The Truth About Long Distance Relationships

You see it everywhere in American media. “Long distance relationships never work.” “Long distance is the wrong distance.” It wouldn’t even be so bad if they were just expressing a personal view, because that’s fair enough: some people have had poor experiences with LDRs. My problem here is simply that in American media (and I single out “American” only because I’ve only really seen it there), they preach those quips as though they were truths. Like a moral of the story.

And that irks me to no end.

I have extensive experience with long distance relationships. All of my past relationships have had a long distance component. Some started with a distance, some started in person and experienced periods of distance. I am also the product of a sucessful long distance relationship. Point is: I know what I’m talking about.

Long distance is just another way to date people. Think about it this way. You meet someone in a bar and date them for a while, but it doesn’t work out. You meet someone else in a bar and, again, it doesn’t work out. Would you then be of the mind that meeting people in bars is a terrible way to meet someone for a relationship?

By that same token, let’s say you take a date to an amusement park. The relationship doesn’t work out. Let’s say you do the same with three more prospectives, but none of those relationships end up working out. Would you then say that taking dates to amusement parks is a dealbreaker?

Here’s the thing: everyone’s failures outnumber their successes. You only have to get it right once. And because humans are genetically wired to bitch about something bad more than they are to gush about something good, people will always highlight the worst experience they ever had in an LDR, meeting someone in a bar, or taking them to an amusement park.

Now, to be clear, I would never recommend an LDR to someone. My point is that I would not dissuade someone from an LDR simply because of the distance. I might tell someone to think twice if that person is jealous, untrusting, needy, and lacking an internet connection, sure, but I would not tell someone to walk away from an LDR just because of the distance.

I’m not going to tell you how to survive, navigate, or maintain an LDR. Not here, anyway. I have other projects that address that. But I will tell you here to stop assuming that an LDR is always going to be a bad idea because of the distance. Just stop it. You are insulting all the couples who DID make it work, all because you (or a friend) couldn’t make an LDR work when you also couldn’t make every other relationship aside from the one you’re in now work (and hey, there’s no guarantee this one will work, either).

Trigger: WEBCAM