Loving from Afar: Tips for Enduring a Long-distance Relationship

As someone involved in a longterm long-distance relationship, or LDR, I thought I'd share some ideas that have worked well to make my relationship a consistently happy and healthy one. I hope it helps someone else out there, because enduring a long-distance relationship is incredibly rough and takes an enormous amount of effort and, most importantly, love.

Communication. Every relationship needs an open, clear line of communication to survive, but none more so than an LDR. Let's face it, for those of us whose loved ones are far, talking regularly in real-time (whether via phone or IM) is crucial because it's all we have. But take heart: we who start out this way often end up in the strongest relationships, because we had no choice but to fall in love with each other's soul.

Commitment. This sounds obvious, right? Well, hang on a sec, will ya? What I mean by commitment, in this case, is that long-distant relationships should be reserved solely for couples already involved in a committed, exclusive relationship. After all, none of us would choose to jump into a situation that causes as much grief as an LDR does, so unless you're absolutely certain that this is the person you want to be with, save yourself some heartache. Besides, to make a long-distance relationship work, you have to be 100% committed to each other -- otherwise, trust issues will inevitably develop. Which brings me to...

Inspire & Give Trust. An LDR won't work unless there is a serious level of trust on each side, and that's accomplished by inspiring it in your partner. Don't do to him or her what you wouldn't want done to yourself, and that includes putting yourself in situations that give your SO justifiable reason to get upset (i.e. wild parties, bars, etc.) -- unless, of course, it's something that you've each agreed upon from the start (which brings me back to the issue of communication). Understand that being in an LDR is hard, very hard, and it requires that each person go out of their way to inspire trust in their partner. And once your partner does the same for you, trust your trust.