Okay, picture this: Your Boo lives in Florida and you live in Illinois. You’re running a successful business in Miami and Boo’s got a great job in Chi-town. Moving in together is not a smart option right now. This is going to be a long-distance love affair.
The two of you have decided to spend one weekend per month together. So you buddy up with the travel agent you know from the YMCA, or better yet, start being really good to that flight attendant friend of yours so you can use some of her buddy passes and get really good prices on flights. You’ll be racking up frequent flyer miles too, so that will help—anything will help. You’re a “Geographic Single”, and monitoring Google Flights for deals has become your number one side gig.
Does the thought of being separated by prohibitive distance and the effort required to be with your love bug make you squint your eyes in repulsion? Or do you think you could swing this kind of relationship?
People do it every day.
According to this CNN article – Long Distance Dating: In Love, Will Travel, there are lots of lovers out there who (for whatever economic, educational, family-related, or other reasons) live in different states or even different countries.
You may even know of a married couple who lives apart, and not because they’re separated or having a really bad fight. The article states: “Another label that has stuck is the ‘commuter marriage’, in which nonseparated spouses maintain households in different cities, often for job reasons. More than 3 million Americans are estimated to live in such an arrangement.”
For many, living apart is not necessarily a choice, but it doesn’t put a damper on their love. For them, the old platitude “Absence makes the heart grow fonder” is true. Having a great deal of time apart makes the time together that much sweeter and slows down the infiltration of that dreaded boredom that so many long term relationships often breed.
I’ve done long distance dating, and it didn’t work out—not because of the distance, but because he had an estranged wife who I didn’t know about (‘nother story, ‘nother day). However, as a married woman now, I have experienced many stints when my husband has worked out of town for several weeks or months at a time. And you know what? It’s the best thing for us. It was hard to handle in the beginning, but now I look forward to the “me time”.
There’s nothing like lying down at night and spooning with your honey bunch in your arms—but there’s also nothing like spreading out across a queen-sized bed, unencumbered by someone else’s knees, elbows, feet, or vibrating windpipe. And as the neat freak in the family, I can unequivocally say that having one less person in the house to clean up after certainly has its perks.
What I appreciate most is the quiet, the putting the kids to bed at night and having time to think, meditate, recharge, without anything or anyone else to attend to. Then, when hubby’s back, it’s time for a celebration! He has truly been missed, and the kids and I are happy to see him.
This is the kind of ebb and flow that would make some people crazy with loneliness or even insecurity. But for others, it’s exactly what the doctor ordered. There’s more than one way to skin a cat!
inanna-joy.com 