Planning Your LDR

Dear Sky,

Yours has to be one of the most beautiful letters I’ve had the pleasure of reading. Honestly, I’d be a hypocrite to tell you not to worry, not to cry, because that’s been me recently. Mr E has gone away to work, I’m back in an LDR after years of near-proximity. I had a lot of the same questions that you are having. How the heck will I survive? He’s my favorite person in the whole world and I rely on him for a million little things.

But the only answer is: we will. We will survive. Love is greater than distance.

Last night was my first night alone. I had a nightmare, woke up terrified and paranoid with no one to turn to. When we were long distance as teens, I’d have been able to message him, the time difference guaranteed he’d be awake. As old married people, I wake him and I say “hug me I’m scared,” and he does. Last night? I could have messaged, but he’s in the same time zone and that man doesn’t wake for all the world. So I managed. I got up and checked all the locks, had a drink and put myself back to bed like a big girl. It sucked, but I’m fine.

That’s the moral of this story. It can suck, and you’ll be fine. It’s allowed to suck. You will gather up a hundred more little things to love about him, things you didn’t even know mattered. And that’s kinda wonderful. Someone once said to me “It’s a blessing you have someone to miss so strongly,” and that’s always stuck with me. People cry themselves to sleep at night wishing they could find what you and I managed to get so young.

In the lead up to separation, I focused on the things Mr. E does that piss me off, like, “Yeah well no one will try to sneak into my bed unshowered!” and “freshly folded laundry won’t sit on the desk three days,” and “I can cook as many lentils as I want and he won’t be here to complain about it.” If you really try, you can find a silver lining in every situation. I mean it really sucks that he has to go away, but it will be a great opportunity to purge junk he might otherwise convince me to keep (such as all this crap he says he will list on Marketplace but never does.) And we all have those bachelorette habits we indulge in when no one’s around.

So that’s where I think you should start. Make a list of things you want to do, or could enjoy doing, that are solo. Craft projects. Video games. Embarrassing home workout routines. Whatever. We all have things we neglect when we are in romantic relationships, this will be your chance to dive into those. You might not have friends and family nearby, but you could be calling them. You can pour your effort into people who might be feeling forgotten. You might also be able to find study groups to keep you on task when all you really want to do is eat ice cream and cry over sappy movies.

Your attitude will dictate your LDR experience. You can have a slow painful LDR journey, or you can have an awesome romantic LDR that you look back on with joy. It’s up to you. There are lots of cool things you can only do at a distance; use them to embrace this stage of your relationship and recognize that it is only a stage. The distance isn’t forever. And it’s only a factor, it’s not the entirety of your relationship. Here’s how you stop the distance getting between you - you focus on having an amazing relationship with a great human. You’re together in the ways that matter: emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and in the future. Being physically separated for a few years has no power over you.

Lastly, it doesn’t matter where in the world he is, you can always come home to him. This is something I’ve harped on for years. Come home to each other every night. Make it routine. What that looks like might need to be adjusted to suit your time difference, but if it’s a priority, you’ll make it happen. Here’s a few ways we’ve done it:

1. Simply coming home and logging on, knowing the other person will be there.
2. Sleeping together over Skype. You can have Skype auto-accept calls so if one person is already asleep, the other can just ‘slip into bed’ beside them. Never underestimate the comfort of being able to hear your love breathing.
3. Five-minute call before bed, just to say goodnight.
4. Calling before dinner time, cooking together.
5. Having a recorded message (or series of messages) to come home to each day.
6. Coming home to a letterbook or shared diary/ private blog. For several months during our courtship I didn’t have the internet, and when I finally did have it, it was dial-up. Awful. So we both had these letterbooks that we would write in every day and when they got full we would swap them via the post. Even though we weren’t talking in real-time, we had the sense that we were communicating. That we were in a mental time-space together. We have 13 letterbooks between us and I cherish them.

Right now our routine is Mr E gets off work, goes back to his hotel and calls the children to read them their bedtime stories. Then we call each other around nine, have a cup of tea together and talk about our days. Then I’ll phone or message him to say goodnight when I’m going to bed. Sometimes we’re online together, but not talking. We’re just being together, like if we were in the same house. We’re there but doing our own things. You will figure out your routine too, and the security of that will help you deal.

To summarize:
Find flimsy excuses to look forward to his absence. Plan solo things you will actually look forward to. Check your attitude, keep your language positive. Call your parents/siblings. Join support groups and study groups. Find ways to make your LDR fun and don’t be afraid of adult toys. Come home to each other every day in your online mind space.

It's okay to be scared. It’s good to have feelings. It’s normal to have a bit of anxiety over big changes and the unknowable future. There’s nothing wrong with you, so give yourself permission to feel these things and get them out of your system. With that said, I want you to know that it’s not all bad. You’re still in love with an amazing person, and you can still enjoy every moment you spend together even if you can’t touch.