On Long Distance Relationships
I don’t talk about my girlfriend Jilian on here very often. But since she’s the most incredible person I’ve ever met, I figure that now that I’m finally talking about her, she deserves a pretty long post to make up for all the months of silence.
I’ve known Jilian for almost two years. In that time, we’ve fallen deeply and madly in love. The kind of love that people write songs about. Sadly, I am lacking in the songwriting skills department. But my love remains nevertheless undiminished. The inside jokes, the shared moments, the highs and lows and fights and hugs and everything else that makes relationships amazing and frightening at the same time, we have all of those. But one thing we have that most couples don’t is a big fat continent between us.
The relationship that Jilian and I have is, for lack of a better word, complicated. She lives in the beautiful state of Washington, about as far west as you can get without becoming very very wet. Technically she lives on an island, so you still might get wet if you can’t jump very far. I, of course, am currently in Waterloo. There are about 3300km between us on any given day. There is a three hour time difference. It would take sound 2 hours and 40 minutes to get from here to there. The distance is balls.
Long distance relationships are an incredible nuisance. We send emails back and forth every day, we skype every single night, and whenever we get the chance one of us hops on a plane. We make it work as well as we possibly can. We’ve needed to try ridiculously hard to do so, otherwise things would fall apart. I have no doubt in my mind that if Jilian wasn’t the most amazing person I know, and totally worth the effort, our relationship would not have lasted this long.
It is extremely frustrating not being with the person you love. Not being able to hug them when they’re sad, not being able to go to dinner or the movies or any normal dates, not being able to attend her band concerts or have her watch my hockey games. All of the things that normal couples take for granted, we miss out on. It’s frustrating and disappointing and infuriating.
I would not wish anyone to have to go through what we go through on a daily basis. It might not sound so bad, but trust me, it has been one of the most difficult things I’ve had to do.
But I’ve never wanted to give it up.
I don’t know what it is about this woman, but I can’t imagine my life without her anymore. So no matter how often Skype crashes, no matter how many nights I have to stay up until 2am talking to her, no matter how much money I have to spend to visit her, she will always be worth the effort. Always.
And someday soon, when we’re finally living in the same place, and we can finally do all those things that we’ve been missing out on for years, it’s going to be fantastic. And we’ll appreciate it in ways that most people never will.
So, basically, long distance relationships suck. But I wouldn’t trade mine for anything in the world.
We are far too young and clever
