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How to Keep a Long-Distance Relationship Hot

c0rkie — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 05:40:53 -0700

Figured I may not be the only one in a long distance relationship. The following article seems pretty helpful.

For the estimated seven million U.S. couples currently in long distance relationships, sex and intimacy come with a whole different set of challenges. Instead of a simple “your place or mine?” you’ve got plane tickets, work schedules and much more to contend with. It’s no wonder many couples just can’t handle the distance. But if you’re stuck spending time apart there are ways to still feel close-and even keep your sex lives thriving. Check out these tips from women who kept their long distance relationships healthy and sexually satisfying.

Change It Up.
Couples stuck without the benefit of regular face-to-face contact have to find alternative ways to connect in order to keep their relationship going. For Tina Snyder, 37, starting a relationship with a man living 170 miles away meant long phone calls, frequent e-mails and a mutual commitment to open communication. “I believe our communication held us together during the first year of our relationship,” says Snyder, who recently became engaged. “We would talk for hours every night. We talked about everything: work, children, careers, our future. And we had a lot of phone sex.”

While inexpensive webcams and voice chat programs have made it easier to hear the sound of your loved one’s voice, Dr. Marianne Brandon, Co-Director of The Sexual Wellness Center in Annapolis, Md., warns that it’s not how often you communicate but how well that counts. She also advises couples not to be shy about their desires-sexual or otherwise. As long as everyone’s comfortable, phone sex, cybersex, or leaving sexy answering machine messages are all healthy ways to connect with someone who’s not around.

Get Personal.
According to the Center for the Study of Long Distance Relationships, the average couple involved in a long distance relationship lives 125 miles apart, visits each other 1.5 times per month, calls each other three times per week and, perhaps most importantly, exchanges three hand-written letters each month. In fact, studies show that couples who stayed together through their long-distance relationship wrote snail mail letters to each other twice as often as long distance couples whose relationships failed.

When Elizabeth Whitmore, 19, moved to England for a year, leaving her boyfriend in Washington, D.C., she relied on the postal service to sustain her relationship. “It was a good way to communicate because you really had to think about what you were saying,” she says. “We would write three- and four-page letters, sometimes erotic. And when he went on tour around the United States, he sent me 180 post cards. It was fun and personal.” Getting personal is exactly what keeps couples together. While generic gifts such as flowers and chocolate are nice, handmade gifts that come from the heart make a lasting impression.

Maximize Your Time.
Dealing with the distance is only half the battle; learning how to maximize what limited time you do spend together is the other half. Dr. Brandon says that when couples do reconnect, they should establish some guidelines for quality time together. “If he thinks quality time means taking her out with his friends and showing her off at a club and she thinks quality time is going to an intimate restaurant and then going to bed, there’s going to be a problem,” Brandon says.

To solve this problem, 29-year-old Mary-Beth Ellis and her boyfriend have developed an informal ritual. “The first thing we do is we hug each other, then we go to the couch and start talking,” she says. “We reconnect with each other first.”

It’s certainly not impossible to stay together when many miles separate you-it’s all a matter of keeping connected in new ways. If you’re both willing to communicate when you’re apart and reconnect when you reunite, then your relationship and your sex life will survive wonderfully.

http://www.savvymiss.com/love-advice/sex-advice/sex-sex-sex-archive/arti...

Long distance boyfriend won't commit

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 09:08:34 -0700

I am 26 and my boyfriend is 25. We’ve been together a year and a half; however, we’ve known each other and been good friends for the last eight years. We live in different countries (we met while I was an exchange student, and consistently maintained communication and occasional visits as friends – eventually, things turned romantic.) Thus, we’ve spent the past year and a half (our entire romantic relationship) long distance, seeing each other for a couple of weeks at a time every 2-3 months. We talk every day, though, and have wonderful communication, similar values, a great deal of trust, and I’m happy with everything in the relationship except of course the distance. We know each other very well, each other’s families, etc.

I already knew, by the time we made the transition to a romantic relationship, that he was “the one”. He, too, says that he doesn’t see himself with anyone else and sees himself with me in the future. At the beginning of the relationship, we talked about me moving there, but I was just starting a new job I loved and it made sense for me to stay here for awhile. He was also starting a new job, and we decided to save money and eventually move to be together.

