Creating the Distance Between Us
The way they make me feel like I belong somewhere else. Long distance relationships, to me, is knowing someone wants me in another culture and another place, because the culture I’m in doesn’t want me and doesn’t make sense. To me, their home makes sense.
My first two relationships were long-distance. This seems to be all I know now. Long-distance phone calls, video chats, Netflix parties, virtual game nights, and tickets back and forth to see each other. I don’t know if this is because of my upbringing as a TCK with the constant moves. My whole life has been navigating relationships over long distances. With friends and family in numerous countries and time zones, I’m a professional at shoving myself into the lives of the people I want to stay friends with while letting some friendships slide away as I make more moves between them and I.
I thought that love was meeting someone, falling in love, getting married, and settling down. I also thought that’s what I wanted out of love, boy was I naive.
My first relationship started in Costa Rica, when our lives looked like a vacation (minus the school work). Running around the city with friends, beach trips on the weekends, endless sunny days. It was perfect. We solidified our relationship over the years as our family’s fell apart, parents divorced and we were forced to return to our home country and different home states. The relationship turned long distance after only 6 months of knowing each other but lasted for 4 years. I thought he was it. We dated for so long even though the long distance never had an end in sight (this should’ve been a red flag noticed). I thought we would eventually live in the same city, get married and settle down. When we broke up I was only 20. I realized I wanted to move to New York City and study fashion or move overseas and work, and he wanted to get married and settle down in a small southern town in the states. We broke up, continued to talk for another year but finally lost all contact. I hear he’s married now with a baby, and I’m happy for him. That’s what he wanted.
My second relationship began soon after my break up with my first ex, a friend from Peru who I had gone to school with. Our relationship started off as long distance. We were soon “dating” and after a few months of talking online, we finally met up as boyfriend and girlfriend for the first time. The relationship continued as long distance for 1 year before we were finally living in the same city. I transferred schools and we went to the same university together. We realized, or maybe just I realized, that we were better as friends. I broke up with him after 2 years together.
Part of me wonders if we started dating because I was desperate for some connection to Peru again.
I was struggling being in the states with no close connection to home, or any other country for that matter, while he was in Peru and knew my home, it just made sense. When one of us was homesick, we understood where that ‘home’ was. He knew my favorite foods and places and had the same love for the ocean. We were good in theory but very different in what we wanted our lives to look like and how we wanted a relationship to look like too. He wanted something more traditional, and I was anything but. I didn’t have a desire for marriage or kids or settling down in another southern city.
Realizing that this was not the relationship for me and that I needed time to be by myself, I ended it with him. He believed that I was in love with someone else, but there was no other man. There was only the world I wanted to discover on my own. I left 2 weeks later to study fashion abroad in Italy. It was a dream I’d had for so long that my first boyfriend tried to squash.
In Italy, I fell madly in love with the culture, the people, the cities, the food, and the wine.
I came back from that trip and immediately planned my next trip to Europe. For so long, my life had been moving between countries in Central and South America that I loved, but seeing Europe for the first time was magical. I felt infatuated with traveling, specifically traveling by myself. No men in my life, just me and a foreign city.
I started doing a lot of solo travel in the years I was single. I didn’t want to feel stuck but wanted to live my life and have someone who loved me for that. After I ran out of money and paid time off, though, I was stuck in Nashville for a while. I chose to do my traveling through going on dates with men from foreign countries. Can I count these as long-distance relationships?
I liked to think that they weren’t one-night stands, that if they had lived in the same city we’d be in a relationship.
I fell in love with a lot of new cities and countries from dating these men. Some of them kept in touch with me over the months, or years after. I got used to getting pictures of gum trees from Australia or videos checking in on me while they were riding home on the tram in Melbourne or drunk calls from the kebab shop after a night of drinking with friends. I had the time differences down pat for Australia and England, always knowing when they were awake to talk or to say good morning. We had our separate lives, yet I felt part of theirs somehow, like their life and culture was something I was part of too. We talked about all these dreams we had. Japan and traveling and relationships and being published artists. But we never met back up.
From all of these men, I started to piece together some of the things I wanted in a relationship, someone intentional and genuine and patient, someone who wanted to travel, someone I could talk to about music and books. I also learned what I didn’t want and added to my list of red flags.
I’m now in another long distance relationship, go figure. I used to be okay with the distance⸺I think part of me liked it, honestly. I had my own life, my own friend group, and someone far away that loved me. This probably isn’t how you’re supposed to feel in a relationship. I don’t think you should stay with someone for 4 years with no end in sight of when you’ll be in the same city again, but that was me!
This is the first time I hate being in a long-distance relationship. With J, I feel independent. He gives me the space to be me and do what I need to do and he just fits in well. He doesn’t “complete” me, he encourages me to complete myself and continue working on me to be the best version I can be, for myself and not for anyone else. We have our own friend groups and don’t need to always be together⸺which is exactly what I need. At first, I panicked at the idea of even being in a relationship for fear of losing who I was, but J has had a lot of patience and understanding.
I don’t think that I know any more about love now compared to 10 years ago but it looks a whole lot different than I originally thought.
I think we’ve all experienced some form of a “long distance relationship”. Long distance could be the miles between you and the person you call your best friend, or the void you feel between you and the person you’re sitting next to. Long distance is the way I poured my heart out to you in bed and you told me I would find my soulmate in Japan, keeping your feelings for me somewhere far away. It’s seeking someone out in a crowd of people, willing yourself to see their face even though you never do. You can be separated by oceans and time zones, yet still hope you’ll run into them. As a TCK, I feel like my whole life is a long distance relationship and I don’t think that will ever change. Friendships, relationships, constant moving...long distance is inevitable. I’m here to embrace it all.