CindyWaitt.com ? Blog Archive ? Do Long Distance Relationships ...

December 3rd, 2012

Get on the damn train, will you?

One of the best long distance romance scenes ever was 1944?s ?Since You Went Away? where Jennifer Jones runs alongside her boyfriend?s train saying over and over ?I love you, darling, ?I love you darling?. ?A close second was when Richard Dreyfus?proves to Marcia Mason he IS actually going to return to her in ?The Goodbye Girl?. ?And since I?ve now convinced you I don?t see much on screen from this millennium, a third would be the train scene from Reds when Warren Beatty, (any scene with Warren works for me, actually), finally reunites with Diane Keaton as all hell is breaking loose in post revolutionary Russia.

So, do they work? ?I have no idea. ?I?ve been in two. ?One didn?t work. ?There was kind of an OCEAN between us. ?One did. ?We?re married. ?Long distance for me, however, whatever the outcome, actually? sucked. ?But I was still curious to know how others navigated the road map, both literally and figuratively, so here?s what I found out.

1)There?s a lot of it going on, particularly among the young. ?From USA today? 2010?.?One recent study, in the journal?Communication Research, finds that as many as half of college students are in long-distance relationships, ?and up to 75% will be at some point.? ?That makes sense. ?They?re young, they don?t know where they want to live or land. ?Another study, by Dr. Greg Gulcher, asserts the following.Their number jumped 30%, to 3.6 million, from 2000 to 2005.

2). The Long Distance Relationship crowd is actually kind of a movement. In fact, some participants actually call themselves ?LDR?s?. ?Sounds like a religion. ?There are websites and stuff. ?That also makes sense. ?When you are in one, you need a website to consult, trust me.

3)It?s a bit of a cottage industry. There is a scientific place, I think it?s virtual, run by the aforementioned Dr. Gulcher, called, ?The Center for the Study of Long Distance Relationships?. ?How cool would that job be? ?Dr. Gulcher wrote a book in 2003 about it. ?So did a whole bunch of other people. ?Here?s a few?.?The Long Distance Relationship Guide? by Carolyn Tiger looks interesting. ?There?s a guy named Chris Bell who added a word to that title and calls his book ?The Long Distance Relationship Survival Guide?. ?My personal favorite is ?The Complete Idiot?s Guide to Long Distance Relationships? by Seetha Narayan.

4)You can?t get a definitive answer on success rates but a few are saying that the myth of the 99% failure rate is just that. ??Mary Carole Pistole, an associate professor at ?Purdue University found that long-distance relationships can actually be?more?stable and last longer than close ones.

5) ?One study says they aren?t that different from non LDR?s ( I just used that because it?s shorter). ?Our friend Dr. Gulcher found the following??while 37% of long distance couples split up in the first 3 months of the relationship compared to regular 21%, if the relationship can last, only 8% break up after the first year in comparison to 25% of traditional relationships. ? ?Learned something new there. ?Where was this guy when I needed him?

I?m confused. ?So in order to make this more simple, and having been there, I?ll give you my pro?s and con?s of the long distance love.

PRO-

1) THEY CAN BE REALLY, REALLY ROMANTIC. ?My friend and I across the pond had a tendency to meet in romantic places like London, Stonehenge and Glastonbury. ?The scene always heightens the experience. ?I am however, firmly convinced that three weeks in Merrill, Iowa would have done us in. (I?m not picking on Merrill, Iowa, I live in Iowa, it?s a nice little town but, you know you?d have to be more creative in a town of 755..)

2) THE TRAIN SCENE AND ALL THAT.?Sometimes the goodbyes are even better than the hellos in terms of romantic pathos. Yum.

3) THIS IS BIG. You have time to lose weight, get some botox, and just generally spiff up in between trysts. ?That?s if you are a bit shallow and all this means alot, and my pond friend was a bit shallow. ?He admitted it. Ok, sometimes I?m shallow too, maybe we would have made a good pair, but I think not.

4) THEY HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU ARE DOING HALF THE TIME. ?This is good, because if you?re not ready, and pond guy and I weren?t ready, you can still explore other territory close by.

5) I CAN?T THINK OF REASON FIVE. ?Shouldn?t lists like these always be five or ten? ?There just wasn?t anything else good I could say about the long distance route.

CON-

1) This is if ?they are the one, which my husband was?YOU DON?T LIVE IN THE SAME PLACE. ?

2) EVEN IF THE RELATIONSHIP WORKS OUT, THE COMPROMISE CAN BE TOUGH.? I got lucky. ?My husband was raised in Manhattan, and lived in Austin, Texas for a lot of years. ?He?d done really big and medium big cities and Iowa sounded good. ?When I found myself single in smaller city Iowa, at 52 (I want you to picture this scenario, ok?), I knew that the pool here was a bit limited, so I?d have to import someone. ?So I did.

3)IF YOU GO TOO LONG WITHOUT SEEING EACH OTHER, YOU CAN ACTUALLY START AGING TO THE POINT THAT THEY NOTICE.? My same time next year or two person may have noticed my gradual physical deterioration. ?In fact, I?m certain he did. ?He?s shallow.

4) SEE NUMBER FOUR ABOVE, ONLY REVERSE IT. ?? If they are ?the one?, you feel a bit better if you have some idea about where and with whom they spend their time. ?A lot better.

5)YOU DON?T LIVE IN THE SAME PLACE. ?This is not a long typo.

In any case, my long distance relationship turned out to be the best thing I ever started, but I like the fact that he?s now in the next room and is about to walk in and say, ?Whatcha writing, darlin??. ?And I?ll say to him, ?I?m writing about the fact that I?d still be madly in love with you even after three weeks in Merrill, Iowa.?

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