Relationship status: long-distance relationship changing to a short-distance relationship

People often say that they are willing to move mountains for love. Being in a long distance relationship (LDR) will cause you to consider the literal implications of this statement. The 1463km distance between me and my boyfriend has seen me Googling the theology department at Stellenbosch, browsing job adds or spending the evening with an illegal amount of chocolate, feeling sorry for myself and being irritated that the stupid lyrics ‘Tussen jou en my, lê daar ‘n berg, lê daar ‘n berg – Tafelberg’ is stuck in my head. Again.

Yes, LDR’s suck sometimes. But for the past 7 months I have had the most amazing time with the most incredible boyfriend. To the cynics and naysayers: we made it! To the supporters and positive friends: thank you! I guess the corny picture quotes are true: distance is not for the fearful; it's for the bold. It's for those who are willing to spend a lot of time alone in exchange for a little time with the one they love. It's for those who know a good thing when they see it, even if they don't see it nearly enough.

Many long-distance relationships may be doomed. It’s not easy. But it’s worth taking a chance at happily ever after if you are willing to rely on these not-so-secret keys: trust and communication. You also need an agreeable bank manager, loads of airtime and faith.

I have great news, our long distance relationship will change to a short-distance relationship on the 1^st of June. Instead of moving mountains, my boyfriend is moving to Johannesburg. Yeah!

I thought I would share some lessons learnt, some of the ups and downs, and some tips if you are considering a LDR or are currently in one.

The lessons

A key part of our LDR came down to the twin virtues of independence and imagination. Instead of merely thinking of our communication as text messages, voice notes, phone calls and packages in the post, I thought of it as a modern version of an old-fashioned courtship. Being a hopeless romantic, I savoured the ‘movie moments’ that so many couples may miss out on. Have you really lived if you haven't searched for your beloved's face at an airport gate, cursing the flight delay because you have only a weekend before you must part again? To believe in the fidelity in the timbre of a disembodied voice over the phone, to be as in love with someone's absence as you are with his presence, is to be a true romantic.

One of the best things we did was to always have something to hope and wish for. We always had a ‘next-time’ date set before we even said goodbye. We had a goal, a plan and something to look forward to.

The distance has proven such a big test to our relationship. It has strengthened it and proven that the love and commitment we share is real. We didn’t just “overcome adversity”; instead, we were changed by it.

Some ups and downs

Let me point out a few advantages, other than not having to shave your legs every day and being able to wear mystifyingly unflattering underwear. Long-distance relationships can be more beneficial than you might think - not just for the airlines and phone companies.

The ups

1. I became very good at packing. I even kept a toiletries bag half-packed in the bathroom cabinet with a ‘travel toothbrush’. I think that after so much time apart, a suitcase itself is an aphrodisiac.
2. I became an expert on finding the cheapest airline tickets, collecting and spending my e-bucks and checking for threatening weather in the days before my flight.
3. Getting to plan the times we would be together was an unbelievable rush of excitement. You’ll cherish the times you get with each other since they don’t happen every day.
4. Starting the countdown (to the annoyance of most of my friends) as days passed until we would be able to see each other. We counted down the hours. Literally.
5. Date nights. Yes, even if that meant spending every Tuesday watching Blacklist or the Sunday movie over text messages. It gave us something to do together.
6. When talking on the phone is your primary form of communication, I learned how to really listen. People who struggle to communicate clearly often irritate me these days.
7. Without the luxury of face-to-face exchanges, I learned to love and appreciate the small things he did to a higher degree.
8. One evening my boyfriend mentioned that we had more of a communication schedule in place than the average couple that lives close to or with each other. We started each day with voice notes, would check in during the day via text messages and had phone calls when he got off work and every night before bed, and so on. Whereas the average no-distance couple) may rely on short catch ups throughout the week and weekends spent connecting in a bigger way.
9. Not only did we communicate more, but we truly felt that we had more meaningful interactions and higher intimacy levels than couples together all of the time. We had deeper conversations about daily life, childhood memories, fears, dreams, politics, Oscar Pistorius, love, the future, God – we talk about everything and anything.
10. We set clear boundaries and clarified together. I think a lot of couples approach a relationship with a ‘take-it-as-it-comes’ attitude, whilst we made it a priority to know why we were in a LDR, the logistics, the timeline, the feelings and the expectations. It eliminated hidden hurt and resentment and opened up the decision making process.
11. There’s something magical about knowing there is a person hundreds of kilometres away who is thinking of you. An unexpected message and the accompanying smiling at your phone was special in its own way.
12.  What we probably loved most about our time apart was the ‘weekly challenges’ that we set for each other. Every week we would have to complete some task and then share it with the other person. If I could give one piece of relationship advice to every guy in the world it would be to start ‘weekly challenges’. We made picture tutorials of paper jets, wrote our own manifestos, secretly recorded our parents, sent a selfie a day, wrote poems, had ‘corny-love-picture’ battles and many more absolutely absurd things through which we reminded one another that we had taken the time to do something, to prioritize the other person and to laugh at the incredibly random things we thought of.
13. We completed so many random quizzes over the phone: what kind of evil villain are you?, Myers-Briggs personality tests, Is he a keeper (COSMO…) or How angry are you?, etc. We laughed, we learned and we shared.
14. And then obviously the BEST thing about the LDR was finally seeing each other. The time we spent together, watching movies, enjoying a rare domesticity, exploring each others cities, meeting friends and family, sharing meals, sitting next to each other at church and living in that urgency that couples in short-distance relationships can only dream of. Every second together counts. Every hug is savoured; every kiss must be good enough to last weeks, maybe even months.

The downs

1. For all the people out there who like to cuddle, a LDR is not your friend. You will feel super lonely at times because there is no body-to-body contact at all. You will find yourself hugging and practically abusing your pillows on those lonely nights and there is nothing you can do about it.
2. My boyfriend says that the most difficult part of a LDR is not being able to console or support me physically by giving me that hug when I’ve had a rough day.
3. The guilt of seeing happy couples around all the time and then hating them.
4. The dreaded drop-offs which are little deaths, every time. They are excruciating despite my attempts to mask the pain with strained humour. I can’t do the pretty crying with tears silently flowing down my cheeks, I do ugly crying. Breaking into a fit of ugly crying in front of his parents has to be an all time low regarding send offs.
5. The phone bills. We rarely talk for less than an hour a day… Enough said.
6. The frustration of technology. From network problems, lost packages in the mail, incompatibility of video chat apps, dropped calls, slow internet connections, inability to save files, missed calls and dying batteries – you will inevitably lose your patience and consider training a pigeon.
7. Life becomes compartmentalized: There's the life with him and the life without him. It’s the life without him that will ultimately take up the most of your time and cause some issues.
8. Your friends won't know him (they may suspect you of inventing him).
9. You'll still be ‘single’ in a way, attend functions without a date (meaning you'll be seated next to someone’s nerdy colleague).

Now, I do not claim to know the recipe for a successful LDR. Ultimately every situation is different and there will be sleepless nights, discussions and possibly a lot of ‘I miss you so much’ messages. But it might also be a great opportunity so both partners can follow their dreams and pursue their goals - while slowly trying to merge their lives together.

So, as I fall asleep alone tonight (in the shirt that I stole from him) I know that being in a LDR has made me swallow my own words. LDR’s are possible. They can work when you believe in the impossible, or at least the improbable at times. It will be tough, but you hold out hope that something's going to change someday, that all the impracticality will eventually give way to something radical, something brave, something involving a moving van. Until then, you wait. Until the 1^st of June, I wait.