How To Make a Long-Distance Relationship Work

I met my husband when I was a freshman in college. We sat across from each other in our computer science lab during the first week of class. We started dating officially a few months later and spent the rest of the school year practically inseparable. Like a lot of freshmen, I struggled greatly to effectively acclimate to college, and perhaps not like a lot of freshmen, wound up being dismissed for poor academic performance over the next summer. I was faced with a decision about my relationship at that moment—moving home to attend community college would mean I would be 9 hours away from him.

It wasn’t really even a question for us that we would stay together, and I don’t recall ever having an explicit conversation with him about what we would do. I traveled to my old college town to see him maybe once a semester, and then we visited each other when he was home on breaks from school. We video chatted every night and texted as often as we could throughout the day. That year, I applied to transfer back to a four-year school and ultimately made the decision to attend a university only three hours away from my then-boyfriend. We were able to see each other more frequently during that time, but it was still another three years until we lived in the same place. So, for those doing the math, we were long-distance for about four years.

I often get asked about how to make long-distance relationships work. The truth is, it won’t always work—long-distance relationships are notoriously difficult for some people. The reality is that long-distance relationships typically stem from necessity, such as military deployment, going away to college, or work availability constraints. The stress of transitioning to long-distance can be difficult to overcome. 

To understand your long-distance relationship, we should first talk about how we make our relationships work when we live in the same place.

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