Graffiti at Las Rosas #spain #studyabroad #love @hannahbyarss
Minneapolis: First, you best be certain, but don’t over-think that. I don’t mean a lifetime commitment. I’m not saying you’ve found “the one.” Simply, be certain that — right now, in this moment — the other person, this relationship and all that will be unique to it, are exactly what you want. Among the variables distance brings, there is a constant: This relationship cannot be half-assed. Get into it knowing it’s what you want.
Detroit: Long distance is hard, but you chose it, so there’s no whining. It’s better than the alternative, which is unthinkable. It has to be worth it. You have to be with someone who makes it worth it. You both have to be all-in, or it’s not going to work.
Minneapolis: Our progression went something like this: Long-distance professional colleagues. Long-distance friends. Long-distance best friends. That all took about three years. By the time it became long-distance love, neither my heart nor mind gave me any other choice. Their rare duet had a booming chorus: “This girl is your soul mate. You’re crazy about her. It doesn’t make any sense to fight it.”
Distance plants crazy thoughts like land mines on the plains of sanity.
When it happens, I step around the thoughts, duck and cover from the doubts, and I don’t flinch. That’s what you do when you KNOW.
Detroit: He’s the first person I think about in the morning, and usually the first person I talk to. I’m using talk as a flexible verb, here. It can be a text message, a phone call, an email, a video chat, an instant message. He’s the first person I want to have contact with. There’s an hour time difference, so I’m often awake first. I start with “Good morning, I love you.” I want him to wake up and be in a good mood.
Minneapolis: You have to talk. A lot. Take all the gestures a so-called normal relationship entails: touching their hand, wiping their tears away, fingers through their hair, throwing crackers at them because you see them standing there and want to throw crackers. All of that is replaced with communication. Talk about the mundane. Talk about the news. Talk about your future. Tell a dirty joke. Run a gamut of emotion in whatever manner you need.
Detroit: Communication is all we have. We talk about everything. We’ve covered big things, like how we’re learning to let our walls down, and scars we both have from previous (not quite perfect for us) people. We break it up with smaller, fun things, like ‘did you see this video?’ or ‘did you read this article?’ We talk until we run out of topics and then we talk some more.
I imagine that if we lived in the same city, most of our time would be spent doing something together: Watching movies, reading books, and just being. But for now, we cover the gap with communication.
Minneapolis: I can pick up her mood by her vocabulary now. Even via text message, I can tell if she’s happy, if she’s angsty, gauge her libido. The sound of her voice pauses my world no matter the time, no matter the situation, no matter my mood. The pop up of a message from her is the difference between getting up to face the world and crashing back into bed for a few hundred lines of instant messaging. Skype is a gift from the heavens that can cut through weeks and miles of separation with one belly laugh.
Detroit: We send sexy text messages. It’s a coping mechanism, and when you’re not getting any for two to three week stretches, your imagination tends to run wild. We think about it so much when we’re apart that when we are together, the sex is out of this world. And that is not hyperbole.
Minneapolis: Oh, and there’s the sexting. I don’t mean cutesy “What are you wearing?” sexting. I mean vivid-as-a-solstice-sunrise “If you were here right now this is where my tongue would be and this is what it would be doing” sexting. Sex drives don’t understand miles. They basically understand, “I really want to grab onto something” and “Holy freaking WOW” and that’s about it. Embrace it. Sext like it’s an Olympic sport and you’ve promised a gold for your country.
Detroit: When we see one another, which is every two or three weeks at the moment, we make it count. I greet him at the airport with a hand-painted sign that says “I love you like there is no tomorrow.” He picks me up, spins me around, and whispers in my ear. I meet up with him in a different city, and he says “We have a stop to make.” We end up at a bakery, for a surprise belated birthday cake.
Minneapolis: We make time together count. Every time I see her, the first thing I do is pick her up and spin her around, whispering something mushy in her ear. The camera may as well be pulling away and credits rolling with “the boy damn sure did get the girl” music starting up.
Some people wait their whole lives and never have that feeling. But every time I see her, we start with a romantic ending.
Detroit: We get hotel rooms with big showers and bring candles and music and do crazy romantic cheesy things, because whatever we do has to last until the next time. We try to make sure there is always a next time, something to look forward to even as we are leaving.
