Is there anyone out there that has had a long distance relationship really work?

Mine worked. Some work, some don’t. It really just depends on the people involved and their commitment to each other and making the relationship work.

We were friends before we started dating. When we started dating we lived a 3 hours drive apart (him in PA, me in DE). Then, about 6 months after we started dating, he moved due to his job and was then a 3 hour flight away from me (in GA). A few months after that, he moved again due to his job and was then a 4 hour flight away (in TX). When we were within the driving range, we saw each other at least every other weekend, but usually every weekend. Once he moved, we took turns visiting each other about every 6 weeks (that was the best way for our schedules). We ended up getting married and spent the first 4 months of our marriage still separated. Then I finally was able to move (to TX) to be with him (I had to wait to get out of my rental agreement). We moved from TX to KS a little over a year ago. We are now technically long distance again because he has been deployed for the past 7 months.

Communication is really important in long distance relationships. Once he moves, the both of you will have to adjust to the new situation. You will be adjusting to him being gone. He will be adjusting to his new town, new co-workers, and new place. It may take some time to get on a good schedule for being able to talk. Once things get settled down, you can plan date nights and send each other care packages (if you want). My husband and I use to watch movies together, eat dinner together, and play games together online. It really helped to keep up connected.

The best advice I can give you is to take it one day at a time and keep yourself busy in between visits. Keeping busy will help pass the time between visits.

I think people with long-distance relationships are usually reluctant to talk about them. I bet they are more common than they appear to be.

Been going on for 2 years now. Really, really hard stuff but it can work.

Yes, I met a wonderful man online, and it was purely by accident. He is in England, and I’m in the US. We’ve probably spent more time talking together via web cam in the past two years than some couples have who live together. We are now engaged.

A co-worker met his wife through an e-mail exchange. It was also a ‘pure luck that their paths crossed’ situation. She was in Russia and spoke no English. She now lives in the US, they’ve been very happily married for several years, and home schools their two sons.

My long distance relationship worked for about a year and a half. It was imperfect (I suppose all relationships are) but I think the real test is whether I would go back and undo it if I could. I wouldn’t. Not in a million years.

@Pied_Pfeffer @hug_of_war @Seaofclouds

Thanks for your responses & for everyone else who responds too, I knew there had to be atleast a few long distance relationships out there that really did work.

Me and him did start of being friends last December (meeting on a online dating site) and he was persistant in going out with me so in June this year I gave in at met him, I should have really met him sooner than I did.

I’m actually scared about him going away and worried that I will feel like a “single girl” again. He really doesn’t want to go but he needs to take this job, up until now he has only been working part time in random companies.

Do any of you use any particular way of coping and not feeling secluded?

@silvermoon My husband and I had “date nights”. It was time that was planned for the two of us to be together talking. We would talk on the phone sometimes and on the computer other times. We would watch a movie together, eat dinner together (actually make the same meal and eat while talking to each other), and play games online together (we like playing games like NeverWinter Nights, so we would get online and play that a lot). In addition to that, we were both genuinely interested in what the other was doing, so that helped our conversations a lot. Between that stuff and keeping busy with work, school, and my son, I never really had time to feel secluded.

Have both of you invest in a web camera and head set. We use Windows Live Messenger software, but more people use Skype. Both are free to download. My fiancé and I can chat for free and often do so for hours on end. Imagine what our bills would be like for those long distance calls. We can also see each other. As he says, it is a poor substitute for being together, but for now, it works.

I had a long distance relationship that didn’t work at all. Honestly we both ended up messing around while separated. As much as we visited eachother, it didn’t work because we didn’t start off with a solid foundation. We jumped into a relationship and soon after it was a long distance relationship because of our careers. We loved eachother very much. Bad timing. Messing around on someone and having someone mess around on you is a terrible thing to go through. It was all so sad.

I was in a relationship for a 4 years. We met through his brother and my sister who studied in the same college. We were very much in love and had the most perfect relationship. We both met each other as frequently as we could. As mentioned above by @Seaofclouds communication in long distance relationship is very important. We were always on the phone with each other when we were free. And again, it is really important to keep yourself busy whenever you are apart. You will be surprised by how much work you can get done when you are in a long distance relationship. Me and my ex now had to break up eventually due to distress between both our families. But till date, we still love each other and cant stop talking to each other. I think long distance relationships bring you emotionally closer and lets you appreciate the other person and not take them for granted.

I spent 30 years in the military and prior to meeting my wife I had several long distance relationships. Being in the military I was always moving around. I don’t think I spent more than two years in one place in the first 15 years I was in the military. For me, serious relationships take time to develop; I may be overly cautious concerning relationships and it takes time for me to become serious. This resulted in every time I had a serious girlfriend, I would move before it became very serious. I never arrived at the point where I would think about marriage. I would do the long distance thing but inevitably we would drift apart and meet other people. When I met my wife, we dated about five months before I was transferred. But this time we didn’t drift apart and stayed in close contact. This was in the days before email. While we were on opposite sides of the country, it didn’t seem like it. She would stay with me during Christmas, Easter and summer breaks, and I would visit her several times during the year. We did this for about a year and half before we got married. So it worked out for us.

It might be just me but I don’t think 1.5 hrs apart is long distance. Then again, I’m from a part of CA where most people drive 1hr each way to work so I’d gladly (I have) drive 1.5 hrs to see a love of mine just as I’d expect them to make the drive to me on their days off. We spent about 8mos travelling back and forth, a bit of time it was a 7hr drive. All said and done we spent 4 beautiful years together.

I’ve been in a long distance relationship for four years so far. It’s hard work, I miss my SO like mad when we’re not together but I certainly wouldn’t trade him in for someone else that lived closer. Unfortunately this is the way it has to be for now and we have to work with what we’ve got.

It’s working so far.

@Neizvestnaya He’s going some 951 miles away (1.5hr flight) about half the length of my country. I consider it long disance due to that.

@silvermoon- I see. Is it out of your budgets to plan a plane ticket each month for one or the other to visit? Do you both even want that?

@Neizvestnaya To be honest we haven’t even thought that far yet.

i had a long distance relationship about 8 years ago. it was a flame from a long time ago, he called me out of the blue, and i was in a relationship that was going nowhere. so we started seeing each other, and he lived with a woman and her son, but they were on the outs. i visited his house, saw they slept in separate bedrooms, i was understanding about it. She finally moved out, after we were dating about 2 years. I don’t think she knew about me, they were incompatible from the way it sounded. He was a real nudge so he probably annoyed the crap out of her, and he was very negative about her son, so that probably did not help anything, either. Anyway, she and son moved out, and now we had the freedom to be together more. It was Christmas vacation, i wanted to visit him. He was very discouraging about my visiting him, he had all kinds of reasons why it would not be a good thing. I thought to myself, something is weird here. I know the woman definitely moved out, but maybe he is seeing someone else, because this is a time when he should be welcoming me to come visit and he is not. So i broke up with him. 6 months later i heard he was marrying someone totally new. Obviously he started seeing her while he was still seeing me. He and I spoke a few years ago, he told me he started seeing his wife in the fall. Since he was married six months later, obviously “the fall” was the fall that he and i were still dating each other, hence my instincts were correct and i was happy to be done with him.

I am not trying to be discouraging, it’s great if you have 100% trust in the person and from the posts here there’s definitely proof that it can work out. However, i would proceed with caution.