My boyfriend and I have been in a LDR for 7 months (me in Asia, him in UK), with 2 months to go before I come home to the UK. Before this, we had been together for 9 months, living in neighboring towns (1 hour drive) and seeing each other several times a week.
I can't wait to be with him again, but he's not confident about our future - this week I need to confirm which uni I will go to in September and have my heart set on one in a city about 1 and half hours’ drive from him.
I don't see this as a LDR but he does and doesn't want to have this kind of relationship. He is older than me and works full time. He is worried about me 'changing' when I become a student but I think I have enough life experience already that it won't all be new to me. I have another option of staying in my hometown to study. He says he will move to be closer to me if I do. But I don't want to have to choose between the uni I want to go to and my relationship with him.
He also wants to work in Australia for a year next year. I support him in this and am willing to stay with him. I am the optimist and imagine we will have to be very flexible for the next few years, after which we can settle down together. Maybe because he is older/more cynical he doesn't want to take this risk and doesn't think it will work.
He has basically told me he doesn't want to be with me if I go to my preferred uni. My questions are: Am I being selfish/unrealistic in thinking this will work? If not, how can I make him think more positively?
Sad student
Dear Sad Student,
Let me get this straight; he doesn’t want a long distance relationship but next year he’s going for a working holiday to a different country, meanwhile he’s making a big deal about your preferred uni being an hour and a half away? Something about this just screams “asshole!” to me but I can’t put my finger on what.
His excuses are weak my friend. If being a student was going to change you, it would change you regardless of which school you went to. He says he’s willing to move the hour between his home town and yours, then why can’t he move an hour closer to your uni, and you can commute that extra half an hour a day? You wouldn’t need to be long distance at all then, at least until he goes top Australia, at which point he may very well decide he doesn’t want a LDR and breaks up with you anyway.
My advice is to put yourself first on this one, get the education you want in the place that can best give that to you, because a good education can never wake up one morning and decide to tell you goodbye. I don’t think you’re selfish or unrealistic, there’s no reason your relationship couldn’t work if both of you decided to make it so. However you can’t change how someone else thinks. The best you can do is ask him for the chance to prove his concerns to be misplaced.
I have been dating this girl for 19 months now. We get along pretty well, but she says, in the last 1 month she started to have bad thoughts about our relationship.
She says, sometimes she’s bored to sit in front of laptop, and when she see couples, her heart hurts. She says, for her it is not enough anymore, she would need me more to be with her, not only 1 weekend per months/one-and-half months.
She says she loves me and didn't lose her feelings for me, but this distance is just too much for her, and needs to see me more often.
I don't know what to do or say. When we started dating, we both knew that we won't be able to meet more often than this and also knew that we can't close the distance for quite some years, yet.
So, her reason is just weird for me, why she has had this sudden change of heart and thinking. I know that she loves me, but I feel she doesn't love me truly or enough, because of this reason.
Sincerely,
Pierre
Dear Pierre,
I wouldn’t doubt her love for you, it’s simply that she didn’t realize how hard long distance would be for her. For many people long distance relationships have a building effect – the longer a person stays in one, the harder it seems to become, because they grow in love and yet the relationship gets to a point where it can’t move forward without that physical aspect.
It also does get boring having to be on the computer all the time, especially if she’s of a more active nature. Perhaps you can talk together on the phone as you take an evening walk, or even if you’re brave, take your laptops out with you for dates – many places have WiFi, and many smartphones can be turned into hotspots so you don’t have to be tied down at home if you don’t want to be.
My girlfriend and I have been together for about four months now, and the first two months were great and we were happy. But now it’s starting to be complicated; when we text it’s just "blah" - all we say to each other is yes, yep, ya, ok, etc.
I need help because to me she’s losing interest and we barely talk about anything. I don’t know what to do, and when she wants me to come up with something to talk about my mind goes blank. How can I get the spark back and make me and her very happy to be with each other again? Cause to me our future together is growing very slim and the door is closing, so please help me. :'(
Ryan
Dear Ryan,
There’s no way you know everything there is to know about each other from talking for a few months, so start by asking questions! If you’re uninspired there are many books of questions available to help you out. Read the newspaper and talk to her about world events. Talk to her about what happened at work or school, tell her about funny incidents that happen, strange people your saw or what’s happening in the lives of your friends and family. Share your world with her.
Offer to read your favorite book to her, or play a game of “guess this famous movie quote” to mix it up.
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