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Thanks to increases in technological communication, long-distance relationships are more common today than ever before. But even for the strongest couples, this type of situation can cause a strain. Would you purposefully choose to get involved in a relationship if you knew you wouldn't see your partner very often? Or would you only do it if you knew the person first, and circumstances occurred later to cause you to reside in distant locations?
I think it depends on the people involved at a particular point in time. If you like someone enough, you'll be willing to put up with things that you might not have in previous relationships. And on the flip side, a person who used to prefer occasional visits with someone could end up feeling entirely different when they meet someone new—going from enjoying their freedom as much as possible, to looking for every opportunity to spend time with someone else.
Living in Chicago, Wendy is involved with a man who lives in New York . She mentions some of the downsides:
When I tell people my boyfriend lives in New York , I inevitably get some response about a long-distance relationship that either survived or failed, followed by a commiserating remark about how hard the [long distance relationships] are. And it's true—they are hard. The commute alone always wipes me out... and the seemingly endless carting around of our belongings from one city to another, and negotiating what often seems like two lives now: the single life and the coupled one.
But although there are hardships, Wendy thinks this situation works for her.
...I thought about the last year and how my life has changed, and my stance on [long distance relationships] softened a bit. There is something to be said for them, for the way you get to simultanesouly experience single life and coupledom—how some weekends are devoted to your friends and your hobbies and yourself, and some weekends are all about the love. [...]
The thing is, if it weren't for the long distance, I doubt NYMan and I would be a couple. I'm such a commitment phobe—always falling for the wrong guy to avoid a serious relationship and ignoring the right one just under my nose, that I think it took an obstacle like 1400 miles to keep me from running, and to provide the unique perspective I needed to see a good thing.
Halley talks about being apart from her boyfriend while studying abroad in Paris:
Being boyfriendless because you're single in Paris is fantastic—there's a never-ending supply of amorous French boys to take you out, you can go dancing and stay out all night without anybody worrying, you can give your phone number to any cute boy who asks for it. But what happens when you're boyfriendless and not single? When there's supposed to be one particular American boy taking you out, waiting for you when you come home from dancing with the girls, glaring at the boys who ask for your number on the street—and he's not there? [...]
There's an empty spot next to me where a boy is supposed to be, so instead of calling him when I'm having a bad day, I flirt with the bus driver, pause a little longer than I should watching the French boys play soccer in the jardin des Tuileries, develop an inappropriate crush on my vie politique professor and devote entirely too much time and energy to finding Rachael a French boy. There's nothing else to do—except wait.
After being involved in a long-distance relationship for years, KF and her boyfriend are finally moving in together for good.
[I]t's finally begun to sink in: this is the last time that he has to go home. Or, rather, the last time that going-home involves traveling in a direction that is away from me. [...]
We've spent long enough stretches in the same apartment—about eight months during my last sabbatical; nearly a year during his last one—that there's no nervousness about this transition. We know we live together well. What we've got instead is unadulterated excitement, knowing that we can finally do some of the things together that we've been putting off. Some number of those things are material; periodically, over the last week, one of us has turned to the other with this somewhat starry, somewhat craven look, and said, "Two incomes. One household. No flying." And both of us sit back and imagine the things we can do,
