Long Distance Relationships

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.

A month by month look at the first year of a long distance relationship, including the month four drop almost nobody warns you about.

Five specific things I started watching instead of asking friends whether my long distance relationship was worth it.