Long-Distance Relationship
It was my first romantic love. I was 18 years old, just starting college, and I met this guy whom I thought was the star of my life at the time. Like any other person in love, I was willing to risk it all, even when we had to be away from each other. To have a successful long-distance relationship, you need TRUST — a lot of it (aside from more love and understanding). At the time, due to lack of resources and less advanced technology unlike today, communication and timezones added up as barriers to that relationship, and eventually, a third-party situation arose. My old self was crying at a computer shop over a Facebook post of him with another woman, before he even had the chance to tell me. He tried to reach out, but I told him I already knew, and it ended there. All my hopes and trust were shattered in that moment — so many questions, but nothing I could do but accept it.
Fast-forward more than a decade later, I could tell my younger self I am still so stubborn as always. I still love the way I do — never a perfect love, but still the “risk-it-all” kind. Nobody knows about our everyday messages from across the seas, the countdown to seeing each other, the joy of airport pick-ups, and the heartbreak of airport goodbyes, not knowing when we will see each other again. And even if I have to go through that same heartbreak again — the one that shattered me all those years ago — But I have to fight for love. Looking back, I’ve come to see this journey as something bigger than just me and my husband- Henri. I think that’s what the Lord wants us to find — find His treasure (love) and leave everything for it. I am so grateful that He has allowed us to find each other and made a way to keep us together.
To all those in an LDR situation, we know how hard it can be. Most of the time, it’s quite impossible to see where it ends in the moment. I guess it’s also a process — it’s not magic or a fairytale. We make mistakes and are a work in progress too. It just feels so much better to have him by my side.
But here’s something I wish someone had told me early on: talk about the timeline, and keep talking about it. It’s easy to get swept up in the love and the countdowns and tell yourselves it will all work out eventually. But “eventually” isn’t a plan. Sit down together and agree on an actual endpoint — a date, a milestone, a goal you’re both working toward that brings you into the same city, the same home. It doesn’t have to be set in stone, but it needs to exist and it needs to be revisited. Without it, the distance can quietly become the default, and years can pass with neither of you ever really deciding to live apart — it just happens. Love can carry you through a lot, but it shouldn’t have to carry an open-ended question mark too.
You deserve to live, love, and be loved.
~ Lyn