Long Distance Loving: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

As we come to an end to our LONG stretch of LONG distance, we thought we would round up the good, the bad and the ugly of doing long distance.

Most people warn you off doing long distance, “it will never last” they say. Well we’re here to tell you, yes, yes it will! Want to know why? Because we love each other enough to put in the effort to make it worth. Want to know why others don’t last? Because they don’t do that. Whitney & I have always had the most strongest and deepest love for one another and share a bond unlike most couples that we meet. Despite the distance and cultural differences we MADE it work. It didn’t just work out by chance. This post was originally written in 2012, when we conquered long distance. We’ve since lived together in Windsor, UK for 14 years. So let’s run through the good, the bad and the ugly.

The Good – Long Distance Relationships

• You get to visit new and different places! Whether you’re different ends of a country or countries apart, you’re guaranteed to learn more and develop as a person by traveling and being apart of different places.
• You get to miss one another! The feeling of knowing you’ll be seeing each other again is like no other. The butterflies and excitement still continues 4 years later!
• If you’re a trans-atlantic like us, you get to travel and see the world, experience new cultures and learn new things you wouldn’t ordinarily do. Megan got to visit Hawaii 8 times, a dream destination she thought she’d never visit!
• Your love grows stronger, you learn the important rules of communicating and making sure each other feels loved regardless of what is happening in your life.

The Bad – Long Distance Relationships

• Whilst traveling has it’s perks, having to do it so much over year becomes a chore when you have to go through the same routine of checking in, security and customs, changing flights, waiting around in airports etc etc. It soon becomes routine rather than novel and new.
• Missing one another like hell and there is nothing that you can do about it. Nothing that a phone call, e-mail, text, picture or Skype (or FaceTime as is more popular now) comes close to when you just need a kiss and a cuddle. 
• Missing out on the little things that every couple gets to do, whether it be movie dates to the small thing of grocery shopping or buying a new outfit and wanting to show off. What’s the point in getting my hair done if she can’t see it?!
• The money, ooh is it expensive to make a long distance relationship work!
• The clash of cultures and lack of understanding, where a simple misunderstanding of how one family operates to how different a word is pronounced can seem so confusing.

The Ugly – Long Distance Relationships

• The fights. Ooh we’ve had some big and bad ones that’s for sure. The distance only makes them worse and prolonged when a hug would have solved the situation long before.
• Visa and immigration. Ooh lordy is this the UGLY side to LDR. As if the miles and time apart weren’t enough to deal with, you also have immigration governing how long you can stay in each others company. Not only this, applying to move to another country is a BIG and daunting project. You might think it’s obvious you two should be together but then this all comes down to an Entry Clearance Officer who decides you fate. May 2011 we were very unlucky, June 2012 we were very lucky!!
• The costs of LDR definitely adds up, especially if you have to apply for visas to move to another country.
• If you’re in a same-sex relationship, then where gay marriage is legalised comes into play! When we wrote this in 2012, there was a lack of immigration rights for same-sex couples. We often get asked why Whitney left Hawaii and moved to the UK, and while it helped with the decision that Whitney had always wanted to move to the UK, there was also no legal option for me to move to the U SA. At the time there were only 8 states in America that allowed gay marriage, only one of them allows out of state marriage and NONE of them apply to immigration.

Are Long Distance Relationships Worth It?

Starting out we had NO clue what lay ahead or the twists and turns that it would take. We didn’t realise how HARD it was going to be and how LONG it would take to live our lives together like we were meant to do all a long. Despite the difficulties to long distance, we would never go back and change a thing. It’s lead us to this very point of where we’re meant to be. Waking up together and going to sleep together, and finally truly experiencing all the boring parts to a relationship from grocery shopping to putting the bins out. Now we have a daughter, cat and a dog and get to live the perfect little life together.