Long Distance Relationships are hard…
The truth is, it is actually so stressful to be one. I am not talking about loving someone- no no no, I am talking about how the distance can REALLY screw with your head.
There is a lot of good things that come out of it. There is a love that you are fighting for and all that, but this post is not about all the goo-goo ga-ga love stuff, it is about all the crap that comes with an LDR.
Lonely Nights
I remember back home in California I would get out of a hard day at work and make my way home. I remember wanting to call him but I was on the road and my aux cord was broken at the time, so driving and calls were out of the question. I would have loud music playing with the window down wishing I was anywhere else but here. Wishing I was with him.
I would get home and I would see my daughter some days and there are nights where she was at her dad’s house for the night. On the nights where she was at her dad’s I felt so lonely. I had a cat named Milo and my brother and his girlfriend live just a room over but I still felt lonely. I would go online and scroll down my feed and saw other people in their happy relationships and I could not help but feel empty.
After my shower, I would lay in bed and get under the covers and look at a computer screen while he talks to me and then there are nights where he is asleep and we cannot talk because he had work in the morning.
I can text him and I can video call, but we go months without a single kiss or a simple cuddle. Especially the time where he went back to England and I had to sit in a room full of memories of the late night talks and the midnight trips to 7/11 for some pizza and wings.
All I did was hug a pillow with his shirt for a cover and I cried like an idiot for missing him so much. I knew a simple hug from him could have made it all go away but I lived here and he lived there.
How time is actually a VALUABLE thing.
Right when I woke up in the morning I knew he was at work and I would wake up to his good morning text that he sent at midnight. I would have lunch at 2:30pm most days and he would just be getting ready to get off at 10:30pm his time and have no time to talk to me but a simple “I miss you” message he sent on his lunch break hours before. I would get off of work at 7pm and he would be asleep and he would wake up at 9pm my time to talk to me for a little bit while he was getting ready to go to work.
There was a time where he didn’t have work and he was on my sleep schedule and it made my life so much easier. But for some reason, it did not seem enough some days. I wanted him to spend his days with me even though he was. He was halfway across the world talking to me through skype and I would still feel like our time together was not enough. We slept on skype together most days just to know we were “there” with each other to make us sleep a little easier. Call us mad, but I really loved those nights where we could do that.
People do not understand and are not as supportive.
“Norma, you have a daughter. You need to find someone who can take care of you and your daughter.”
I have heard that and all at this point. I can be called a bad mother and I know a few people who are not parents but also in an LDR that can also say they have heard all the negative things people have to say too.
We know what you think actually. There was a time that most of us thought LDR’s do not work. There was a time where most of us thought we would never work out, we would never see each other.
I do have to say, yes, it is so freaking hard. It is hard when you too think that it would not work some days and the people you love have something negative to say about it. I know I am a mom and I know that I have my daughter, but she likes him and they get along. Her dad and I have got that covered. We both are raising her. She has a father and she has a mother, Sammy does not need a replacement parent. I am not looking for a replacement for anyone and I am lucky to find a man who loves my Sammy as much as he loves me. I find that being a mom in an LDR is a lot harder due to the fact that is is not only me but there is also a child in the mix and it makes it 100 times more difficult because it sometimes feels like I am a single mother. It is just Sammy and I at home most of the time with no real outside help if you exclude her dad’s and I’s joint bills. I bet it is harder for him to watch me struggle through a screen. He hates it, he says it makes him feel useless.
“Where is this going?” and other questions come up. But the thing is this is just a regular relationship just like any other but without having someone physically there for long periods of time. I love Connor dearly and he loves me back. We talk about the future like most of you do, but it is not as simple as “We are going to get married and find a house together” like most relationships. We are talking about visas. We are talking about plane tickets. We are talking about leaving what we have known for our whole lives into a whole new different world. We are talking about savings accounts and applications. We are talking about when are we next going to see each other to make a countdown. We are talking about all these things before we even think about getting a home together.
People tell us stories about their experiences and tell us it is not worth it. Thay cannot see that we are gaining anything from it so they assume it is not going to work. They do not see us as a couple, they see us on our phones and computers and smile like dorks. People asking the obvious if it would be easier to get a man down the street. Or if I really know if he is cheating or if I am really cheating on him. It is hard to convince anyone LDRs do work because we get the “Do you even know him?” “Have you ever met the guy?” “What if he is a serial killer?” But we do know who they are. We have been intimate for months and we have skyped for so long that I can spot him in a room full of 1 million people. I would not let a complete stranger come into my home and live with me for a while if I was not serious about him. I surprised my family when Connor came to visit and he walked up and gave her a hug. Something that most of my family NEVER thought would happen.
And now I am in England visiting his family. We are trying hard to make this work.
Finding the money to make our desired future a reality.
It has gotten harder for people like us to “just get married and move there”. It is not so simple at all. I live in the US and he lives in England and we have to go through a process that costs lots of money and lots of paperwork. We have to really figure out who is living where when we close the distance. Nothing about it is simple. Leaving family and friends and learning to adapt in a whole other country is something I never really thought about and now I have to.
If any of us want to bring personal belongings across the pond, it is going to cost money to send it over.
I can go on and on about how expensive it all it but I know you get my drift.
Not knowing how they are really like until you are there and living it.
I knew how Connor was over the screen but not in real life. When he came to visit for a while I found it hard to find a middle ground sometimes. We are so different and yet the same and we fought a lot about stupid things that we never really knew we would until we slept in the same bed together. Turns out he snores really loud and I take the covers off him. I like to clean the house a certain way and he likes to do it another way.
There is no dating where he can come over for a little bit and get the feel of my home and then he goes off to his home. It goes from not seeing each other to seeing each other ALL THE TIME. Don’t get me wrong, it is awesome when we are together, but going from living a certain way and then having someone else step on your toes when we have no idea how to be in this new environment is difficult. The comfort of our own room and especially stuff is difficult for us both. He likes PC gaming and he had to live without it for a while since I had no PC but a laptop in the house. I miss my arts and crafts I left at home because I did not bring it on the plane with me.
Having to adjust our way of living to our new surroundings is hard. I could not find some basic ingredients to make my favorite foods in his town in England without paying loads of money and it kills me a little inside sometimes. My comfort food is out of the question. His comfort food is out of the question too. He was dying in the supermarket one day because he said he could NOT live without Branston Pickle. I laughed at the time until I came here and I found out they did not have XXtra Flaming Hot Cheetos.
We live in two different worlds. His sense of humor is different from mine even though we have one that brings us together. He has a different point of views than I do and that is fine. We eat different things than I am used to. And so on and so forth, you know what I mean.
Missing home.
I know if I move here I am going to miss home. I know I am going to miss the sunny weather and going to Carl’s Jr. I know he will miss England and his family if he moves to California. It is hard to think that one day one of us is going to have to leave everything behind. Or both and move to Canada! Ha! But in all seriousness, it will be difficult to say goodbye to everything we know.
I can go on for days about how hard it is…
But the reality is…
It is all worth it.
We All Start from Somewhere 
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