Long Distance Relationsh

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Just wondering about any practical advice on long distance relationships. Do you think it’s safe getting romantically involved with someone without having met them or been with them? How well can you really get to know a person through Skype conversations and constant texting?
I welcome any personal experiences. Thanks. 🙂
 
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While I wouldn’t say it would never work, I will caution you about this.

When I dated a woman long distance, every time I saw her was magical. I would come and visit her for a weekend, she would come to visit me for a weekend.

Every time we got together we planned exciting activities. Since it was a limited time, I got to share the best parts of my town and my life with her - and she with me. I did all the mundane parts of life - when she wasn’t going to be around.

Well, eventually, I did move to the city she lived in - (and the primary reason I moved to this city was not her - because our relationship was too new to be moving for one another - but because of a career opportunity). Nonetheless - when we lived in the same city, all of a sudden, we were exposed to everything in each others life - the good, the bad and the ugly. Prior to that, we did not intentionally try to deceive one another, we just saved the best things for when we got together - and every time was exciting.

When you can see each other more often, you begin letting down your guard - and so does the other. You begin to see how that person interacts with his/her family and friends - how he/she treats the waitstaff or the cashier. You see how he/she dresses when they aren’t dressed to the nines. - what they look like when they haven’t spent hours on getting their hair just right.

You can learn some things about someone long distance - but it’s not a complete picture. You may start to think you know more than you really do.

When you are skyping (and skype was not an option when I date long distance) - I would think that you get yourself prepared to speak to the other in a way that you might not if he/she dropped by unexpectedly at your door. You don’t see how he/she speaks to his/her mom - only what he/she tells you.

So, by all means, if you find the relationship exciting - keep using skype to get to know him//her. But know that you are only getting part of the picture.
 
I have the same problem, and there’s an entire ocean in the way. I would say that, it isn’t going to be as difficult as a LDR between two non religious people. You at least aren’t going to be subjecting yourself to lots of incidences of sin.

Getting in to a relationship with someone you have never physically met, is a strange one, so forgive me for being perplexed at this one. But its worked for people before, via arranged marriages and the like. This could be really ok, if both parties are really not convinced of the modern idea of waiting 8 years before getting married, choosing instead to choose pick one person and get down to the business of starting a family in a year or less.

I would just ask, how long would you have to wait until you can physically see each other, even if its only for a day, it could make a great difference. If you started some kind of online relationship, chatting over Skype, is it plausible to travel to see this person. Can you do this regularly. I know a few people who have relationships that are only a 2 and a half hour drive and they find it difficult. I also know people who lived in Canada and Europe and they seemed to be fine.

It really would have to boil down to both peoples attitudes towards being without the physical presence of their partner. How committed you both are to travelling, and trying to make plans to lessen this long distance, or get rid of it completely, if marriage is your goal.

Skype is probably best, maybe just every two days. It seems like the worst thing in a relationship at the start, is to not talking constantly, but that slowly loses its appeal. Go live your life, knowing at least you have someone to complain to at the end of the day, but don’t have to put up with their annoying physical traits for the moment.
 
When I was in undergrad, I met a grad student from a different school. He was just about to graduate; I had two more years left.

There was another girl in my major who was also doing a long-distance relationship with a guy from her old hometown. He was a teacher (her old high school teacher?) and they had begun dating when she graduated high school, and there wasn’t a conflict anymore.

My long-distance relationship survived. He had a hobby that required a lot of travel. So during the summer, I’d meet up with him at events that he had obligations at, and we’d get to be together. During the school year, we would still try to get together once a month, perhaps, but not as often as I would have liked. But I had my job; and he had his job; and even though it was back in the day when gas was 80 or 90 cents/gallon, neither of us had a whole lot of spare money for extra travel. We made up for the difference with love letters (on paper! with stamps!) and emails and phone calls. The letters were nice— I still have his and mine both. They were a good way to put things down on paper, and show that we could connect two thoughts together into ideas, and let a little humor and personality shine through. 🙂 And you can re-read and linger over a letter way better than you can re-read and linger over a text. 😛

My friend… her teacher boyfriend didn’t end up waiting for her to finish school. I think he ended up finding someone else to see by her sophomore or junior year.

We met in April of my sophomore year and started dating that summer. I graduated in May. He proposed in July. We were married in November. Our marriage isn’t old enough to vote yet… but it’s old enough to drive. 😛

All that said, I would be very, very, very, very leery about committing myself to anyone that I’ve never actually met in person. And even if I had met them in person, I’d be very, very, very, very cautious about accepting them for who they say they are without any context or proof… because you run into so many people who turn out to be the “other woman” who have no clue about the rest of the guy’s life. I was on a pregnancy forum whenever I was expecting my own children, and there was always at least one or two women in my due-date month who were devastated that the guy they were having a child with wasn’t the kind of guy he had presented himself as, and had no interest in being involved with his new family.
 
My brother did long distance dating. He was in Georgia and she was in Florida. They would Skype, text, call, and email. They did this for two months! When they finally met, the whole thing imploded. So you can definitely do long distance relationships; however, you should meet sooner rather than later. She liked dating my brother online but didn’t care for him in person.
 
In my opinion and others opinions do NOT have a long distance relationship, it messes with people and they ultimately end up in break up. That’s all because usually in order to get to know someone or be with someone you have to actually be WITH them not just on a screen. In long distance relationships you take away the being with someone part, and that kind of ruins it, if it’s only for like 2 months then that’s fine, but if it’s like you are at a college and the person you like is at a different college I would not recommend.
 
I think it depends on the people, their maturity, and their goals.

I met my husband on the internet and we were long distance (1800 miles) for two years. Before Skype or texting. We emailed and talked on the phone.

