GUYS!! After being in Idaho for 78 days, there’s only 3 more days until I get to go home!
This summer has been a conundrum. It’s been the easiest/hardest, most relaxed/busy summer of my life – and seemingly never-ending. Taking care of a baby is such a contradicting job. It’s nice because you can 1. Take the baby on adventures (go to the pool, the lake, the park, on walks/hikes, etc) and feel like you’re being productive. Or 2. You can stay home and let them play with their toys while you try to get laundry, cleaning, and cooking done. It seems like you should be able to do what you need to. HOWEVER, you still are taking care of a tiny human while doing all of those things! Life is still busy, still crazy, and when you wrap all of that up and move 1,500 miles away from the person you love, 10/10 your life is going to be tough.
Luckily, we live in the 21st century and FaceTime exists so we can at least pretend we’re hanging out. But don’t get me wrong, long distance is awful. In our case, Eric was able to visit for 4 days at the end of July before he started school again in August. Then it was back to relying on texting and FaceTime.. (I’d just like to take a moment to say that I’m SO grateful that I’m dating a literal angel that not only puts up with, but also kinda loves that I have a baby to tote around with us if we ever hang out or talk before 7pm. Countless FaceTimes have consisted of him talking to Aspen and asking about her day as she jumps on my back and kisses his face on the screen. Lol. And together we have been able to endure this summer apart. Seriously, he’s the best.). Finally, after almost 2.5 months of not knowing when I would be coming home, I got an end date! This also made me realize a few things that would make long distance relationships a lot easier (if your circumstance allows).
If you have to do long distance, here are a few of my tips:
1. Have a date to look forward to!!
-Whether that’s a date you get to visit each other, or a date when you no longer have to be long distance and your relationship becomes (thankfully) much more local, PLAN AHEAD. Eric planned to come visit about a month after I had left for the summer, and the month leading up to that visit was crazy easy compared to the month and a half after when we were unsure when we would be able to see each other again. Heck, even this last week of being in Idaho has been 100x better because we know we’ll actually be able to see each other soon!
2. Don’t let yourself be consumed in texting, calling, or FaceTiming one another.
-You still have to go about your life and be present where you are. This one is still hard for me, butttt if I had any kind of self control then it would’ve made both mine and Eric’s life’s a lot easier.
3. Continue to date!
-Eric and I felt like we got into the habit of being stuck in small talk.. We seemed to be doing basically the same things every day. Since we were talking to each other every available moment (refer to tip #2), and were obviously not able to experience anything new together, we didn’t have anything new to talk about. To remedy this, we decided to save the juicy details of our day until we could talk that night. We also tried to do things together, like read a few of the same book then talk about what stuck out to us, watch the same shows/movies on Netflix so that we had something to bond over and laugh about, and share our personal spiritual journeys with each other so that we can keep one another on track to achieve our goals.
I will be the first to say that long distance is basically the worst way to date, but I am so grateful for how it has built us as a couple! It definitely shows you where your priorities lie and either reassures you or makes you contemplate whether your relationship is worth pursuing further. Long distance makes some of the important parts of your relationship impossible, like dating, interacting face to face instead of with a computer screen, and all of the kisses… It forces you to rely solely on your communication skills to keep yourselves fulfilled. Long distance is NOT for the weak – we only had to survive a little under 3 months, so shout out to all the couples enduring months to years of time apart. You’re INCREDIBLE.
Life With Carly J 