Blog Audit: Expansion 1

Blog Audit: Expansion 1

The first blog that I want to expand on is “Long Distance Relationships and My Experience.” I picked this blog because I felt that I could go a little bit more into detail on my personal experience, along with relating it more to lecture material. As I stated in that blog, my last relationship did not start out being long distant. It wasn’t until we have been dating 4 years, he got deployed overseas. It was extremely hard on both of us. We went from seeing each other every day, to not being able to see each other for an entire year. Our communication styles have changed from talking on the phone and talking in person, to writing letters and occasionally skyping when he had free time (which was rarely ever). This relates to the lecture in that men and women communicate differently. Females discuss their feelings, while men tend to discuss objects and actions. This was true in our relationship which made it sort of frustrating. When we did get time to talk overseas, I would always tell him how much I missed him and loved him. I would express my feelings to deeply and he would say “I love you too,” or short simple responses. However, when I asked what he was doing in Afghanistan, he rambled on about the details he was doing. He never would tell me if he was sad, mad, lonely, happy, etc. It was a guessing game when it came to communicating. This was one of the stressors that we experienced after our relationship became long distant. Another stressor was that we didn’t have the physical and intimate touch that we used to. This could relate to infidelity. Although infidelity is more common among close relationships, it could happen whenever and wherever. Fortunately for us, it didn’t happen. At least not that I know of. However, there were times were a guy would snapchat me or text me, and I could easily flirt back or meet up with him without my partner ever finding out. That goes hand in hand with him. He could have been texting or instant messaging other girls, and I would have never known. He could have also been deployed with other women and started to like them. There was one example that I started to doubt how “loyal” he was to me, however. When he came back to America, he started talking to a girl he deployed with. They both attended UW-River Falls, and I thought nothing of it. One day I went to surprise visit him at school and he wasn’t at his dorm. I called and called and waited an hour outside of this room. Finally, he called back and send he was at the library studying with a friend. I asked who it was and he told me it was the girl he deployed with. Of course I assumed the worse right away and we got in a huge fight. Little did I know, they were actually just friends and she had a boyfriend herself. That was an example of what I thought could have been infidelity, as it can be defined differently among other couples. All in all, the long-distance part did not break us up. Although it was extremely hard to overcome, we did it. When he returned home, we stay together for quit a while. The long-distance part didn’t break us up, it was other things that happened in a geographically close relationship. It was other factors in the relationship that did it, factors that relate hand in hand to lecture material.