Keeping the Romance Alive

Let's be honest, guys, relationships are a lot of work and long distance relationships even more work. I'm Doctor Carey and I'm going to talk today about my experience with a long distance relationship. I've actually had a few of these in my lifetime and I'm most recently coming off of a six month separation from my fiance who has been deployed overseas. Now this has been one of the most challenging things I've ever done in a relationship because it does require planning, it does require work. So I want to share a few tips with you today if you ever have to experience long distance relationship or just maybe just relationship tips in general.

So number one, you actually have to schedule your time to talk. If you are in a position where you can talk on the phone, which I highly recommend, you have to schedule it because what happens is you kind of end up living your single lives when you're separated and you just kind of do whatever you want, whenever you want and it can be really freeing and really fun, but. But you have to schedule that time to connect. So whatever that looks like for you, saying at this time, on this day, we're going to connect and this is how much time we have.

That's another thing I would recommend is having an expectation for how long that call will last. Because one of the things that I found with my fiance is he had to talk in his middle of his workday, but I was in the evening because of the time difference and he might have only had a 30 minutes lunch to talk to me but didn't explain that right up front. And so I'm in the middle of a subject when he's like, hey, I gotta go back to work. So depending on where you guys are at, sometimes you have to have that expectation of like, this is how long the call is going to be today.

So you both know, what can we cover in this time then? I would say you have to have different kinds of conversations. You have to have ones that are just sharing about your day. Right. This is what's been going on in my life. You need to have some more. More planning, execution, you know, let's plan out our next week together. Let's plan out what the kids schedule is. If you're separated and there's kids involved, let's plan out our next date night. And so you might have to have some more like, logistical conversations.

You could also do those things over email, over text, and then having date nights, like doing something different than just how was your day? Great. How was your day? Great. Like, you actually have to plan an event to do together. And there's so many cool things you can do. Virtual long distance. You could play a game on your phone that's an ongoing thing. You can. My fiance and I actually watched a comedy episode together one night and, like, would pause it and make comments as if we're, like, in the room together.

You could watch a tv show together where you both press play at the same time. Maybe it's a show that you watch together, but you have to have those shared adventures as well. You can also take your phone with you, FaceTime it, and go out to a restaurant where both of you go out for pizza one night. You can be that creative if you want with it, if you do have that ability. But I want to just stress the importance of technology as your friend. There are some times when we're separated in relationships where you don't have that ability.

Like, at one point, my fiance was literally on a boat with no cell service, no email, no nothing. Those can get really hard. That's when you start pouring into writing letters and jotting down notes of things that you did throughout the day. Maybe you want to, you know, come up with a list of things you want to tell them when you do have that time to reconnect. But when you do have technology, utilize it. There are so many cool apps out there that you can use. Like, for example, there's one where you can send video messages to each other.

There's other ones where you can play games together. So you have, like, an ongoing thing, but use technology to your advantage. It is such a gift in this time and age. I was talking to a couple who did long distance for two years, and this was before cell phones. This was when they had landlines and they had to pay for long distance. That looks so different than we do now with all the resources we have. So utilize technology to your advantage and remember that this isn't forever. So you have to sometimes choose what things you share with each other.

Like, I don't want to let resentment build up, so I'm going to share with my significant other that this has been bothering me because I wanna be able to get it out in the open. But then there's other things I'm gonna have to let go because we just don't have the time to connect about it. So that's a good tip of advice for any relationship, but especially when you have limited time to connect, really choose your words wisely, and especially when you do have that time to be cherishing each other.

So I hope this was helpful. You have any questions comments on this topic, please ping me. Please send me a message. I would love to give you more tips, more of my experience, because it is a challenge to do long distance relationships, but it can be so beneficial and so worthwhile. You get to develop a friendship with that person on such a level that you never could if you didn't have the distance. So embrace it and lean into it and just use the tools that you have. Thanks for tuning. God bless.