Share your LDR experience (good or bad)… needing some insight.

[msalek89]

Hey everyone. I am currently in a LDR with an amazing guy who has been my crush since I was 10. We are giving it our all to make things work. We are making “the distance” the last issue in our lives. We text every day, talk once a week, play games (same apps on our iphones), he sends me flowers and we also give each other our space.

 

We are taking things slow and hoping for the best to come. We have never kissed or anything intimate. We have known each other our whole lives but we never had the guts to say it I guess. I was recently in my country for a month and we saw each other the last 10 days that I was there. We took that time to hang out as much as we could. Before leaving he told me he liked me and would like something with me, if I was opened to keep talking even if I was leaving.

 

I followed my heart and agreed. It’s been a month and don’t regret anything. I live it day by day and look forward to when we can finally be together. We feel that for now the distance is a plus because we are both in school and working, so the distance gives us time to get our lives together and be the best we can be for each other once we can be together.

[LittleTiger]

That's very sweet. I hope it works out for you.

 

I doubt very much that "the distance" will be the last issue in your lives but, nevertheless, I wish you well.

[ThomasD]

Here's my experience. What "insights" does it give you?

 

It happened a while ago, and it was rather different from today's "online dating", but I experienced a LDR for several months before actually meeting in person. It happened before email, cell phones, text chat, or Skype even existed; and a 20 minute phone conversation across several states could cost as much as several hours' take-home pay from a minimum wage job.

 

I was almost 22, and had gone through four essentially dateless years in college when a much older acquaintance suggested that I should meet her niece. There was a significant distance (nearly 700 miles) between us so her niece and I wrote to each other - real letters, on real paper; no email or text chat or phone calls - for over 3 months before we met in person.

 

We eventually DID meet, had our first date the day we met, etc. That evening I even held her hand and was a little surprised at how eagerly she seemed to accept that gesture. At the end of the date I decided to get real brave and try to kiss her. I figured I might get brushed off, or at best a perfunctory kiss out of obligation. To my surprise and delight, she not only kissed, but kissed back - REALLY kissed back! One year plus two weeks after that first date (and first kiss) we kissed at the altar in church, experienced the physical and emotional intensity of a double-virgin wedding night, eventually raised 3 kids and have been life partners for almost 39 years now.

 

Of course, our mutual acquaintance (my wife's aunt; a friend of my parents) knew us both so it wasn't a connection between two random people. She didn't say so, but she thought she saw compatibility characteristics. I still could have pretended to be somebody very different from myself in my letters, but in fact was rather forthright, certainly revealing things that wouldn't have come out in the somewhat artificial atmosphere of a typical "dating" situation of similar duration. In retrospect it was a good way for two quiet and shy people to become very acquainted at a rather personal level.

 

After 4 months her summer job ended and she was living with her parents, I was in grad school, and the separation distance reduced to about 175 miles. We started visiting every 2 or 3 weeks, but it became pretty much every weekend that we were together. Again, it wasn't the standard "dating" situation: we were houseguests of each other's families. In fact, I stayed overnight in her bed after our second date, just two days after our first. (No, she wasn't in her bed with me - see the last sentence in paragraph 3, above.) We didn't see each other only after carefully preparing for a date; we saw each other at breakfast, and washing dishes, and with our families in church, and helping her Dad milk cows, etc. I think this was also a significant factor to developing our relationship from complete strangers to a long-term marriage in a little over a year.

[justwhoiam]

One month is really nothing. You'll have to go through many more months if you are lucky, and years if you are less lucky. Or maybe you are lucky if you are still together after years. There has not been any kind of intimacy... not even a kiss? You'll need to see if you are really compatible as more than friends. I hane no idea about the distance separating you two. At times people write in here and they are just an hour away..

[Els]

That's sweet, OP.

 

Crossing my fingers for you two.

[Chris516]

The first two were complete jokes. They didn't care at all.

 

The third, well, I don't know the status of it, because she hasn't been communicating much. When I get the chance to ask her if she wants to break up, she says no. So, I don't know.

[Charym88]

I believe if my LDR didn't involve a new baby and him just previously being in a 5yr relationship, it would have made us stronger. Especially being the fact that we both like to travel and he likes my geographical location and I always wanted to visit his. That was the plan until the child's mother ruined everybody's happiness including her own. He is the type of guy to try and do the right thing until his emotions catch u to him. I believe LDR can be great and sometimes stronger if it can survive the distance.

[emi]

LDR are so worth it, and much more special and precious than normal relationship BUT only when u can survive it

 

Not many can

[MissBee]

Hey everyone. I am currently in a LDR with an amazing guy who has been my crush since I was 10. We are giving it our all to make things work. We are making “the distance” the last issue in our lives. We text every day, talk once a week, play games (same apps on our iphones), he sends me flowers and we also give each other our space.

