Long-distance relationships have to be structured around trust, communication and loyalty. Trust is a nice ideal, but, let’s face it, it’s not necessarily in our nature to trust unconditionally, especially when it’s someone you care about.
Communication is difficult to sustain. In a normal relationship, you can bring your mate along with you in your daily life, and you can bond and spend time together as you complete your daily business. So, if your day wasn’t already busy enough, you have to set special time aside to call or write your significant other. If you don’t have time, then you have to make time. If you don’t, then your relationship will begin to resemble its physical state and begin to drift apart.
Loyalty is linked with trust and communication. If in the relationship communication begins to fall away, then it gets harder and harder to trust the other. Most people these days get into a relationship just to have a steady sex partner. When this is the case, then it only takes one member to have no real thought of a future for the relationship, and it begins to crumble.
They say that nothing can come between true love, but true love can be taken and forced far apart. The intention of the relationship makes all of the difference: How dedicated are the two loves to each other, and, probably most importantly, what are the ethics of those involved in the relationship?
Another key element in a long-term relationship is honesty; honesty is in the same vein as trust and loyalty. When there is no honesty, there is no hope for trust or loyalty. The greatest fear people have in long-distance relationships is that the mate might cheat. Once your mate cheats, there is no longer honesty in the relationship, and it is doomed to head for failure.
If someone in the relationship cheats, then the first instinct of the individual is to try to justify his or her actions by shifting the blame. The individual searches for faults in the other to make his or her wrongdoing seem less significant. This leads to bickering, and bickering leads to fighting, and the fighting leads ultimately to the destruction of the relationship.
When both parties of the relationship are not wholeheartedly committed to one another, then they will both tend to wander from each other. It only takes one person to slipping up to change the conduct unconsciously in the communication of the relationship.
I’m sure that everyone has heard some story of a failed long-distance relationship. An example of this would be high school sweethearts being accepted to different colleges and being separated through no faults of their own. In moving to a different environment, you meet people who have different priorities and morals, which are factors in causing change in a person.
When surrounded by new people, there will be significant change. Even when you are reunited with the one you love, that person will most likely be changed and not be the same person.
Distance makes relationships hard for two major reasons: When far away from someone, it’s easier for that person to lie or cheat, and, also, distance makes it harder to have good personal conversations or to show your love and affection. These factors would weaken any relationship. It’s unhealthy. So, why be subject to a long-distance relationship?