Barbara Angelis - The 100 Most Asked Questions About Love, Sex and Relationships

Last year I met a wonderful man at a friend’s wedding, and we’ve been having a relationship ever since. The problem is that we live in two different parts of the country, two thousand miles away from each other. Does our relationship have a chance? How can we keep it working when we are so far apart?

Of course your relationship has a chance, but since it is a long-distance romance, you have to be aware of the possible problems and do what you can to avoid them. The very same factors that make a long-distance relationship so exciting also make it hazardous. It’s easy for you to think the relationship is much better than it is because you don’t spend consistent quality time together. Your goal becomes trying to see one another again, rather than really taking a close look at the relationship.

There are three major problems in long-distance relationships:

1) You don’t get to see what your partner is really like.

You know that if you have three days to spend with your lover, you are going to be on your best behavior and so is he. It’s easy to hide the difficult parts of your personality for seventy-two hours, and leave feeling wonderful. But you never really get to know one another, because you don’t see your mate under pressure, in a crisis, when he is ill, when he is frightened. All of these situations reveal a lot about someone’s character, an essential part of determining compatibility. You need consistent time to discover these dimensions of a person.

2) You avoid dealing with problem areas.

Let’s imagine that you haven’t seen your long-distance lover in two months, and he’s flown in to spend the weekend with you. Over dinner that night, he says something that annoys you. Now you have to make a decision: Do you confront him on what is upsetting you, and risk ruining your weekend, or do you forget about it? Most people choose to avoid the confrontation, fearful that by the time they get through the argument and hurt feelings, half of the weekend will already be over. The problem with this habit is that you and your partner never learn to problem solve together, or advance the relationship to deeper levels of communication and harmony. The unresolved issues and the unexpressed resentments just sit there like Emotional Time Bombs, waiting to explode. It may look like you have a great relationship on the surface, but you haven’t allowed it to move through the transition stage every healthy love affair must experience.

3) You have an unrealistic view of your compatibility.

Long-distance lovers often don’t even know how little they have in common because they are too busy entertaining themselves. If you only have three days with your partner, you will treat it like a mini-vacation —you’ll spend all your time together; you’ll go out to restaurants, movies, shows, etc.; you’ll have lots of sex; and you’ll avoid friends and family. This gives you a very unrealistic picture of your relationship. You may actually enjoy the excitement of the fun weekend more than you enjoy your partner and not even know it. Many couples find themselves extremely disappointed when they finally move to the same city or decide to live together. “It doesn’t feel like it used to,” they often complain. Of course if doesn’t. It’s not a twenty-four-hour-a-day party anymore. It’s a real full-time relationship, and if you and your partner aren’t truly compatible, you’ll find out real fast.

For a long-distance romance to evolve into a healthy, lasting relationship, both partners will eventually have to live in the same place. That’s the only way you can truly know if you are compatible, and develop the level of intimacy you need to sustain your love. But while you’re still apart, the most successful long-distance affairs are those in which the couple treats the relationship like it is a full-time romance. So:

Don’t try to make every moment together special, but do normal things together

Don’t try to hide difficult parts of your personalities, but be yourselves

Don’t edit how you feel, but allow yourselves to communicate honestly and deal with conflicts as they come up.

My fiancée and I are from very different cultural backgrounds—hers is much more traditional and strict, socially and spiritually, than mine as an American. We’ve always told ourselves that our love was more important than where we were born, but we’re starting to run into some very big problems as we discuss wedding plans, having children, and other serious issues. Am I making a mistake in telling myself the differences don’t matter?

Don’t kid yourself … differences always matter—it’s just a question of how many there are and how much conflict they create in the relationship. Love is not enough to make a relationship work: you need compatibility, and as you’re discovering, cultural differences aren’t just about where you were born. They spill over into most areas of your life, from your spiritual beliefs; your social, intellectual, and emotional style; your values; your choices about child-rearing; customs; and on and on. It’s not that you and your partner have to agree on everything and have gone through the same life experiences. But there’s a point beyond which too many differences will create too much tension, and make a harmonious relationship next to impossible.

You’re experiencing what many engaged couples go through—you’re just now confronting some big issues between you that hadn’t fully surfaced before. I’ll bet you both avoided seriously talking about some of the cultural differences while you were dating because, intuitively, you knew they would be “hot buttons.” So here you are engaged and Pandora’s box is opening!! And I can hear that you’re having some serious doubts. That’s what an engagement is supposed to be for—a period of time during which you can really take an honest look at all of your remaining issues, and hopefully, come to agreement on how you will blend both of your cultural backgrounds together.

I know what’s scaring you … it’s possible that as you confront these topics you may discover that your values and beliefs are just too different for you to live compatibly together. As uncomfortable as it will be, find the courage to talk about everything that’s bothering you. After all, if it’s not going to work, isn’t it better to find out now, rather than waiting until after you are married and have children?

My fiancé is thirty-three, but he might as well be three years old, because his parents still control him, especially his mother. He talks to her on the phone every single day, and she calls here at all hours, with no respect for our schedule. Now that we’re engaged, she is pushing all of her ideas about the wedding on him, and we end up fighting about her constantly. I’ve tried to get him to look at his relationship with both of his parents, but he says they’re just a close family, and that there’s nothing abnormal about it. My childhood was very unhappy, and I have a very distant relationship with my own parents, so I wonder if I’m judging him unfairly. Help!