We all live in a little mental "room" filled with our own experiences. They shape our worldview and we tend to believe that what we believe represents "the truth". Though we like to believe that we are open-minded, worldly, and quite experienced—especially when we have gone out of our way to seeks new experiences or learn new things—there is always something that will be outside of our worldview. When we are young, the box is quite a bit smaller than it is when we are older. Time has a way of bringing in many visitors who can open our eyes to other possibilities.
When I was in my distance relationship, I thought that all such relationships were like mine. That is, I thought people fell in love with someone who they didn't know face to face and then carried on at a distance until they could meet and resolve the geographical problem that stood between them. I thought that, sometimes, people met first for a brief time and then developed feelings, but my notion of a distance relationship was always one that formed as a result of two people who started out living apart. It did not occur to me that there were people in distance relationships who started out together and then were forced by circumstances to live apart. I always thought that people who were together physically at the outset found ways to stay together outside of very extreme situations such as a soldier who was posted abroad in war time situations.
This belief was obviously informed by my naivete, but it was also the case when I had my distance relationship (1987-1988) that people were a lot less likely to be together and then carry on an LDR in the future. I think that people used to have to make a choice when one person or the other headed off for parts unknown. The couple who once resided in the same place would either have to find a way to move together or decide to break up. It was the rare case that they decided to struggle on at a distance because of the obstacles at that time.
I cannot know if my sense of this was correct as there are unlikely to be any statistics about LDRs in the pre-internet age. I'm purely guessing, but it would make sense that people who did not have the option to contact each other for free, simultaneously, and by video as well as voice, would struggle a lot more with distance. If you knew that your partner moving from New York to California meant that you'd only talk briefly in real time because of phone call costs or you'd be stuck with the sluggish and laborious types of communication you could have by post, you'd be much more inclined to break up or move together. This seems logical.
While expanding my reading on LDRs, I've found that one of the most common ways to have an LDR seems not to be as I did—that is, to fall in love with someone who does not live near you—but rather to already be in love with a local person who has to move for career, education, or family reasons. People sometimes meet via social media or MMORPGs or other online games and fall in love, but that seems to be less common than people who are together at first and forced to be separated.
One interesting thing about these two types of relationships is that it seems much harder to endure separation after you've already had substantial time together. Once a relationship holds a particular status and occupies a certain place in your life, the gaping hole left behind when it changes is very hard to live with. If you've never met the person you love, or met them for a short time, the relationship adds something to the status quo. If you've been with that person for some time, it takes something away.
Both types of long distance relationships are very difficult and take a tremendous amount of effort to manage. However, the psychological impact and the sense of hardship at the separation seems to be worse when you've had the luxury of contact for some time and then had it taken away.
Which relationship do you believe is more challenging? What are the unique challenges of each type?
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