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| this is pretty fuckin creepy |
For the first-year Thanksgiving Dump activity, it's less that long-distance is inherently flawed than it is that attempting to maintain a strong tie to someone who knew you pre-college (pre-the person you became when you stepped on campus, pre-your first frat party, pre-your mind-blowing classes, pre-your all-night discussions about love and god and sex and race and war with your housemates) and to remain unchanged to preserve image they have of you is flawed. People change and waver and grow organically and sometimes do regrettable ridiculous shit (especially in college), and it's difficult to fully experience that process when you're tied to someone "from home" in such an intimate way.
Furthermore, I think going off to college more viscerally forces you to choose who you want to be: as the first person in my family to go to college, I had to actually choose to step into and begin to transition into the middle class (let no one fool you: this is not an easy process. No matter how smart and sophisticated I felt in my hometown, Smithies leave me in the dust on the daily with their cultural capital, and there is no faking or cultivating that knowledge they naturally have), which also meant recognizing my hometown sweetie who worked at Burger King and had no plans was no longer It for me.
But can it work post-college? I'd like to think so. I'll (hopefully) wind up discovering that for myself. It's hard because there's times when the physicality of relationships (the snuggling on the couch, the lying your head on their chest, the feeling of their hot breath on your neck during sex, just smiling at them during a meal) is all you ache for. And the insecurity of having no idea what they're doing much of the time? It can be agonizing sometimes. But with a little work, regular Skype dates, masturbation, and phone sex, I think it can be accomplished....as long as you allow each other to change and grow naturally. Balancing act, for sure.
Your thoughts?
Much love,
The Sheriff
*edited for typos*
ReplyDeleteThanks for writing this. I think everything you've said here is close to 100% accurate based on the experiences of people I know. I've never held down a long-distance relationship but I've watched a lot of people both succeed (through LOTS of hard work and use of technology) and get in on the turkey drop action.
In general, it seems like unless people really know what they want already when they get to college, the pre-college significant others don't tend to last. Some during-college long-distance relationships (S.O. goes abroad, S.O. graduates) I have seen work, maybe because that type of person does know your college self, and like it. I can imagine a post-college long-distance relationship can work too (maybe even better than the previous ones), as long as both people are sure that who they're with is who they really want.
Overall, really good post! Probably should be required reading for first years.
i dont think they can ever work, also as someone who has experienced a terrible ldr. whether you go away or the other person goes away, someone is held back and someone is heartbroken. post-college, there are just as many opportunities for growth as there are in college, and (thank god) most people will not be the same pretentious idiots they were at smith college once they leave an all-women's magical fairy land. the "real world" (as far as a 22 year old can experience it) eventually kicks in and people get with it, which means change all over again. but that isnt to say that all relationships must end the second the tassel is switched over - especially as someone in an extremely loving relationship, i hope that isnt true. but i saw something last night where a woman was in a relationship for 6 years and said "youre just completely different people when youre 20 and then when youre 26" - and its true. thats why i think theres something to be said for possibly jumping off the conveyor belt of life that says you need to do x,y, and z before youre allowed to settle down and instead let yourself do the ridiculous thing and make plans WITH the other person if theyre that important to you. im not saying follow them, but you have to make it work for both of you. otherwise, youre better off just meeting someone else when you get to wherever youre going.
ReplyDeleteIt can work really well, if both people want it to. I lived a few hours from a primary partner for several years, and I think it worked a lot better for us to see each other a few times a month rather than every single day (like most of my other relationships up to that point had been). I had room to make friends, concentrate on my schoolwork, join clubs, etc, that I had not had in previous relationships. Of course, if you sit on the phone with your long-distance partner for hours every day you miss out on those benefits.
ReplyDeleteWhat actually killed that relationship in the end was moving together to a new city. It was all the newness and excitement the Sheriff described above, and it drove a wedge between us even though we lived together.
I'm in another long-distance deal now, which I am not by any means happy about, but again, I have plenty of time for schoolwork and I do enjoy the freedom. The key for me is that having a partner in another city or state should not keep you from doing things you want to do. If you really need to have sex frequently, or find yourself seriously lusting after other people, you probably need to either break up or work out some kind of openness/nonmonogamy. I just don't want to be with anyone other than my partner, and the relationship isn't holding me back from anything else, so I'll deal with the less-than-perfect aspects of it.
Jealousy and insecurity isn't really an issue. I won't say it never comes up, but we go a day or so at a time without speaking and I don't worry about him or what he's doing. Trust is absolutely crucial in long-distance relationships. But I wouldn't want to be in any kind of a relationship with someone if I had to worry every time they left my sight.