Personally I got to know him better, faster than if we’d gone on dates to movies and whatnot where we could fill time with trivial matters.
 
shainski said:
You see how he/she dresses when they aren’t dressed to the nines. - what they look like when they haven’t spent hours on getting their hair just right.
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My husband and I saw this right from the beginning because neither of us dress to the nines or donhaor and makeup excessively.

We were real with each other from the start
 
Really appreciate everyone’s response, and am genuinely taking them all into consideration. I like the letter-writing idea. It’s actually very romantic and sincere. It gives a person a chance to dig deep.
Thanks again.
 
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1ke said:
I think it depends on the people, their maturity, and their goals.

I met my husband on the internet and we were long distance (1800 miles) for two years. Before Skype or texting. We emailed and talked on the phone.

Personally I got to know him better, faster than if we’d gone on dates to movies and whatnot where we could fill time with trivial matters.
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I’m much more positive about it for mature people.

I feel that for younger people who haven’t dated at all, it can be a way of procrastinating actually learning to be around people. There are a lot of young people today who aren’t well socialized and they need more real life practice.

(I’m not being mean–I wasn’t well socialized either as a young adult, but back in the early 1990s, normal people didn’t have the option of long-distance long-term primarily electronic relationships.)
 
Jp2.0 said:
In my opinion and others opinions do NOT have a long distance relationship, it messes with people and they ultimately end up in break up.
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Not necessarily true.

I met my wife through these forums. I lived in Ireland and she in Latvia. So that’s a three hour flight if either of us wanted to visit. We chatted and prayed together on Skype and got to know each other very well.
After about a year I proposed and we’re now happily married for just over a year.

I think that talking a lot without actually meeting can be just as effective as being in person. Before we had ever met, I knew my wife very well. We had shared hopes and dreams for the future, ideas about family life and marriage, and spent time praying together.
 
I met my husband through Catholicmatch.com and it was a long distance relationship as he lived in another state. Because I am a teacher, I was able to visit him frequently during the summer and spring and winter breaks. He was able to come down and visit me several times as well. We didn’t have Skype, but we talked on the phone a lot. I don’t think I would recommend becoming romantically involved with someone you can’t physically meet at least occasionally. We had visited several times before we agreed to be in an exclusive relationship. (Although, we were both kind of already in an exclusive relationship by default since we weren’t dating anyone else.)
 
I know a ton of people who maintained long-distance relationships with in college in different states. They still got to see one another frequently when they went home for breaks and holidays. I don’t think there’s any reason to believe that their relationships ended at a higher frequency than any other college relationships. (which don’t frequently end in matrimony anyway.)
 
Allegra said:
I don’t think there’s any reason to believe that their relationships ended at a higher frequency than any other college relationships. (which don’t frequently end in matrimony anyway.)
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That’s a very good point.
Also, thanks for commenting. Haven’t seen you around here as of late which is really too bad. I guess maybe I just am not seeing the Stitch logo? Lol
 
I wouldn’t dismiss what you get to know of a person you meet online and have a long distance relationship with. The issue, I think, is the frequency with which you correspond. When my husband studied abroad, we were separated for about 4 months. With the time difference, we could only talk on Skype on weekends and during weird hours of the day because of the time difference. Even though we stayed in relative contact, it was more of a checking in. We didn’t learn anything valuable about each other during that time.

However, when he wasn’t in Oxford, our relationship was still long distance a couple months before our marriage. We saw each other in person almost every weekend and and spend most of our evenings talking over Skype. And indeed, these conversations were great ways to get to know each other’s values and opinions and even how prone we were to arguments (indeed an issue we ended up needing to go through therapy over to have a happy marriage).

But looking at another previous LDR relationship I had and my sister’s LDR with her husband, there can be a tendency to feel like it’s okay to interact less frequently in an LDR. “How can I ask to have this person interact with me over Internet when there are people to hang out with in real life?” And that’s the issue. Because if you take that attitude, than you don’t know what that person is actually doing when they’re not interacting with you.

My sister’s LDR was used to excuse the fact that he often ignored and pushed her away. Indeed, this pattern persisted during their visits. He’d want his space. She’d be upset she wasn’t getting attention when they saw each other so infrequently. He said that would change when they were no longer long distance because then there wouldn’t be so much pressure to spend ALL their time together. But indeed, she continued to feel heavily ignored by him even when their relationship was no longer LDR. Granted, he didn’t move near her until they were engaged and she just lived on the hope that things would change once things settled down.

I had another relationship that started with lots of communication, but gradually the LDR became a cover for the fact that he wasn’t brave enough to break up with me and had basically started dating someone else. He actually just tried to push us to have arguments so that I’d break up with him. Then he later said he felt it was rude to break up over the phone and was faking the relationship till he could do it in person.

So in terms of getting to know someone. No. If you correspond for months and quite regularly, ISN’T like meeting a stranger. But the LDR can be a cover for spending less time with you. Indeed, if you ARE getting to know each other, it does entail talking mostly every day through the use of technology. If you’re only talking for an hour or two weekly, than no, you’re not getting to know the person. You’re just checking in.
 
Cruciferi said:
My brother did long distance dating. He was in Georgia and she was in Florida. They would Skype, text, call, and email. They did this for two months! When they finally met, the whole thing imploded. So you can definitely do long distance relationships; however, you should meet sooner rather than later. She liked dating my brother online but didn’t care for him in person.
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Haha. I met my husband online. We corresponded 6 months prior to ever meeting. Our first meeting went terrible! It was all nerves. Had I not known there was more to him, that “first impression” it would have been a first date horror story and never again. Luckily, we HAD corresponded so long.
 
Couples in the past would long distance with letters, they got to know each other and I would think had more patience than we do in the world of INSTANT communication.
 
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