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Long Distance Relationships Essay

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Long Distance Relationships: Can They Work? Two clichés: Absence makes the heart grow fonder and Out of sight, out of mind. Which one of these two conflicting views is closer to the reality? As it turns out, it does not really matter that much since long distance relationships (LDR) suffer from exactly the same strengths and weaknesses as proximal relationships. Whether two people are going to have fulfilling relationship does not only depend on their geographical closeness. What matters is quality, not quantity. According to one expert on LDRs, "the majority of studies that have been done show no greater risk of an LDR breaking up than any other relationship (Guldner, 2004, p. 6)." An LDR relationship has the same likelihood of …show more content…

I approached him: he immediately remembered me and we spend next few hours engaged in conversation discovering that we share similar opinions on many issues. Before I could even recover from the initial shock of seeing him again, he asked me to go out for a walk with him the next day. I agreed and that was the beginning of our relationship. He had been divorced for ten years and had made a decision to never marry again. I had normally dated men closer to my age (in one case even younger than me) and would have never contemplated dating (much less marry) somebody 21 years older then me. However, the unlikely happened to both of us. A few months after our first date we got married. Today, five years later, we have two beautiful children and have been living in a long distance marriage for three and a half years. It is definitely not easy for us to maintain a successful marriage being an ocean apart. Our relationship, as any other, has its strengths and its weaknesses. What I find the most important is the constant feeling of strong commitment, warmth and mutual emotional dependability. These feelings compensate for the lack of one extremely important ingredient: good communication. Intimacy requires that partners are able to talk about anything and to feel understood by the loved one. It became apparent during our marriage that neither of us have solid communication skills.

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