The Upside of Long Distance
We were having lunch when my friend G said: “I think I want a long-distance relationship.”
My knee-jerk reaction was to holler, “Why stop at using your knee to rub salt into my wounds, stick your elbow in there too!” Or as Melanie Marquez might say if she’d thought of it, you don’t know what you’re talking!
Or maybe he did. G is a rational being, after all. He’s the sort of dude who will drop what he’s doing to rush a friend’s sister to the hospital - and not as some kind of hokey excuse to shirk work, either. He’s also a single dad in his 30s. Hence the kind of person who’s kind of got his routine down pat and likes his stuff where it is.
As am I. I’m in my 30s and I happen to be in a long-distance relationship, hence my impulse to violence earlier. It’s not easy, but you don’t need me to tell you that. It’s like being a hound chained in a yard and knowing that the cute poodle you saw earlier while you were both being walked is somewhere around. While caterwauling cats yowl of their romance to the whole neighborhood.
This constant feeling of being there but not quite there isn’t something I like to dwell on, so instead - I will tell you what I do appreciate about being in a relationship that’s awesome in all aspects but proximity.
1) When you have a nightmare and are unable to go back to sleep, you have someone to message and ask to meet you online, or just to calm you down till you can go back to sleep. Different time zones FTW!
2) While your upper half needs to be presentable (hair, eyes, makeup, top), you can be wearing ratty old shorts and he is never gonna know. Until you stand up. Therefore it also goes that you don’t ALWAYS have to shave your legs.
3) You don’t always have to smell fresh from the shower. You can be fresh from your morning run if you want, and he’s not going to get all squeamish on you. Until Skype creates a Smell function, we’re safe. (Alarming personal hygiene, I know!)
4) Your time is still pretty much your own. You can go shopping without having to deposit him on some Bored Boyfriend Couch with other bored boys. You can go have desserty PMS boy-bashing time with your girlfriends without worrying that he might already be downstairs, honking.
5) You don’t fight over where to eat. Your diet is not endangered by his burger habit. The choice of ice cream flavor is yours, and yours alone. Plus you can eat enough garlic to end True Blood. For now, anyway.
6) You aren’t always in each other’s faces, so you have space and time to miss each other (boy do you ever).
7) Earning airline miles! If we keep this up we COULD be doing business class soon.
(Look, ma, checking out the silver lining!)
Maybe I’m simplifying it. Maybe they sound small in the face of the terrible need for something as basic as a hug. And yes, there ARE those days when you wish Pottermore actually meant somebody had invented Apparating already. But as a whole, I know what G meant.
Being in this kind of relationship allows me to enjoy the way I am, the things I’m used to as a single person for a little while longer. It also forces you to talk about things that would take same-city couples months to be comfortable discussing (such as money). You end up discussing whether or not you guys have a future. It makes you ask the hard questions - can we afford this? Am I ready to face cultural difference upon cultural difference?
But at the same time, you have the joy of knowing that somebody can’t wait to see you and vice-versa, of making Skype finger puppet shows; and that at long last, someone has found what Cynthia Alexander calls comfort in your strangeness, and you in theirs.
All relationships have their snags. Mine just happens to be too much space.
It’s far from ideal, but at the end of the day you have to ask yourself if you would rather be casting uncertainly in a sea of maybes in some smoky bar, or in a long-distance relationship with a surefire bet. I know which I’d recommend.
The long-distance won’t be forever, but this relationship will be.
My knee-jerk reaction was to holler, “Why stop at using your knee to rub salt into my wounds, stick your elbow in there too!” Or as Melanie Marquez might say if she’d thought of it, you don’t know what you’re talking!
Or maybe he did. G is a rational being, after all. He’s the sort of dude who will drop what he’s doing to rush a friend’s sister to the hospital - and not as some kind of hokey excuse to shirk work, either. He’s also a single dad in his 30s. Hence the kind of person who’s kind of got his routine down pat and likes his stuff where it is.
As am I. I’m in my 30s and I happen to be in a long-distance relationship, hence my impulse to violence earlier. It’s not easy, but you don’t need me to tell you that. It’s like being a hound chained in a yard and knowing that the cute poodle you saw earlier while you were both being walked is somewhere around. While caterwauling cats yowl of their romance to the whole neighborhood.
This constant feeling of being there but not quite there isn’t something I like to dwell on, so instead - I will tell you what I do appreciate about being in a relationship that’s awesome in all aspects but proximity.
1) When you have a nightmare and are unable to go back to sleep, you have someone to message and ask to meet you online, or just to calm you down till you can go back to sleep. Different time zones FTW!
2) While your upper half needs to be presentable (hair, eyes, makeup, top), you can be wearing ratty old shorts and he is never gonna know. Until you stand up. Therefore it also goes that you don’t ALWAYS have to shave your legs.
3) You don’t always have to smell fresh from the shower. You can be fresh from your morning run if you want, and he’s not going to get all squeamish on you. Until Skype creates a Smell function, we’re safe. (Alarming personal hygiene, I know!)
4) Your time is still pretty much your own. You can go shopping without having to deposit him on some Bored Boyfriend Couch with other bored boys. You can go have desserty PMS boy-bashing time with your girlfriends without worrying that he might already be downstairs, honking.
5) You don’t fight over where to eat. Your diet is not endangered by his burger habit. The choice of ice cream flavor is yours, and yours alone. Plus you can eat enough garlic to end True Blood. For now, anyway.
6) You aren’t always in each other’s faces, so you have space and time to miss each other (boy do you ever).
7) Earning airline miles! If we keep this up we COULD be doing business class soon.
(Look, ma, checking out the silver lining!)
Maybe I’m simplifying it. Maybe they sound small in the face of the terrible need for something as basic as a hug. And yes, there ARE those days when you wish Pottermore actually meant somebody had invented Apparating already. But as a whole, I know what G meant.
Being in this kind of relationship allows me to enjoy the way I am, the things I’m used to as a single person for a little while longer. It also forces you to talk about things that would take same-city couples months to be comfortable discussing (such as money). You end up discussing whether or not you guys have a future. It makes you ask the hard questions - can we afford this? Am I ready to face cultural difference upon cultural difference?
But at the same time, you have the joy of knowing that somebody can’t wait to see you and vice-versa, of making Skype finger puppet shows; and that at long last, someone has found what Cynthia Alexander calls comfort in your strangeness, and you in theirs.
All relationships have their snags. Mine just happens to be too much space.
It’s far from ideal, but at the end of the day you have to ask yourself if you would rather be casting uncertainly in a sea of maybes in some smoky bar, or in a long-distance relationship with a surefire bet. I know which I’d recommend.
The long-distance won’t be forever, but this relationship will be.