"Being Real"

A very long time ago, I once read a book by a man who had lived in Japan during its economic "bubble" era. This was back in the days when Americans were freaking out because the Japanese were buying up their real estate and works of art. Local governments in Japan had so much money that some of them purchased gold-plated statues for their municipalities. It was an age that the Japanese felt smug and superior about, and thought would never end.

Eventually, the bubble deflated and Japan entered a long and slow decline. People started to forget that it was ever that much of a threat and eyes turned toward China as the next looming economic powerhouse. The book I read, called Japan: It's Not All Raw Fish, is as outdated as the idea that the Japanese were going to take over the world. However, I have never forgotten something that was mentioned in the preface as I am continually reminded of it as I go about my days in America. An old Japanese lady said something to the effect that Americans felt their opinions were facts. She was absolutely right, though she certainly would have gone further in expanding on that had she known Americans even better.

One of my frustrations as someone who was repatriated after 23 years of life abroad has been the limited scope of most American lives. Not only do they tend to live in little bubbles existences, and this applies even when they travel for tourism, but they are absolutely certain that their limited worldview is the only correct one and that it is a very informed one at that. I have had more than one discussion with an American in which a person has asserted that "we don't know" something to be true when the truth is that he or she does not know something to be true because that information has not penetrated the bubble they've constructed around them. The attitude is often, 'if I don't know, it is not true or known by anyone.'

It has been equally the case that I have encountered people who apply the same arrogant assertions to many other situations. If I can't do it, then it can't be done by the average person. If I haven't experienced it, it does not happen. If I don't believe it, it does not exist. Even if someone has indeed done it, they immediately deny the veracity of the claim or they insist it is an outlier experience and therefore invalid as a general rule.

My most recent experience with this involved an exchange with a woman in an LDR who insisted that the parents of young folks in distance relationships couldn't understand how they could work because, when those old people grew up, they lacked the "tools" to conduct such a relationship. Since I had my relationship in 1987, I took issue with the idea that such tools were indeed insufficient to carry on such relationships. She snarkily insisted that she was right and asserted that she was just 'being real' by saying that people could not conduct LDRs without the benefits of instantaneous text communication and video chatting. That was what was "real". My experience was obviously an outlier because she couldn't imagine making a relationship work with the limits that I did. Her experience was the arbiter of "reality," and my experience bounced right off of her bubble rather than find its way in and become part of a new version of truth.

This attitude stunned me because she was adopting the exact same posture as all of the doubters who sit in judgment of LDRs. For them, they believe that an LDR can't be "real" because it is a requirement that you be in person. When they say distance relationships don't work, I'm sure they feel they are also "being real" by setting the bar at needing physical proximity because they couldn't have a relationship any other way. She set a bar as well. Hers was just having access to technology. She even said that she and her boyfriend could not have their LDR without those things. I wonder if this is an opinion that she has shared with her boyfriend. Hopefully, they are on the same page in this regard or someone could end up getting hurt.

I'm sure that the reason she got a bit uppity with me was that I said all that was necessary was commitment and dedication. The tools help, but ultimately I said that it was about what you put into it, not how you carried through with it. This idea was likely threatening to someone who felt her LDR would fail without the comforts and immediacy of all that cell phones and internet connections bring. She probably felt I was questioning her dedication and commitment, but the truth was that she was the one questioning it as a result of what I'd said as I knew nothing about her relationship until she made her assertions. If she couldn't make her relationship work without her necessary tools, then no one could... except for me, that freak outlier. It was that American attitude I've grow so tired of encountering rearing its head again.

People who were born before me suffered far greater difficulties of separation than I did in my LDR. Men went off to war and left their families behind. Their wives still loved them and they wrote very infrequently and constantly faced the threat of permanent loss. Diplomats and political figures traveled during times when sea voyages were common. John Adams adored his wife Abigail, but they endured huge separations—sometimes spanning over a year—as a result of his career. Love somehow maintained itself despite enormous obstacles and relationships remained intact. That is what I'm talking about when I say that it takes devotion and commitment and is not dependent on the tools at your disposal. It's about a shared perspective that you have a connection and do whatever you can to maintain it, not about how you do it.

I wouldn't recommend that anyone pursue an LDR lightly and I certainly wouldn't recommend ignoring every possible tool at ones disposal to ease the difficulty. However, I will say that, if you can't have the relationship without a particular type of communication, then it's time to think about what your relationship is all about. Absence is supposed to make the heart grow fonder, not make it grow bored, cool-hearted, and restless.

Perhaps this is an "evolution" of relationships based on the modern age. That's the same age that has dramatically reduced our attention spans and decreased our distress tolerance until we've all turned into stimulation junkies who can't bear any deviation from our expectations. It's what has us following Twitter and screaming at a barista who puts one too few squirts in our vanilla latte. Perhaps I was a freak outlier, but I have some confidence that some people are made of similarly devoted stuff when it comes to their LDRs, though I'm guess that "being real" girl is not among them.

Putting the "Relationship" in "Long Distance Relationship"

One of the things that I consistently encounter when people talk about their LDRs is that they seem to forget that they aren't just "long distance", but also in "relationships". The same issues that concern a face-to-face relationship affect a distance one as well. It seems that the logistical challenges and physical deprivation overwhelm the thoughts of other relationship concerns for some people.

However, there are other issues other than resolving distance and coping with the day-to-day sense of feeling alone. Unsurprisingly, I follow the Reddit LDR subreddit that I link to on the right. I do this because I want to get a sense of the challenges and issues people presently face as compared to my LDR back in 1987-88 as well as see it as a muse for further work on my book. I've noticed that people often fall in love and then think about how to get through the separation without worrying about bigger problems such as basic compatibility issues or lifestyle differences.

One of the threads that I was looking at was from a young woman who was of a certain faith that did not allow followers of said faith to marry atheists. She was neither prepared to abandon her religion nor was he ready to convert to her faith. The distance wasn't even the issue in this case. It was this basic roadblock to any sort of future together. Her question was about whether or not it was "worth" it for him to endure the LDR given their obstacles, but it wouldn't be "worth" it even if they were in person. It was a road to nowhere in terms of a relationship given their respective stances on this issue.

The very basics of conducting an LDR include the fact that it has to be more firmly "book-ended" than a regular relationship. That is, it has a concrete beginning in which intent to enter into a relationship is understood by both parties and a concrete conclusion in which the distance has been closed is planned. Because of the sacrifices that must be made in order to be together, it becomes even more important for the parties in an LDR to have some sense that the entire relationship has the potential to work out.

It's monumentally unfair to the party who abandons life in one location to move to another only to find that their significant other has fundamental differences and now the relationship just won't work out despite now being in person. Before anyone moves, the relationship itself has to be solid and a plan for a shared future has to be agreed upon. If love were a neat and tidy thing and we could control who we fall in love with, it would be ideal that people wouldn't even fall in love with someone who had an enormous roadblock to future togetherness and such relationships wouldn't start in the first place. Love is not so logical or cooperative, so it's important to look at a distance situation first and foremost as a relationship rather than to focus too much on the "distance" portion.

Two Types of Distance Relationships

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?