Minneapolis: We fill our time together like every other couple. Bad TV. Starbucks. We just make it count a lot more than those people. I make the touch of her hand last me two weeks. I memorize the rasps in her voice. Oh. And what normal people call “amazing sex,” we might possibly consider calling “pretty ok” depending on whether they even belonged in the same conversation as us in the first place. (They probably don’t.)
Detroit: Every night we are apart, there is a bedtime phone call. Even if I am asleep he calls to wake me up and I mumble something sleepy-cute. Often we’ll be texting or messaging and I will type, “Getting sleepy, call when you’re in bed.” Even if we only talk for a second, I go to bed feeling loved. And at the end of the day, that is always enough.
Minneapolis: And lastly: “It’s late. I can’t keep my eyes open. I’ll say this like I did yesterday and the day before, and tomorrow and the day after. I miss you. I love you. Good night.”
Always chase your bourbon with crystal light. That way, people will find you both adventurous and health conscious. (and your sexuality will constantly be in question).
Love, we’re going home now,
Where the vines clamber over the trellis:
Even before you, the summer will arrive,
On its honeysuckle feet, in your bedroom.
Our nomadic kisses wandered over all the world:
Armenia, dollop of disinterred honey:
Ceylon, green dove: and the YangTse with its old
Old patience, dividing the day from the night.
And now, dearest, we return, across the crackling sea
Like two blind birds to their wall,
To their nest in a distant spring:
Because love cannot always fly without resting,
Our lives return to the wall, to the rocks of the sea:
Our kisses head back home where they belong.
I fully realize that sometimes I’m kind of an obsessive psychopath control freak about a lot of things and I really can’t be grateful enough for the people in my life (mostly a.v. and cody, let’s be honest) who manage to not only put up with me but somehow love me beyond my crazy.
Much love to all of you, you know who you are <3
You want to travel with them. You want to see what they’re like going through airport security, on planes, in strange countries. You want to meet their families and charm them to pieces. You want to nestle into their childhood beds and look around in the dark at all their old posters. You want to see all the embarrassing photos of them with braces and socks pulled up mid-calf. You want to hear all the stories about their drunken nights under the bleachers and their best friend’s jokes. You want to read all their journals, see how they took notes in high school. Did they use pen or pencil? What color highlighter? You want to work with them, just to see them work. You want to go out with them. You want to make out with them in the bathroom. You always want to touch them; you want them to always want to touch you.
You find reasons to disentangle yourself from them; it’s only going to hurt later, you can tell already. You stay up way past your bedtime for them. You look at the clock and know their schedule. You neglect other people and other things, and beat yourself up about it. But it’s like they have a hold of your hands and your voice, and you don’t mind. It’s like you’re trapped in an hourglass; you know your lungs might fill with sand, but there’s something sensual and comforting about the grains sliding down glass walls and pooling around your ankles, your knees, your waist.
You like things about their appearance that the rest of the world may cringe at and call strange, less than perfect. Their broken, reshaped noses; their little teeth or the gaps in between them; the way they pull their hair; their narrow hips; their wide shoulders; the depth of their pores. You can laugh when funny things happen in bed. You usually want to be in bed with them.
You think they’re smarter, better, friendlier, fitter, happier, more productive than you are. You strive to be as much as they are, as good as they are. You try to cheat and figure out what it is they’re going to teach you, if they’re going to fall from grace, if you’re going to play a part for them that you never thought you’d play before. You try and pull patterns and threads of meaning from the conversation or the way they looked at you the first time you met; what they did, what they offered. An apple stolen from the bar. Notes from a guitar. Pitchers of free beer. Pieces of bark with writing on them.
You cherish snippets of them; paste them up in your memories like old faded scrapbooks clutched to chests for generations. Their skin glows black and white in your head. They star in the little short films of your life that sneak up on you when you’re not looking. Like the walk to the South End for dinner on a quiet corner. The feel of the sun beating down on you both at an outdoor concert. The way they ordered wine on your first date. The slow swing of a hammock near a lake. The back seat of their car.
You can see yourself with them in the future you can’t quite see. You build apartments outfitted with all the right kitchen supplies and the perfect bed with two nightstands, each piled with books and magazines. You wait for them patiently while they chase their dreams; they wait for you patiently as you chase yours. You sit in bed eating dinner late at night, drinking tea and wine and whiskey as you tell each other all about the chasing. You create adopted dogs and cats; you have awkward conversations about money; you put up with each other’s crap. You see what they look like standing at the end of a candle-lit aisle in your grassy front yard and wonder if you’ll make it to the other end to meet them or if they’ll just end up in the scrapbook clutched to your chest or flickering on the screen in your brain. 
