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Hmm, well, here's my tuppence worth, though I don't suppose I'll add much. Myself and Mr Safeling (monog) did a year NYLON (me NY, he LON) seven months into our relationship (heralded, unfortunately, two months in - just at the point where you're OK phoning just to say 'what yer up to?').
In retrospect, the primary thing that made it OK was the endpoint. I even ended up in the heady closing days thinking 'yeah, I could probably do another month, this here Manhattan is fun as hell'.
The difficult things were myriad. I moved over there knowing no-one apart from one chap whose idea of a prompt return phonecall was two weeks after the initial, mildly indirect 'PLEASE SEE ME' message. "So, what have you been up to?"; "Erm, nothing, er, waiting for you to call back? sitting in my unfurnished apartment bawling my little eyes out?". Hard to go out and make friends and be BUBBLY! and BRIGHT! and the kind of person people want to befriend (in a competitive market, mind) when all the while your heart is screaming at you to talc your hat, put it on, grease up and swim home. (Or jump in a cab and say 'Airport, please!' and worry about small things like tickets and passports when you get there.)
The time we did spend together (a weekend, usually) was stressful for all of the above reasons. Having crossed off each number daily (usually from around 33) on my obsessive-compulsive chart, there was little or no room for error, and every sharp word was Meaningful and Spoke of Imminent Doom. (Only to me, but after a while that gets wearing for the other.) My propensity for foreseeing every possibility in an attempt never to get a nasty surprise started to confuse possible with actual in an incredibly destructive way (thanks for that, cheating ex). The utter, utter desolation of his departures was raw and incredible. Its passion breathes such life into your love that it blooms and flourishes precisely as its jumboed up away from you.
Spending the night/evening in a plane hardly does wonders for anyone. The first time I flew home, I was taking the overnight on a Friday. I was to arrive on Saturday morning and leave on Sunday afternoon. The plane was delayed 6 hours and I was inconsolable. Someone actually asked me if I were on my way to my Mum's funeral (dark imagination). Every hour does count, so much, and often too much to make it fun at all. A longer timeframe didn't help much - we had two weeks in France and that just had to be Filled With Important Moments as it took on the import of being our Longest Time Together in a Year.
(Aside: perhaps I am doing more to highlight my oddities here than generalise about LDRs. Still, oddities are an important point - each relationship is totally idiosyncratic, and long distance doesn't make them any more generalisable.)
Added to this, though I did get friends in the end, I had a cunting bunch of cunts as colleagues and I HATED my job. (I spent my last week kneeling on the floor putting together the life-sized jigsaw Mr S had emailed me of himself. Fuck me, it was good to get out of there.)
Still, we made it, and I am in fact sitting in his office right now as I attempt to wrestle him away from work. It teaches you a lot about how to prioritise and how important someone is to you ("COURSE I'll come and sit in your office with you all night").
The last thing I would say (has anyone got this far?) is that you do it because you can't not. Never thought about splitting up, no matter how hard it got. Still haven't. |
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