However, he never talks about concrete plans for the future together. It really bothers me, because I believe that for a long distance relationship to survive, you need to have a future plan of when and where you will be together in order to not feel like you are doing everything for naught. I try not to pressure him, but I feel ready to be together or at least to make a plan to say “ok, in one year, I’ll definitely move there or vice versa”. He says he can’t make plans because at this point in his life he doesn’t know where he will be in six months, much less a year, in regards to his job, location, etc. He works 12 hour days in his job and travels frequently and also must relocate occasionally for work, and he says that now is just not a good time to have me move down there because of that. Even if he did want me to move down there, I have made it clear that I can’t uproot my whole life unless he has made a firm commitment to me (engagement).

He says that he can’t tell me we’ll be together in six months or a year or two years, because he doesn’t want to lie to me, and he just doesn’t know, but that marriage isn’t something he even thinks about right now. I value his honesty; I don’t think he would remain in a long distance relationship if he didn’t want it to work out eventually. It would be easier for him to be single or casually dating where he lives, but he makes every effort in our relationship to talk and see each other often, so I believe he has the best intentions.
I sincerely believe he is just “not ready” and would like to become more established in his job, more stable, save up money (he’s mentioned buying a house, etc.) before he wants to make a firm commitment to a life together.

However, it is difficult for me when we barely see each other, not knowing if there is ever an end in sight to the distance. I have doubts start to creep in, especially when I realize that friends and everyone around me at this age is getting engaged or married or having children. I know it’s not a contest, but I can’t help but think “What is wrong with me, that all their boyfriends will commit to a life together, and mine won’t even commit to being in the same town?” I would like to have my first child no later than 30; fertility problems run in my family and I don’t particularly want to take the risk of waiting too much past that age. However, what if he isn’t ready by then? I would like to have a family structure in place when I have a child, and ideally have been married for a few years first. I feel like, if he’s not ready, or decides a few years down the road to break up with me, then I am screwed, and have to start back at square one in my love life.

I don’t want to give up the love of my life to settle for less, and would be more than willing to wait for him, if he could just tell me with certainty that he DOES want it to happen within X amount of time. But the fact that he can’t even commit to saying “5 years” or anything makes me worried. I know that nothing in life is certain, but I feel sad that he can’t even give me a rough timeline. We could die next week and I would regret not having spent every second possible together; he doesn’t feel that way.

I don’t want to date anyone else, or be with anyone else, but his lack of commitment makes me wonder if I should think about, at a certain point, “giving up” and finding someone who DOES want to commit to that with me before I get too much older, when it is much harder to find a partner (I have many friends in their 30s who are absolutely struggling as men tend to go for younger girls).

The morale of the story: Now that I’ve found the right person, I’m ready to move on to the next stage of my life, but I don’t know if he ever will be…so at what point do I just have to give up and cut my losses?

Making Your Long Distance Relationship Work

Myst — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 19:33:39 -0800

by Rebecca Walton

Going off to college soon? Going away for business? Going overseas? Leaving behind that special someone? Long distance relationships are hard on any couple, but don’t break up yet, because there are ways to make it work. It will require a lot of love and a lot of time and commitment, but if you want to make it work you can. Try using these few simple tips to keep your long distance relationship going.

Make Time
Make sure that you make room in your new life for your partner. Just because you do not see him or her everyday does not mean you forget that they exist. Make sure you visit one another as often as possible. Once a month would be the best, although sometimes that is not possible. When he or she comes and visits make sure your attention is fully on your partner. Don’t try and make lots of plans, this is the time to focus on your relationship, nothing else. Make sure your partner knows how happy you are to see him or her, otherwise they may begin to question if you should still be together, or if you have begun to grow apart

Communication
Making time and communication go hand in hand. No matter how busy your day might get make sure you set aside a large period of time to talk to your partner. If you blow off that time once it will only get worse. Try to focus on talking on the phone, talking over instant messenger or through text messages can cause your relationship to become disengaged. While talking online you can easily become distracted, and you really need to be focus on what you or your partner is talking about.
It is important to remember to tell details about your day. It may not have seemed exciting to you, but if you don’t talk about details your partner will begin to feel that he or she is no longer a part of your life, make sure your partner knows that he or she is!
Remember that there are lots of new ways to communicate. Webcams, digital cameras, those are ways to really stay connected with your partner. Show him or her where your living, who your friends are, and what you have been up to. This gives your partner a way to really see into your new life.

