Column: How An LDR Can Actually Be A Good Thing

Ah, the long distance relationship. Usually the death mould, the scourge on young couples who have just started to date. At least, it used to be. No matter how much you liked someone, the fact that they were not in the same city as you added to the emotional distance, which was already fighting a battle with the physical.

 

Despite all these dire warnings though, I've been in not one, not two, but three long distance relationships (four if you count a brief email-only affair I had), most of which ended for reasons not relating to the distance between us at all. (My last long-distance turned into no-distance at all, proving that if a couple is willing and compatible, they can make it work.)

Of course, my LDRs weren't massive amounts of distance. Twice it was Bombay-Delhi, an overnight train or a quick weekend flight. The first time was when easy econo-airlines didn't yet exist, and yet with red eye shuttles going between our two cities, we managed to see each other at least twice in the two months we dated. The second one didn't begin as an LDR, but evolved into one when my then-boyfriend decided to spend half the year in England, where he was from. I think the distance actually added years to our relationship rather than taking away from it. When we were together, we had long protracted fights which would have eventually led to us breaking up a lot faster, had that added romantic glow that comes from not seeing someone very often, bolstered our flagging romance.

 

So, there's a pro for a LDR right there: every time you see your significant other after a long absence, it injects a certain early-day-heady-romance feeling that couples who have been together a long time begin to miss.

 

Con? When I was with the original Bombay-Delhi person, I was a poor journalist at my second job. The costs of our cellphone calls alone were astronomical. I was using pre-paid cash cards to renew my mobile phone then, and I remember once lying on my bed and stacking them all up to make a house of cards with two towers. The longing for love—in this case like—was cleaning me out.

 

Another con: when they have no idea who you're talking about when you describe a certain person and what they said and why it was funny. Everything lies in how descriptive you are, and if you're not, then it's hard to make the other person feel like they're included.

 

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Although being forced to be descriptive is a pro. So often we don't really truly connect with the person we're dating. Sure, we love them and we've been together a long time and so on, but real life is distracting. With an LDR, you're living each part of your life twice—once as it happens, the other as you retell it. If it weren't for our stories, my partner and I wouldn't be so close so quickly as we were when we began. We already knew each other deeper and more intimately than we would have if we were living in the same city.

 

And lest you think this is just me waving my relationships in your face, I stopped to think of all the happy marriages I knew. Out of those, at least two have done serious long distance—country to country—and emerged at the other end feeling happier for it.

 

So maybe a LDR isn't the bane it's supposed to be. So many perfectly nice people who you have an instant spark with dismissed for not living in the same city. Take a risk. It's not ideal, but it stands a chance to be a better relationship in the end.

 

Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan is the author of five books, most recently a YA novel about divorce called Split and a collection of short stories about love called Before, And Then After. The views expressed here are her own.