Read more at http://thoughtcatalog.com/2012/how-you-know/#51TEy72pXyvkGy05.99
By
Long distance relationships are hard as fuck. I’m sorry, but they are. Yeah, there are some pretty great things about them – unlimited alone time, not having to fight for space, being able to go out with your friends all the time without anyone getting upset — but on the whole, being thousands of miles apart kind of blows. And whether you feel like acknowledging it or not, distance has a definite impact on the dynamics of a relationship.
A serious long distance relationship, I’m pretty sure, is not the same as having a long distance crush. When you have a long distance crush, everything’s new. It’s exciting. You’re getting to know someone over the only modes of communication you have and it’s the biggest emotional tease, really, because the possibility of anything is wide open. Maybe you’ll meet them, maybe you won’t. Maybe it will be idyllic like it is in the movies or maybe it’ll be a horrendous disaster. Maybe you’ll end up getting that brownstone in Greenwich Village and live out your bohemian fantasy together or maybe you’ll realize upon meeting that you actually hate each other. You never know.
But when you’re trying to make something that already exists, something with arms and legs, legitimately work long distance, it’s difficult. It’s difficult because you have the best and worst of both worlds – all the freedom of being single and none of the fun, all the comfort of being in a relationship and none of the contact. It’s like you already have a large part of your life figured out but it’s mysteriously nowhere to be found, and when you think about it, that’s probably one of the weirdest feelings you’ll ever get.
I’m pretty new at this long distance thing so I’m not certain I know what I’m talking about, but I think a large part of making it work is actually two things I’m embarrassingly bad at: hope and optimism. Hope as in, you put your everything into it and hope it doesn’t spontaneously combust (or worse, slowly fizzle out), and optimism as in, you don’t allow yourself to succumb to occasional pervasive feelings of loneliness and pointlessness. But when those feelings crop up, they’re unavoidable. How do you handle them? How do you know it’s worth it? What do you have to tell yourself to feel okay?
My girlfriend and I weren’t always long distance — we actually used to live together – but when we broke up she moved to Texas and I bounced around for awhile before settling in New York. But now that we’re finally back together, it’s like… what now? She has a big girl job in Texas, and New York — at least until I finish my degree — is my home in all its glittery piss-soaked glory. And while we do try to maintain our daily doses of hope and optimism, sometimes it just feels completely impossible. The loneliness is tangible.
And it’s scary too because you realize just how fragile it is, how fragile what you’re trying to keep alive really is. You can visit each other, you can Skype, you can do small things that make you feel connected to each other’s lives, but even those can sometimes seem like paltry offerings thrown into the void when you consider the vastness. You also realize how frighteningly easy it is to disconnect. When you fight long distance, for example, it’s not immediate. It’s all radio waves. You can literally be done with each other in the click of a button and knowing that is equal parts crippling and fascinating and all too real.
Read more at http://thoughtcatalog.com/2012/how-do-you-handle-a-long-distance-relationship/#ii4bseOis6VcEYD8.99
By Karen Noble
One time, a guy I was dating said, matter-of-factly, that though I was enamored of him now in the beginning stages of our courtship, I’d eventually grow to hate him “the way all girls hate their boyfriends.”
I was surprised. “You think ALL girls hate their boyfriends?” I said.
“Not hate, like real hate,” he replied. “But you know, when they go hang out with their girlfriends and complain about us or when we don’t do something basic in the right way, whatever. That way where you love us, but we’re idiots.”
And in a sort of vague rom-com Sex and the City way, I knew what he meant. I thought about my own friends and the way they talked about their dating lives. Usually when you ask a woman how her relationship is going, she’s inclined to dress it down. She’ll say things like, “It’s gooood.” Pause. “He’s really tough to get through to sometimes where I don’t know if he’s really present, you know? But we’re good, we’re like totally good.” Or “Ugh. I can’t even with him. He just like, leaves shit everywhere and doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life. Like, all he has to do is call that guy about that new job and he like, won’t even do it.”
So why if we love them, do we find it acceptable, nay necessary, to bitch about them to others? It’s required for any conversation between women about men. Maybe I’m missing some female chip in my brain, but why would you be with someone you don’t absolutely adore? Is that unrealistic? Because the idea that growing to resent and hate the person you’re choosing to be with is terribly depressing.