Distance Makes the Heart Grow Fonder…But Also Makes it Question…
Long distance relationships can sometimes start out as a positive thing for a relationship. When it first starts you will really miss your partner and focus on all the great things that you miss about him or her. Overtime that feeling can fade though, because you are becoming more accustomed to the relationship. Soon you may even begin comparing him or her to other members of the opposite sex and you will begin to focus on everything your partner does wrong. It is important to remember that it is ok to be attracted to other people; it does not mean that you are no longer in love with your partner. Instead of comparing your partner try and focus on why you picked him or her in the first place. It’s ok to go out and have fun, its even ok to flirt sometimes; you know where to draw the line. Remember that your partner will be doing the same thing though; he or she will be attracted to members of the opposite sex. You have to be able to trust your partner and know that he or she loves you and just because someone thinks another person is hot does not mean that your partner does not love you.

The most important thing in a long distance relationship is that you stay committed and do not begin to take one another for granted. Long distance relationships take a great deal of love, but also a great deal of time and energy. If you are willing to put all you have into making it work you can, you just have to want it bad enough.

Long distance help, please!

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 15:45:15 -0800

My boyfriend and I have been in a long distance relationship, and I'm finding it insanely hard to keep up with it! I know I am in love with him... but the communication has gotten a bit lackluster and I was just wondering if any of you had any tips to keep the passion going. I know many people are skeptical about long distance, but I want to stick it out with this guy... we've been together for some time and I love him, he's amazing! I'm just a little clueless as to how people manage to deal with distance. it's so hard, but I'm willing to stick it out. Any suggestions?

Long distance: I don't want to move unless I get engaged, any advice?

littledog — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 22:33:10 -0700

Hi everyone,
This is my first time posting something here at team sugar.
My dilemma:
I've been with my boyfriend for 3 years now in a long distance relationship (different continents!) It was extremely difficult but we managed to visit each other and we talk on the phone and email everyday. We are now both 26.

We have been discussing future plans, and because it will be hard for him to find a job in my country, he would like me to move to where he is next year. To me, moving to a new country (and continent!) where I don't speak the language very well is a very scary thing. I will have to find a job (I may not be able to find a job in the field that I am currently working in), get used to the new language, culture shock, new living environment, etc. This is a HUGE sacrifice, especially because I have a good job, my own property, excellent relationship with family and friends, etc. I am willing to make this big move only if I know he is committed and will stay by my side through the good and the bad. In other words, I want marriage, or to be engaged at the very minimum.

However, he just wants us to live together for a while first before getting married. I am extremely worried because this isn't guaranteeing 100% he will marry me after we live together. (e.g. he can break up with me very easily if we are just living together first at the beginning). This is very upsetting to me because I would never make such a big move for a guy who may or may not marry me. To me, he is really "the one", so I guess he doesn't feel as strongly about me as I do for him. (this is the way I see it). He tells me that he loves me but isn't ready for marriage yet, but that he does want to marry me in the future.

Does anyone have any suggestions for what I should do at this point? Should I wait patiently for him to accept the idea of marriage? I feel so scared that I will spend so many years waiting (especially since I have already spent 3 years of my life with him).... I really love him and I do want this to work out. I don't know if I should try to be the "patient girlfriend" to wait for him to be ready for marriage, or if my boyfriend isn't serious enough. I want to know what steps I can take (if any) to convince him that I am the one for him, and if he keeps making me wait, I won't be around forever.

I have been really upset and torn over this issue, any advice from all you experienced ladies out there would be greatly appreciated....

Thank you!!!

xoxo

Long distance problems...all tips mostly appreciated!

