Long Distance Relationship and My Experience

There are 14 million couples involved with long distance relationships. My last relationship did not start out as being long distance, but when my boyfriend got deployed to Afghanistan, it become a long-distance relationship. A long-distance relationship is self-defined for all couples, but in my case, I’m sure most people would agree half way around the world is long distance. The statistics show that 32.5% college students are in long distance relationships’, and I was a part of that statistic. There were a lot of stressors when my ex-boyfriend was deployed. He experienced loneliness, as we didn’t have the physically and intimate touch as we used to. I experience guilt, as I emotionally missed him. There were times that I felt like I “lost” him, like he was no longer on this earth. In a way, I thought the long distance was harder for me. I thought this because everywhere I looked, and the things I did, reminded me of him. I would drive by his house, see his friends and family, listen to music we used to listen to, it was the little things that reminded me of him. He had a completely different view in Afghanistan. I’m sure there wasn’t much that reminded him of me there. Research shows that more infidelity happens in geographically close relationships, and less in long distance. I can completely agree with this. I felt totally committed to him when he was overseas, and I know he wasn’t texting or talking to other girls either. We obviously had a loss in day to day intimacy, for a solid 12 months that he was developed, so that put a stressor on the relationship as well. The first 6 months we wrote letters to each other, and the last 5 months we skyped here and there. It wasn’t as great as in person, but it did the trick. It was a very difficult time, but when he came home we did stay together for a long while afterwards. The long-distance part didn’t break us up, it was other things that happened in a geographically close relationship.