 

We are taking things slow and hoping for the best to come. We have never kissed or anything intimate. We have known each other our whole lives but we never had the guts to say it I guess. I was recently in my country for a month and we saw each other the last 10 days that I was there. We took that time to hang out as much as we could. Before leaving he told me he liked me and would like something with me, if I was opened to keep talking even if I was leaving.

 

I followed my heart and agreed. It’s been a month and don’t regret anything. I live it day by day and look forward to when we can finally be together. We feel that for now the distance is a plus because we are both in school and working, so the distance gives us time to get our lives together and be the best we can be for each other once we can be together.

 

I just was curious, you said you talk once a week, how come only once a week?

[Chris516]

LDR are so worth it, and much more special and precious than normal relationship BUT only when u can survive it

 

Not many can

 

Especially when the relationship becomes one-sided.

[Rosebud3]

Long distance relationships can be very rewarding.

 

MY SO and I have been together for 4 years, and I am truly blessed to call him mine.

 

Edited August 14, 2013 by a LoveShack.org Moderator

[jonsnuh]

6 years, 1.5 hours apart (150km), went to same high school and dated throughout university.

 

Sad thing is you think everything is rosy and that she wouldn't cheat in a LDR, but it's always this when you find out after the BU. There's no way to know because you never see her physically and as frequently as you could. This gets filled in by some other guy.

 

I don't condone LDR. It's like having an intangible chastity aura and in your mind.

[tem7074]

Had a relationship that started local and went to distance. At first things were good, but slowly got worse, and ended after about 5 months. Visits were about once per month, with constant Skype, texting and phone calls.

 

Problems started when I was accused of only visiting when it was convenient for me (I teach and can't just up and cancel classes). Different expectations about financial support were also an issue.

 

The worst thing is that the distance can cause you to develop a very strong emotional bond with the other person. Be careful about that.

 

Maybe communication between us was not ideal. Not a great LDR story, but probably fairly typical.

 

My advice is to try to communicate as effectively as possible and to be as loving and caring as possible. Best of luck.

[Faith13/2]

My LDR and I met online back in 2009 on a virtual online game. We never met each other in person until February of this year. The process was never easy and always had it's rough patches.(mostly due to the distance) After all that time of building a relationship with a person behind a computer screen, I was able to put a touch and smell to that amazing "fantasy" man I had loved so much. We are now engaged to be married and in the process of getting our Fiance Visa finalized. These relationships can work, but as people here have already said it's not for everyone. It takes a lot of strength, understanding, and trust to keep a LDR stable. It can definitely be worth the struggle though..

 

Take the initial steps as in getting face to face with one another and actually having a "real" physical connection.. you don't want to rush into things when you're not exactly sure who this person will be as a lifelong partner. I wish you the best of luck and I hope you get what your looking for out of this.

[masonlikethejar]

Long distance relationships are really tough, but 100% rewarding with the right frame of mind.

 

I used to live in a small town in the midwest and was friends with this girl in study hall. We used to use AIM and MSN instant messangers and were pretty good friends. Well her best friend since child hood had a relatively poor family and so she got internet access a bit later than everyone else. When she got access she ended up adding our mutual friend's whole friend list to AIM and MSN. This is how we first "met" although by the time we started talking I had moved all the way to the West side of the U.S. but it was totally by coincidence that I started talking to this girl who was best friends with a mutual High School aquaintance.

 

When we first started talking it was just randomly here and there when we were both online and bored. We never really got personal and for literally 8 years we just knew of eachother but didn't ever have full blown, long conversations.

 

When I first joined Facebook it added all my IM friends and thus we became FB friends and for the first time I had a face to put to the name I had known for all that time. Low and behold she was beautiful and she still lived in my home town (which I go back to visit often because my parents live there still). Anyway we started talking off and on but a little more frequently because (finding out later) we were both attracted to each other.

 

It turns out that she was really good friends with another mutual friend of mine who just so happened to get two free airline tickets to anywhere he wanted in the continental U.S. Because he didn't know anyone outside of his home town besides me he basically said he wanted to come visit me and wanted to bring this girl that he thought I knew! It was her.

 

Once we realized that we would soon inadvertantly be meeting we started talking much more often and actually started to get more and more intimate in our conversations. When we met in person we were so enammered with eachother that three days after she got back home she booked another ticket to come back out and meet me again a few months later.

 

Although it was rough at times, and we even had one particular moment where we didn't know if we could make it work at all we pushed through. We couldn't give up eachother and because we stayed committed in our LDR, when we finally made plans to live with eachother it turned out to be perfect. We are madly in love now and engaged.

 

I think that LDR's are really good for people because it's an obstacle you have to overcome together and thus the whole situational experience is much more of an effort.

 

Good luck to you!