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 12:14:35 -0800

I've been in a long-distance relationship for over 3 years now and until this moment I'm still very in love and happy with
the person I chose to be with. I believe it's the other way around too since he's still very kind and loving towards me. I
really do feel like this is someone I could share my life with and start my own family. However as I said this is a long-distance
relationship and I feel the clock ticking. My boyfriends original home country is only reachable by taking a long plane trip however since
a while now he's been living on his own in a country closer to mine which made it possible to see each other about one time per month.
So far this has worked fine for us but his visa runs out soon and he will have to return to his home country and family. On the one hand
I am happy for him since he gets to see his family again and be in a familiar surrounding. He chose to live in a different country for a while
for his own reasons (which had nothing to do with me) and worked there too to foresee in his own needs. But now I know he'll be traveling
to the other side of the world again I really feel crushed inside. I know he had to go back someday but to make the best of it I kept
suppressing it which I know is my own fault. Now I have no choice but to start thinking about it. I realise I'm really going to be heartbroken
when he goes back even though I trust him enough to maintain our relationship over an even larger distance. I was just really looking for
someone to share my life with. I am only 20 years old at the moment but I have never been the person to experiment around with people.
I talked about this with my boyfriend too and he reacted positive and he feels the same for me. Hard to explain
but we're just trying to obtain the typical house - garden - kids image. However we have so much obstacles in our way and it is
really depressing me to think about it. To sum it up as short as possible:

- different country, race, language and culture (language and culture not being that much of an obstacle)
- my mother absolutely hates him even though she has only seen him once (racist issue)
- no funds

I can't afford to visit him with a plane financially nor am I allowed to by my family. I love both of them and I do not want to make a choice
between him and my family nor do I want him to pick me or his family. I'm guessing the main problem right now is my mother hating him and
not wanting me to see him. Mind you, I only said he was a friend at the time >_

Long Distance Love Woes

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 10:59:12 -0700

I've currently been in a long distance online relationship with a guy I've been speaking to for almost 3 years. Due to money problems we can't meet up but we're slowly working on ways to visit each other on a tight budget. The long distance is really tough on us both and we manage to make it work, but recently it has made it much more tougher on me. Now that he has started college, he tends to hang out with other girls (who are known to be hot) and his roomates more, although he still contacts me everyday, there's always this thought in my head that I can't trust him as I'm not with him in real life all the time (I live in the UK, he lives in the USA btw). I got really upset over this as he truthfully mentioned it to me, that these girls tend to hang out with him and his friends every night. I've been hurt badly in the past by ex-friends and people I care for, so my trust issues with people are sky high.I've never had a boyfriend either because those who I've fallen for way back turnt out to be complete and worthless pricks that I didn't need to waste my time on. I don't know what to do? He's had past girlfriends who have screwed him over so he's been hurt relationship-wise plenty of times, and seems 100% faithful and says that he really wants to be with me. But I'm still feeling scared and worried that he will do something or change towards me now that he's at college, I can't seem to stop feeling this way, just the thought of him hanging out with other girls in his dorm with his friends when I'm so far away just tears me apart sometimes...any advice on how to be more calm, less jealous or relaxed about this situation is kindly appreciated. I love this guy with all my heart but...I don't know.

Long Distance Boyfriend Disinterested in Sex

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 17:39:00 -0700

Hi virtual friends,

My boyfriend of 2 1/2 years, who became long distance about a year ago, is completely disinterested in sex. No, he's not cheating. He's not like that and I just know he's not -- just to get that out of the way. He was sort of never really that into sex, but I thought it was nice at first to be with a guy who didn't want to get laid 24-7.

Well, it's progressively gotten worse to the point where we hardly ever have sex, and if we do it's always my initiation and he is barely into it. We only see each other once a week, every three weeks if we're lucky. And so many times those weekends have passed without him touching me in a sexual way. And many times he's pushed me away when I've tried to initiate sex -- saying he's too tired, not in the mood, etc. It's heartbreaking to me and makes me feel fat, undesirable, unattractive and it lowers my self esteem and confidence.

So... we're still together of course, with its ups and downs because of the long distance, but all in all aside from the sex issue things have been going really well.

Here's the funny twist though -- He's very affectionate and lovey-dovey with me. He holds my hand and kisses me and tickles me and holds me in bed while we're sleeping -- but, it's almost in the way that you would be affectionate to a kitten or a baby. Everyone thinks we're the perfect couple and that we're so in love (which we are, aside from the fact that we're barely having sex)

I spoke with his ex (they were together for about 2 years) some time ago and she told me that hewas completely disinterested in sex with her too, and after a while she stopped even attempting to initiate it because it hurt her feelings so much. She said that toward the end of their relationship, 9 months had gone by where they didn't have sex even once!!

That said, I don't think that it is "me", because I still attempt it but, like his ex, I am having my self esteem shot down when he rejects me and pushes me away. And he never initiates anything and is quite content to just fall asleep together after a quick kiss every night. I feel like it's almost a non-issue with him; like he would be perfectly fine being in a relationship and just not having sex... but that's not how I feel at all, and it's not going to fly with me. And I feel damaged by his rejections. I know he doesn't mean to make me feel this way, but it's destructing me and our relationship.

