Olivia Parker

How I handled insecurity in my long distance relationship without letting it turn every quiet night into a fight.

Honest, specific ways I handle missing my partner every day in a long distance relationship, from naming the ache to booking the next flight.

An honest look at long distance jealousy, and the small rules that made mine quieter without pretending it disappeared.

Six months into long distance, I looked through my partner’s Instagram likes at two in the morning. I found nothing, felt disgusting about myself, and did it again the next week. Trust was the thing I assumed would just show up if he behaved well enough. It turned out to be something we had to … Read more

For the first year I thought the answer was as much as humanly possible. We talked three or four hours a day and I was proud of it, right up until I started dreading the phone ringing. The honest answer is that most long distance couples I know land somewhere around one real conversation a … Read more

About eight months in, my partner and I had a call where we said maybe thirty words total. Not because anything was wrong, but because we had already covered work, dinner, and the weather, and there was nothing left. I got off the phone convinced we were losing something. It took me a while to … Read more

Our worst fight in three years of long distance started with the word okay. He sent it after I told him I had to cancel a visit, and I spent the next eleven hours building a whole story out of two letters. He was on a job site with bad service and no time to … Read more

For the first six months of my long distance relationship, I texted my partner something like forty times a day. Somehow I still hung up most nights feeling like I had no real idea what his life actually looked like. The fix was not more messages. It was a handful of small daily habits that … Read more

We talked every night for a year and I still felt unknown. The five communication changes that actually fixed it.

What I got wrong telling my mom about my long distance relationship, and the approach that finally worked with the rest of my family.