How many of you have been in a long distance relationship at some point in your life? A new boyfriend, a serious love, or even a spouse? For some of you, you might not have found it that difficult, but for others, perhaps, it seemed next to impossible.

Traveling back and forth between my home in Jamaica and school in the UK, I was put in this position a few times, but I was in my late teens, so it was no big deal to leave the present puppy-love interest for a few months. To be honest, the boyfriends in those days didn’t even last so long, nor would they have, even if I had stayed put in one place. I was, however, put in a position when I was 19 years old. I fell in love with someone on the other side of the world (and in the opposite hemisphere), but I knew that it was completely impractical to pursue it past a few more months of long distance love letters. I know that I broke his heart in a great effort to save my own from eventually breaking, but it was testament to the fact that I was incapable of being in any relationship that required me to be distant from any man. Call it self-preservation, if you will, because I suppose that is what it was.

This brings me to think about what distance means.

A friend of mine has been in a long distance relationship with her husband for fifteen years. Small pockets of time have had their family living together, but for the majority of this duration, they have lived in different countries. Their reasons for doing this are understandable – job, money, extended family support, personal happiness – but of course, there have always been those who have judged her for the decisions made in the last decade and a half. It has not been, nor is it presently, easy for my friend, as she still makes every effort to make decisions that will bring about the greater good for the five of them in their immediate family. She and her husband have been through ups and downs, like in any marriage, but with the added stress of not being physically together for the majority of the time. However, as she pointed out to me, “You have people sleeping together in the same bed every night and they themselves are actually in a long distance relationship.”

How true are her words, right? How easy it is to let life and the daily stresses of work, raising children, supporting the family financially, and every little thing in between, cause us to shut down emotionally and verbally, resulting in an uncomfortable silence and a long term lack of communication. Before we have had a chance to realise that this is happening, we find ourselves proverbial distant from our relationship – a situation we have created, while the people in physically long distance relationships have a common goal in mind – to eliminate the distance and keep the channel of communication wide open.