Things came to a head last night, as he was down visiting me for five nights in a row and never initiated anything sexual nor did he bring up the issue of our sex life. And so around 11pm when he was falling asleep I brought it up and was hurt and crying and he blew it off and said he just needed his sleep and would talk about it some other time. But he never wants to talk about it no matter how often I bring it up -- it's always a "bad time" or he has other "more important" issues to deal with.

I'm beginning to think that this is a pattern in his relationships and that there is nothing I can do to change him to make him more sexually attracted to me -- that perhaps his lack of truly allowing any real intimacy or perhaps feeling so close to me that I'm more like a family member or something than a girlfriend? I don't know what it is, and when I've asked him he says he doesn't know why he's not sexually attracted to me either.

I can't be in a sexless relationship, and from what his ex told me, it's not abnormal for him to become this way in a long term relationship. I think to the future of getting married and possibly having children, and think, how could we even have children if he never wants to have sex with me?!

What does everyone think I should do? How can I bring this up so that he'll deal with it? Help!!!

Long distance relationship, is it worth it?

Sat, 07 Mar 2009 19:10:42 -0800

I've been dating my boyfriend for over 5 years. We started dating when I was 15, he was 16. We ended up going to the same college together and even lived together one summer at school. He is my first love... along with first with a lot of other things. I get along with his family very well, his mom calls me just to chat and his sisters and I go shopping together a lot. His friends and my friends all hang out because of us dating. I know he is the one and we have talked about marriage and kids and all that, although we both agree on waiting until we graduate and are financial stable to take the big steps.

Right now, I am currently taking a semester off to intern for a big company and to gain experience for my major. The only issue is that it's 5 hours away from where we go to school. I've been away for a little over 2 months now, and it's getting really hard.

We've had a long distance relationship in the past, when I was a senior in high school and he was a freshman at college. I only got to see him once every two months or so, because we were 9 hours away from each other. Now we see each other every two weeks, but it still seems so much harder then it did before. I understand that part of the reason it is harder is because I don't know anyone where I am working now and I miss him and my friends back at school. I tell him that I feel lonely living by myself... but he doesn't even seem to care. We talk on the phone for maybe 15 minutes a day, if that. I got him a webcam for Christmas, and when I first went away we webcam'd a lot, but my internet and his internet is very slow, so it gets very choppy. Whenever I call him it's never the right time for him to talk, even though he has the easiest schedule this semester. When I was back at school we always had time to hang out every night!

Today I felt that it was the last straw. He had an interview and then was heading home for spring break. He said he would call me after the interview and tell me how it went. I was very excited for him because I know it's a tough time getting a job with this economy. After a couple of hours I started thinking that his interview was delayed or something. But after even more time went by and he still didn't call me, I texted him. He then texted me back saying he was already home, a 3 hour drive from his interview. I asked why he didn't call and he said he doesn't like talking when he's driving and he said he has to go because he was going out to dinner with his family. It's now WAY past dinner time and he still hasn't called...

He's graduating in May and unless he get's this job, he doesn't know where he is going to work. I still have a semester left of work at a year and a half left in school. Is it worth staying together with him? Am I making a big deal out of nothing?

Long Distance - where will it end?

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 06:30:15 -0700

I've been in a long distance relationship for four months now and it started when I moved 600 km away to Vienna to attend university. I'm really happy right now and think that my boyfriend is pretty much perfect for me but I can't help but wonder if the relationship has any chance of become somthing "long term". My boyfriend is doing his one-year social service right now (which is mandatory in Austria for men). He has talked about going to university too after that but I happen to know that he hates Vienna and if he shoud really decide to become a student, it probably won't be in Vienna.

If we had been together before the past fall, I think there would've been a strong chance of me choosing another university but now I am here and I sort of don't want to change schools right now.

So what I'm fearing is that even if we won't have problems about the long-distance status of our relationship in the coming months, how are we supposed to handle that fact that it won't end? That it will never get normal? Or at least until I graduate. Should I try and do some lobbying for him to come to Vienna? Should I make a move and just switch universities? (there's a great one in Switzerland too, it would just be a lot of stress and I do own a condo in Vienna...