Hello from the other side

Whenever someone I know talks about a long-distance relationship, we would both heave a knowing sort of sigh – long-distance is hard. There is almost no comfort in the knowledge, and no advice to be shared amongst “community”. What else can be said without calling to mind a sort of loneliness we must endure without comfort? It is hard, but at the same time, I feel that my long-distance relationship has taught me valuable lessons on love. Why else do we find ways to celebrate Valentines, despite all the hours lost to time zones or the capitalist poisoning of the holiday?

Does distance make the heart grow fonder

Sure, if anyone contains just a sliver of masochistic streak in them. Long distance is hard, and creates a sense of painful longing, that when viewed with the right mindset is a kind of fondness. It is watching people take slow strolls in the square as the leaves fall, and everything feels tragic and dramatic and deeply, personally, mocking. It is having my fingers perpetually cold and wishing I could feel some familiar warmth. It is tearing up while staring at my phone – the tears always come out of sight, never during the precious time to video call – and wondering if it is just a moodiness that comes with the early sunset, or being quite literally bored to tears waiting. It is rehearsing the reunion a million times in my head, fearing that I am overinflating it with my expectations beyond what any human can bear. Fearing that when we do meet, I will find that some things will be different from memory.

But of course, things will always be different. We all grow individually, regardless of the company of another person. The distance only makes obvious the inevitable shifts of a relationship that a physical closeness might cause me to overlook. That clarity in the way I have learnt to view my relationship prompts a deeper kind of fondness. It puts away fear now that I realise that the trajectory of relationships remains indifferent to distance.

I have been learning to find the right distance in a relationship, forced to, both literally and emotionally. One good thing to come out of it is the reduced risk of losing myself in a partnership. We all must, first and foremost, be individual people who lead fulfilling lives, I believe, and a little distance gives me the space to figure out how I want to improve as a person. The same way plants choose to disperse their seeds because being too close in clusters deprives each sapling of the chance to grow, some distance is essential, and some problems I must still face alone. I like that it has made me realise that a relationship is not an emotional crutch. We have to learn to pick and fight our own battles, and learn when to be supportive without intruding, when to step away without being cold. It is true that when we grow more into our own interesting persons, there is more of that person to be fond of.

While that is a half-hearted answer for whether distance does make the heart fonder (I think people who insist that long-distance is for the better kind of sound like the fox calling the grapes sour) there is a different kind of love I have discovered from having some space to myself. #selflove amiright?

But is it really fondness or is it just lust

Long distance very obviously impacts the physical intimacy of any relationship, and that is something I will learn to make sense of. If zoom university is of any indication, even the longest video calls cannot replace the reassurance of being physically within reach. Stating the obvious, but staring into pixels that encode the colours representative of an eye is different from holding an actual gaze. To know that I have not misjudged a reaction, that I have not missed any indication that there are things left uncommunicated, to just squeeze their hands in reassurance, to just breathe in a familiar scent, all irreplaceable aspects in a long-distance.

Physical touch is a part of romantic relationship that most straightforwardly distinguishes it from platonic, yet for some reason (maybe it’s just in my head) there is a shyness as people sidestep that discussion when it comes to long-distance. There is something too private about the topic that inhibits me from just outright sharing about it, but I think it might have been reassuring for me to know that it is normal to grapple with some insecurity of whether there is too much lust in the relationship. One of my love languages is touch, so this issue was very important to me.

Why does the lack of physical intimacy make me feel disconnected? Is there some deeply embedded mutual objectification that on some level reduces our need for companionship to pure biology? To compensate for long-distance, extra creativity and more deliberate attempts to step out of my comfort zone need me to first of all justify whether I am doing it for the right reasons. Maybe this is me being prudish, or over-liberal, and it might seem strange that I got so hung up over it.

I think there is nothing wrong in valuing physical intimacy, wanting to be desired, craving feeling of trust that comes from sharing the most private affairs. At the same time, I despise reducing my relationship into its physical components, missing a hand, a warmth, a body to cuddle not unlike the functions of a blanket. Long-distance forces me to overcompensate by emphasising and making up for precisely what I am lacking the most. To miss something terrible when you are deprived of it is only normal, and it might diminish the other aspects of a relationship that can be fulfilled vaguely through video calls. It makes it easy to overlook the most endearing parts of a relationship when consumed by the desire for the replaceable (which is a temptation many people do succumb to) even when I know that a person is far from an assembly of replaceable body parts. It becomes a breeding ground of insecurities.

As with anything else in long-distance, it requires effort and commitment to work out the delicate balance of too little and too much (I personally might say that it rarely is too much, simply because we always wish to satisfy what is unsatiated, so “overfeeding” the beast of eros might be more helpful than to deprive it and fan its desire). The distance also has its own upsides, such as building greater trust and communication (motherhood statements, I know, but it is true). The sooner we work out how to untangle the knots of insecurity the better it is for the both of us. It goes both ways to have some reassurance that I’m not only a piece of meat, or some perverted deviant. I also realise that lust does not last, so maybe I do have the answer to my doubts all along, with some enduring aspects of the relationship as proof.

Love is not a cure for loneliness

Long-distance is hard (if I have not reiterated it enough), and it is painful – not just because of the distance, but also because of the time zone differences which I find unbearable – thus it should not be a yardstick to measure the strength of a relationship. What I mean is to say that everything I have represented on this Valentine’s Day post is an oversimplification of what a long-distance relationship is like, and that problems arise all the time, be it my internal struggles or a conflict. It really isn’t anyone’s fault – to try to place responsibility on people assumes that we are stronger than human nature. That is a sort of maturity that gets refined with long-distance, as though it were some martial arts that requires training in isolation and meditations in solitude.

Many people might find this largely inapplicable, especially if they identify themselves as “single and alone” on Valentines, but I think it would be nice to conclude on the note that love and relationship is not a cure for loneliness (I realise this disclaimer should probably appear earlier). The victimisation of being single in the season of love seems to assume that all those happy couples are happy to find that they fit like jigsaw pieces in a lonely world. Long-distance really showed me, with great clarity, that it is not the case, and one is still very much capable of feeling lonely even while in love (though the distance probably hyperbolizes these occurrences).

What is more important is to learn to find value for myself. Now that I can no longer be “one call away”, or provide a comforting hug, I am forced to think about what other ways I can make the relationship work. Working on myself is a part of that equation. I want to be a solution, not just a temporary distraction. And yet, paradoxically, I have to come to terms with the fact that occasionally, we really are just each other’s distractions. And that is all I can be. And maybe that is enough.

Maybe a hello from the other side of the globe, or a good night message when I wake, is enough.