Make no mistake about it, long distance relationships are hard. Brutal even. But are they worth it?
In the day and age of social media, entire lives are portrayed with a snapchat filter and short clever caption. However, by the age of 21 or so, you start to realize that real life isn’t the singular moments you see when scrolling through your Instagram feed. Real life is dead end jobs, sweat pants, messy hair buns, a never ending stack of bills, and fighting over who put the empty ice cube tray back in the freezer.
I spend most of my blog posts recounting the happy, fun, passionate, and sexy times of mine and Sir’s relationship. Because when we’re together, that’s what it is; happy, fun, passionate, and sexy. But that’s two days a week, what about the five we spend alone? Those five days are just as much a part of our reality. So I want to talk about that today. What does our relationship look like without the weekend filter?
Five days a week we wake up alone, we go to bed alone, we go to work and come home to an empty house, we eat dinner across from an empty seat, we sit alone of the couch reading or watching tv, we pay our own bills and make our own plans and have our own friends and we just… survive.
In D/s relationships this is exceptionally difficult. I need daily guidance and affirmations in order to thrive and Sir needs to lead and care for his kitten in order to feel content. We both thirst for physical touch and we both worry… well, honestly we worry about me and if I’m going to have some kind of panic attack or breakdown on my own someday without his calming presence to center me.
Each week we get the glorious feeling of being reunited with our soul’s counterpoint. We get the feeling of coming home, of walking into the arms of the one person we know loves us more than any other. But every week we also have to say goodbye. We have to walk away from our other half over and over again, knowing that we’ll continue to do it over and over again in the future.
Then there’s the financial hardship of travel. We’re lucky enough that we’re both in a place to be able to shoulder the burden of weekly travel expenses. But make no mistake, the cost of weekly flights, gas to and from the airport, and the price of extended airport parking amounts to a small monthly fortune. We could pay a mortgage and electric bill with our combined monthly travel expenses.
Since long distance isn’t always easy, there’s the added worry that one day the other will just say they’ve had enough, that they can’t keep half-living like this, that the sacrifice will become greater than the reward. We both worry that our relationship will become a stifling burden to the other and we’ll be left devastated but not really confused by their decision to end it.
That leads us to the hardest part of any long distance relationship - deciding how it ends. Do you plan to be long distance indefinitely? If not, one of you has to sacrifice to close the gap. One of you has to quit your job, sell your home/end your lease, leave your family and friends, pack up all of your belongings, and trek across state lines where you’re left to start over while the other person gets to keep their job, house, friends, with virtually no sacrifice at all. Can this kind of sacrifice even be made without eventual resentment? Can a person who truly loves their partner and wants the best for them expect their partner to give up so much? At what point do you put your partner above your relationship and say “no, I can’t let you sacrifice so much for me, for us?” Or do you allow them to make that sacrifice and spend the rest of your life trying to make it worth it for them? None of these answers are easy, but they have to be asked of each other and they have to be answered. It’s the only way to know where the relationship is going. Is there a light at the end of the tunnel or are you just going to ride it out and enjoy it while it lasts?
For Sir and I the end result has always been us living together. But it doesn’t mean the journey is now or will always be easy. In fact, it hasn’t and it won’t be. But it has been beautiful. It’s been full of love and light. It’s been full of promises made and kept. Full of laughter and bittersweet tears. It has been the single best thing that has ever and will ever happen to me.
Long distance relationships aren’t easy. They’re hard. They’re full of sacrifices and lonely nights. They require more work and energy to stay connected than a regular relationship. They require scheduled time to sit and FaceTime or chat on the phone. They require open and honest communication to avoid jealousy and misunderstandings. They require all of the effort a regular relationship requires but with double the effort and without the reward of their presence.
But when you find the one, your ONE, there isn’t a mile you wouldn’t cross, a sacrifice you wouldn’t make to be next to that person.
=^.^=
