long-term relationship.
Long-distance requires prioritization and patience:
When you have a limited amount of time each day to be together, you’ve got to decide what’s most important. Everything else gets deprioritized. In our situation, we chose to focus on the relationship.
One way we did this was by scheduling a block of time on our calendars for daily connection. It helps to find ways to treat the time you spend together as a sacred obligation.
Of course, life happens so when things get hectic and you can’t talk, try to stay connected in other ways like text, email or even a sweet message sent via an e-greeting card.
Distance helps you get to the point fast:
Dating across thousands of miles is a commitment of time and emotion. It can also get really expensive if you travel to see each other on a regular basis.
My husband and I had a great early connection, but we were also practical. We didn’t want to waste each other’s time or money, so we cut out the meaningless fluff. You know, the stuff that usually consumes the early part of a relationship. We didn’t invest our time trying to impress each other with superficial platitudes.
We cut to the chase with deep, serious conversations about what most mattered to us. We talked about our ‘dealbreakers’ and what was most important for us in a relationship. We discussed the good, the bad, and the ugly stuff about our lives. We told our family stories and shared things we’d never revealed to another soul.
Being authentic and vulnerable helped us build an emotional bond. By the time we met in person, we had a good sense of who was really standing before us.
Trust is essential for long-distance relationship success:
Dating across distance means making a choice. You can opt to trust your partner completely or stress yourself out with worry and doubt.
When you only have a couple hours a day to connect, it means you — and your partner — are on your own the rest of the time. An awful lot can happen in the remaining 20-plus hours of the day while you’re apart.
Mutual commitment and trust goes a long way toward building a relationship that can stand up to the test of time.
A Final Thought
Love is a weird thing, and you never know exactly when or where it will happen. If you fall in love with someone living in another state or country, don’t despair. You have an opportunity to leverage the advantages of distance. Use those advantages to build a strong and lasting future together.
