I thought I'd do a post on dating long distances and even being married with distance. For my fellow Milspouses, this is familiar territory. However, I know there are others out there that may not be a part of the military community, but still find their relationships in seasons of long-distance. For a little treat, I even had Nick weigh in on the post and share his thoughts.
Many people claim "long distance never works" or "you aren't truly dating them if you can't be with them". I've even heard, "you're just wasting your time and pushing back to inevitable breakup". As a disclaimer, I do not blame anyone who has said this to me because I know they may be speaking for their own experiences or lack thereof. If you've been in a long-distance relationship these statements probably sound familiar, right?
A little about us...
I want to start by admitting that long-distance is never ideal or fun for anyone. It's difficult and requires a lot of work on top of the work that it already takes to have a healthy relationship normally.
Nick and I started our long-distance journey 9 months into dating when I moved two hours away to go to college. Now in comparison to what we faced down the road, this doesn't seem like a big deal. However, we were 18 and newly dating so during this time we faced the most fighting and arguing we've had during our relationship. I realized a lot of our conflict stemmed from both of us trying too hard to make the rare moments with one another count. There was too much pressure and when things wouldn't be perfect we would both be disappointed and upset. Learning to be present in our time together let us find joy in the imperfections. This really opened us up to enjoy our time, grow, and learn together.
This year of "mini" long-distance really helped prepare us for what came next, which was Nick enlisting in the Marine Corps. We both knew that this would mean greater distance and more work, but somehow two 19-year-olds thought it was worth it to stick together (and boy am I glad they were right!). Now we were facing 3 more years of distance with no guarantee how great or small that would be.
For my fellow Milso's you know the deal, but for those who may not know the process of dating being married to someone joining the USMC. There is no contact for the 3 months of boot camp, only snail mail. YUP! (some may think that romantic, but that probably means you haven't had to do it and depend on the Ol' Pony Express!). Then there is more training and schooling, so this took Nick to California, Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, and back to California again. There were many care packages and facetime dates throughout this time. We even got some weekend trips spent together.
I don't share our long-distance experience to belittle anyone else's story!! I share it to say I get it and no matter the distance IT IS HARD. Now being married and having much less distance aside from the occasional training detachments, I want to share what I valued about our time being long distance.
The time being a part made us decide and choose early on if we were going to put in the work to make this relationship last. I had a great chat with a friend recently about our experiences and she said something I thought made so much sense and I want to share it here with you. She said, "I don't think long distance doesn't work, I think it just speeds up the process of the relationship so if it wasn't going to work out you find out sooner than you would without the distance." For me, this rang true in the sense that early on when the distance took place we both had realized that this was something we wanted to work, therefore we were going to make it work, despite the sacrifices.
The physical distance really granted us the time to get to know each other's hearts and grow up. Since we met so young (15 years old) we still had some growing up to do, but the distance gave us the space to do so while still being together.
It taught us to be intentional. You can be around someone all the time, but that doesn't guarantee there is quality time being spent. We had to learn how to show one another love in a way they could receive it and take full advantage of the time we had together.
It allowed us to practice and hone our communication skills. If our communication was off, then we were off and it was way more noticeable because of the distance. Learning how to communicate problems or misunderstandings and working together to fix them during that time has proven to be fruitful now that we are married. This got us to practice our communication and establish a solid foundation for our future selves.
This is a much more lengthy post than I usually write, but I wanted to start sharing some more personal and encouraging posts on here. I hope this was insightful and relatable. Even if you don't find yourself in this situation or season maybe it will help you understand someone around you. Let me know what your favorite part of this post was in the comments below.
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