Feb 9, 2016
3 Regrets in my Long Distance Relationship
Nobody wants long distance relationship. But if your partner happens to be from different country, it’s very likely you have to face it whether you like it or not.
I had a long distance relationship with a Korean girl until just a few years ago. She happened to be my first girlfriend in my life ever.
I met her when I studied in Canada. She was one of my classmates. From the first day we met, I thought she was absolutely gorgeous, stunning and brilliant. I fell in love with her instantly. (I guess, this is exactly called "love at first sight” in English, right?)
After pushing and convincing her everyday, we became official couple.
Actually I still can’t believe it. I was on the top of the world.
However, after just a few months later, I had to go back to Japan for some reasons, so we had to be in a long distance relationship.
I was optimistic even though. I didn’t think long distance makes the situation worse. That’s because I was immature and didn’t know anything about relationship at all.
However, guess what? I’m single guy right now. That means, Oh yeah, I FAILED..
Today, I wanna share 3 lessons I've learned through my long distance relationship. Because I really wish somebody shared this with me before I started.
Actually, I made a video about the subject recently.
But, let me explain in more detail below I didn’t cover in the video.
1. Keep in Touch
“I know it’s important already! That’s obvious, isn’t it?”
Probably you wanna say that. Well, actually We both knew keeping in touch is necessary as a couple, so we decided to do Skype every day as much as we can before I got back to Japan.
But it turned out we didn’t actually.
Why?
After I came back to Japan, I started my own business as a web designer. I was extremely busy. Trust me, it’s not “kinda” busy. I was “REALLY" busy!!
A lot of people said, “Nobita, It's too early for you! You’re gonna fail! Just stay being employed by some company.”
That motivated me a lot to work all day to make ends meet, sometimes, with no sleep.
She was also very busy life with starting to work at a new company. She got a lot of things to learn and quite tough time to get used to it back then.
So, both parties were really really busy. I think that made it really harder to keep in touch. We both were too focusing on our jobs.
Having said that, we were doing Skype everyday for first 3 months, since we both knew keeping in touch is important for couples.
But, running out of things to say bothered us a lot. Sure, sometimes we had a lots, but sometimes, there was not so many to talk about actually.
- Hi, How’s it going?
- It was fine. How’s your day?
- No not really. It was just normal day. Did anything new happen?
- Nothing new.
- …OK, Ah..
- ...
After just a few minutes, weird disgusting silence bothered us a lot. I felt extremely awkward. Probably she felt the same way.
Given the situation she was on the extremely busy days, I felt I'am wasting her precious time. Feeling of guilt was killing me.
So we stopped daily Skype. Our Skype became once in a week, once in a month. Gradually, it was getting less often. And then, our connection died out in the end.
This is our first big mistake. Stopping daily communication.
Remember, you don’t have to always have thoughtful discussion or serious conversation everyday. Actually, it’s kinda impossible, right? (no matter how close the couple are).
I realized after talking with Ryosuke and Grace that just little things are totally OK, like doing chores around the house, talking about your dinner or lunch, daily workout or something like that. It could be anything.
Even you think boring or mundane parts of your day can develop your relationship and grow the connection between two, if you do “everyday".
What you talk about doesn’t really matter. How often you talk is much more important. That’s the biggest lesson I’ve learned.
Even if you’re extremely busy, still you have enough time to say hello. Just texting "Good Morning! Have a nice day!” “I MISS YOU!” or something like that doesn’t take 15 seconds.
Making daily-communication routine is the key to have successful long distance relationship.
2. Do Something Together
Talking with many couples who used to be in a LDR, I realized this is something I should’ve definitely done in my LDR.
When you do something together with anyone, you must feel the distance between two seem closer and connection happens naturally.
I think the biggest benefit doing something together is, you get something to talk about so easily. If you watch same movie with someone at the same time, for example, it’s so likely to happen conversation about the movie.
You wanna share reactions each other and have a great time. Thanks to the internet, distance doesn’t really matter to do this. It’s quite easier nowadays.
