Long-distance relationships are extremely hard to work through and in most cases don’t work. They take a lot of effort, especially for college students. According to a study from Wayne State University, long-distance relationships make up around 25 to 50 percent of all college relationships. Long distances between partners can be debilitating to the relationship, particularly when the distance makes meeting up regularly nearly impossible.
Every relationship requires communication to survive. Moreover, at every point of our lives, especially in college, we experience many changes, from discovering different things about ourselves to having evolving preferences. Throughout all this, the level of communication with people, especially with people from the past, is susceptible to drop. This makes it especially difficult to maintain solid communication with a significant other.
I came to college as a first-year while I was in a relationship. My boyfriend and I decided that we didn’t want to let go of the relationship. As soon as I became acclimated to campus life, I made friends left and right. I stayed in contact with my friends and family back home, who would call and ask about this new chapter in my life. But at a certain point, I barely got calls from my partner. This person I used to see and talk to every day was no longer privy to updates in my life. Whenever he would call, he would ask about things that happened a week or two before, and it wasn’t exciting news to talk about anymore. With the challenges already prevalent in the relationship, it didn’t help that our communication was also failing.
For some people, long distance relationships actually increase the love they have for one another. I don’t think it is the distance itself that makes the heart grow fonder, but rather the effort that each party is willing to put in during this time period. This effort is provoked by the feeling of compensating for the miles between one partner and the next. Each partner may feel the need to be more romantic than they truly are or contact their partner more than they normally would.
Furthermore, being separated can also help avoid petty arguments that are usually more frequent when partners are always together. But when the two parties reunite in person, in most cases, the dynamic changes. Typically, they both realize that they have to relearn how to interact in the same place to create understanding again. If this is not learned or if their actions are drastically different from the way they were while they were away, then the relationship may be in trouble.
I would not recommend long-distance relationships for couples that aren’t deeply in love beforehand. Nor to people who have a wandering eye or an “out of sight, out of mind” mentality. Long–distance relationships are for couples who have overcome tribulations in and dealt effectively with insecurities they have. Only those who are trustworthy and have good communication can flourish in the challenge that is a long-distance relationship.
