Month seven was when I nearly quit. Not because anything went wrong, but because nothing was changing and I was tired of being brave about it.
I remember sitting in my car outside the grocery store doing math on how many more months of this I had left. The number was big and my patience was not.
I did not get positive by deciding to be positive. I got there by changing a handful of very small things, and here is exactly what they were.
Always Have One Date on the Calendar, Even a Cheap One
The hardest stretch of my relationship was the six weeks we had nothing booked. No flight, no dates, just a vague plan to figure it out later.
That open ending made every small problem feel permanent. A missed call was not a missed call anymore, it was evidence that this would never work.
Now we book the next visit before the current one ends, even when the flight is three months out. It does not have to be a good trip, it just has to exist.
I put the date on my fridge on a sticky note and cross off the weeks. A number I can count down to is the single cheapest way I know to feel better.
Stop Comparing Your Week to Couples Who Live Together
My friend Dana and her husband were my favorite way to feel terrible about myself. She would mention making dinner together and I would go quiet for an hour.
I was holding my Tuesday up against her Tuesday and calling the gap a failure. Of course my week looked thin next to a week that happens in the same kitchen.
What helped was comparing my current month to my own worst month instead. Against month seven, almost everything since has been an improvement.
I also stopped treating her life as the finish line. She had her own hard parts and I was only ever shown the dinner.
Keep Receipts on the Good Stuff Because Your Memory Lies
On a bad night my brain will swear the last month was nothing but silence and canceled calls. It is a very convincing liar and it has never once been right.
So I started a note on my phone called good things and dropped one line into it most days. A voice note that made me laugh, a flower he had delivered, a call that went two hours.
The first time I read it back on a rough Sunday, I had forgotten half of it. Forty lines of evidence against the story I was telling myself that afternoon.
It takes nine seconds a day and it is the only thing that reliably stops a spiral. Feelings argue with feelings, but they have a hard time arguing with a list.
When the spiral still wins anyway, this is how I handle a genuinely bad long distance day. Some days need a plan, not a pep talk.
Give the Hard Feeling Twenty Minutes Instead of Fighting It
For a long time I tried to talk myself out of feeling sad about the distance. I would list all the reasons I should be grateful and then feel guilty on top of sad.
That never worked. The sad thing just waited and came back later with interest.
Now I set a timer for twenty minutes and let it be awful. I sit on the floor, I cry if I need to, and I do not perform being okay for anyone.
When the timer goes off I get up and make dinner. Nine times out of ten the feeling is already smaller, because it got heard instead of argued with.
Forcing positivity on yourself is just a slower way to get overwhelmed. Letting the feeling have a short turn is what keeps it from taking the whole night.
Make Sure the Distance Has an End You Both Agree On
This was the real source of my month seven crash, and it took me ages to see it. I was not worn out by the distance, I was worn out by not knowing how long it lasted.
We had never said a year or a city or a condition out loud. I was being asked to be patient with no idea what I was being patient for.
The conversation was uncomfortable and it took two tries. We landed on after his contract ends, in my city, and writing that down changed how every hard week felt.
A temporary hard thing is survivable in a way an open-ended one is not. If you have not had that talk yet, it will do more for your mood than any amount of positive thinking.
It also helps to know what the first year usually feels like, which I laid out in the long distance relationship timeline. Month seven being terrible was not a sign we were broken, it was just month seven.
Being Positive Is Not the Same as Being Fine
I am not a cheerful person about the distance and I never became one. I am a person who has four or five tools and uses them when the week gets heavy.
Some months still feel too hard and I say so out loud to him now. Saying it has never once made things worse, and pretending always did.
If you are in your own month seven, it is probably not a sign to quit. It is usually a sign you need a date on the calendar and an honest conversation about the end of this.