One of my misconceptions about LDR was, I thought having conversation through Skype was the only thing couple can do.
Obviously, it’s not.
You can cook together, watch movie together, read book together. There are a lot of things to share with your partner.
3. Be Honest
What I was struggling in LDR the most is jealousy. She was too beautiful for me not to do. I think that was the first time I felt “real" jealousy in my heart. (I usually never compare me with someone and do not care at all about what other people think about me.) I didn’t have no idea how to handle it.
“Maybe some guys approach to her and they might have great time now.."
“Does she really feel the same way as me? There’s plenty of guys in Canada. Maybe she already got into other guy.."
These kind of thoughts made me crazy all the time.
The biggest problem is, however, I didn’t tell my feeling to her at all. I just kept the anxiety, fear or any negative feelings in myself.
Why? Because I didn’t wanna be sneaky and creepy guy. If I said to her like, “I’m worry about the possibility you might cheat on me”, I thought that’s gonna make me so embarrassing and she must see me very insecure guy.
But, now I realized. If I’m not 100% honest with her, how she can be honest with me?
If you’re not open and honest with your partner, it’s gonna swallow you up from inside out sooner or later and your partner can feel that.
Eventually it leads to breakup.
It’s totally normal you feel jealous and anxious. That’s not problem. What you shouldn’t do is to try to hide your feeling. You have to express your honest feeling and let your partner help you. You definitely shouldn't take it all on yourself.
Conclusion
So, these are the 3 things I wish somebody told me before I started LDR.
As you can imagine, LDR is quite tough. Every couple doesn’t go well.
No matter how hard you try to make it, sometimes you fail. Because both party have to equally commit 100% in LDR. So, don’t blame on yourself too much even if it doesn’t go well.
Some couples do well and get happy marriage. But many couples don’t and reach to breakup.In my case, unfortunately, didn’t well.
But, honestly, I don’t feel I’m miserable or unhappy at all. Because I got really valuable lessons thanks to LDR.
The above 3 tips don’t only work to relationship, but also to "friendship".
I have some international friends all over the world. Even though they all live in different countries, but we’re doing so well to keep our friendships. This is definitely thanks to the experience of my LDR. And also I’m confident that I'm not gonna screw up again in a relationship.
Sure, it would be great if I could get through LDR successfully and get happy marriage. But right now, I'm really grateful my experience and am totally happy person(^o^)! Yeah~!!
5 Comments
DaveJpn
on Feb 11
I think the communication one is very important here. If you want to make long-distance relationships works you've got to stay on top of this. As you said, though, it can be hard, particularly when you're both so busy. I think you need to have the discipline to do it (which doesn't sound very romantic, I guess) but in the long run, it needs to be done. Nothing wrong with a bit of jealousy, in my opinion. It's how you use it that's important. You can let it kind of eat you up inside, and eventually ruin things. Or, you can use it as a positive to prevent you from taking things for granted. It can be crazy difficult in an LDR situation, so as you said, being honest about it is important. Glad to hear that you came out of this in a positive way.
whywhy
on Apr 17
These are truly interesting points from a Japanese guy. :D Well, I would like to share mine. I met this Japanese guy in an online class. Yes, he was my student. He confessed to me on Skype and came here in Philippines just to court me in person. Amazingly, he survived being in that sucking situation (LDR) for 4 years. :) At first, our Skype, Line, and Messenger connections were very strong. Obviously, we were madly in love with each other. Yet, when he started to become a junior high school teacher. SNS connections were gradually lessen except for Messenger. Every day, we sent each other sweet messages. :) Yet just recently, he gave up. He gave up having me since he maybe realized that he couldn't anymore take the situation. So...what I learned? I learned that...he used to show me his being ONE-OF-A-KIND Japanese character (since he's emotional and I think not all Japanese guys are like that haha), yet in the end, he chose to give up and treat me as a COMPLETE STRANGER like the usual Japanese way. I never thought "ghosting" could be this painful. But LIFE GOES ON! :D
Rachel9328
on Oct 9
Probably it didn't work out because both of you are meant to be with other people. It wasn't your fault.