Is it because the opposite is annoying and we’re trying to make ourselves look sympathetic and human to others in an attempt to bond? Is it because it’s suspicious or Stepford-esque to say only nice things about them?
Would it be totally psycho to when a female friend asks, “How’s your boyfriend?” for me to say, “Really good. We’re like, super in love and I think he really gets me. We’re both flawed people but we’re making this relationship work because we’re both committed to each other. Also, he does this really adorable thing where he sort of hops into his pants in the morning when he’s getting dressed. You’d have to see it, but it’s like, the cutest thing. So yeah, things are good and he’s a good person doing his best.” Because it feels like that would come across as totally psycho.
Okay, I know PDA is annoying and maybe this is the verbal equivalent, where no one wants to hear about how great your relationship is. People want the juice, the guts, the gore. They want to feel better about their own lives by hearing yours isn’t so perfect. And if they’re single, they don’t want to hear me talk about my sweet boyfriend. They want to feel better knowing at least they don’t have my problems.
But look, my boyfriend is my partner. We’re a team. Why would you go run around talking smack about your teammate? Why would you be with someone who causes you to sigh with frustration when they’re brought up? Why do we gather together and talk about our adult male partners like they are children we’re forced to deal with? Even if your boyfriend was just a friend, it’d be incredibly rude to complain about them behind their back, right? Why is expected and as I said before, necessary, to b-tch about your boyfriend to your female friends?
I like my boyfriend. I have complaints, sure, but if someone asked me how our relationship was going or how he was, I’d want to say nice things. I’d want to be honest about how good things are without feeling guilty or like I’m bragging or I’m insensitive.
Am I weird? Am I weird because I don’t want to grow to “hate” my boyfriend? Am I weird for not wanting to complain about him to other women? Can we stop doing this?
Read more at http://thoughtcatalog.com/2012/i-dont-want-to-complain-about-my-boyfriend-am-i-weird/#5V57r0k1SoEl0xfx.99
——
I love this.
1. When they text you back right away.
2. When they say, “No, it’s your turn.”
3. When you’re at home in your unsexiest clothes and it still gets them in the mood.
4. When your laundry — the one chore you truly hate — has mysteriously folded itself.
5. When they are wearing a button down shirt — and absolutely nothing else.
6. When they save you leftovers.
7. When you get flowers delivered to your work and don’t even have to ask where they came from.
8. When you are getting on a train together and they put their hand on the small of your back, just for a second.
9. When you can tell they are really listening.
10. When they know what size you wear.
11. When they tell you that they want to wait, too, and you know it’s not a line.
12. When they aren’t too ashamed or too bashful to carry your purse.
13. When they aren’t too macho or too proud to let you pick up the check.
14. When they don’t need you to be perfect, they just need you to be you.
15. When they remembered to put the toilet seat down.
16. When you’re flirting with someone and they notice you have a tattoo, then know what it means without you explaining it to them.
17. When they kiss you in the middle of a sentence.
18. When they aren’t afraid to show you affection or tell you they love you around other people.
19. When you walk in and they are on the phone with your mother and laughing.
20. When you wake up and you are still in their arms, even after a night of endless tossing and turning.
21. When you stub your toe or hurt yourself in a way that clearly isn’t life threatening, but they still ask if you are okay.
22. When you can tell they are about to say “I love you” but are too scared to say it — because they really want you to say it back.
23. When you go to the restroom and they order you another cup of coffee, because they know you well enough to know that more coffee is always the right answer.
24. When they become friends with your friends.
25. When they will go to a movie that you know they are going to hate, only because you wanted to see it.
26. When they don’t notice the incredibly hot person across from you because they’re too busy looking at you.
27. When they remind YOU of your anniversary.
28. When they tell you they were wrong.
29. When you leave your toothbrush in their apartment — on “accident” — and then find it in the holder, right next to theirs.
30. When they are willing to cry in front of you.
31. When they actually look into your eyes.
32. When you go to a restaurant and they pour your glass of water for you.
33. When they know what you are going to say, right before you say it.
34. When they’re wearing your sweatshirt or running shorts.
35. When they’re already gone by the time you wake up and leave a little note for you to remind you to have a great day.
36. When they introduce you as “my _____friend” for the first time.
37. When they actually read that book you recommended.
38. When they make a joke that they know only you will get.
39. When they remember a random fact about yourself you barely remembered yourself.
40. When they tell you that they understand how hard you work.
41. When they ask you how your day was, and they really want to know.
