10 things you should do to maintain a healthy Long Distance Relationship

With our generation choosing to pursue dreams, in a socio-economic structure where we cannot afford to be anything less than anyone else, long distance relationships (LDR) have become commonplace. And we get into it eventually to get out of it always choosing distance as our excuse. But, I believe, a long distance relationship can work if we actually want it to. There will be personal hurdles to cross. In which relationship you don’t have to? Yes, may be in LDR you have more of it. But where is the fun in winning against a weak opponent?

Some say, “Out of sight, out of mind”. Some say, “Distance does not matter”. I say, “If anything is worth fighting for, we should fight for it.”

Trust: Yes, I know, I am packing old wine in an older bottle, but, there are some thumb rules which don’t change with time or articles for that matter. Miles away from your partner, one of the few things you can do right is to have faith in the person you love. Not that you do anything different in any form of relationship but when you are in a LDR you have to up your faith quotient a tad bit more. If your partner says one learn to accept it as one and not add it up with an imaginary one creatively churned out by your dearest brain and make it two. Because in a LDR making up stories in your head will not help. If, you, at some point of time, can no longer trust your partner, just know that you have arrived at the dead end of the road called togetherness. As a breather, trust and distance are much unrelated and definitely not inversely proportional.

Continue with your life: It’s hard and you knew it all along. Yes, you will crave for your partner’s presence in your new life thousands of kilometers away but then, you cannot just keep on pining and do nothing else. Like wise men say, “Life must go on”. Give your best to the new beginning. Your new life deserves your earnest efforts to embrace it. Once you start loving your new life, you will be a happy soul and that same happiness will reflect in your relationship. Since you cannot help the distance, the only thing you can do is to accept it.

Adopt honesty and learn to accept truth: We never seem to get enough of telling lies to make the escape route from sticky situations easier and the only time we hate lies is when they are told to us. It is a humane quality and it will come to you naturally but try to abstain yourself from taking the easier path because the aftermath comes with a lot of frills. And getting emotionally drained when you are physically miles apart from your partner will surely be the last thing on your list.

Create a balance: Don’t make one virtual world for both of you where none of you fit in perfectly. Don’t make two separate worlds for yourselves that keep suffering from collisions. Make two subsets with a smooth area of intersection. In simpler words, create a balance between your new life and old love.

Cut the crap: In a LDR, you have to keep bullshit to the minimum. You can’t afford to breed negative emotions for long. You have to make an ardent effort to clear the air whenever you sense a tension growing through your wall of love. Don’t let the cracks grow bigger than what you can handle. If anything bothers you, speak up. Because even god doesn’t know your problem unless you pray. Pent up emotions will only poison the love potion.

Stop washing and drying your dirty linen in public: Refrain from making your relationship a social circus. Nobody cares if you are ‘feeling love’ or feeling ‘angry’. It is none of their business and rightly so. Don’t make insensitive comments or post stupid messages on your partner’s social profiles. Because the stains of misunderstandings and confusions created in a LDR is harder to get rid of. If you have to fight it out with your partner or shower him /her with excess love do it through a medium where it is only between the two of us. Take my words. It is much convenient that way.

Accept the time zones: Like you cannot know everything happening around the world, you will not know everything happening in your partner’s life which unfurls miles away. Some parts of it will be lost in all those kilometers. And it is perfectly OK to not know everything. Don’t make things hard for yourself because there will be latitudes, longitudes and time zones to make things hard anyways. There will be days on row when you will be so caught up with your life and then there will be days when your partner will be and to make it even worse these days will not coincide. And you should know that this is part of the deal.

Stop being a social police: Basically, stop being an asshole. The ‘blue ticks’ and ‘seen’ and ‘active now’ and ‘online’ and the ‘green dot’ fanaticism will  take you and your relationship nowhere. If your partner wants to talk to you he/she will. And if your partner doesn’t want to what is the point anyways. If you direly want to talk to your partner, just let the person know instead of adding unnecessary complication and creating imbalance in the equation.

Create magic: Normal is boring. And when you are in a LDR, you can’t afford to be boring. Spice up things with surprises. Write a surprise letter saying how much your partner means to you. Send a bunch of flowers or a framed photograph. Something. Anything. It is not about the scale of the surprise but your intentions to make it work.

Learn to let go of smaller things for the longer run: Yes, grow up, in other words. Look past mistakes committed and the calls missed. Take every chance you get to be there with your partner in spirit rather than fuelling your ego, say ‘I love you’ more often rather than squabbling over petty issues. Because, in a LDR you cannot afford to lose even a minute of the already cut down we-time.