How to Navigate When Long Distance Becomes Short Distance

I’ll never forget the day when my now-husband sent me a photo from the airport...

It was on the day he was moving to America to make our long-distance relationship a short-distance relationship. It was extremely exciting, yet deeply terrifying all at the same time. “How is this going to go?” I thought to myself as I counted down the minutes until I could pick him up at the airport.

We had made a mutual decision that we wanted to live in the same city for a time before getting engaged, to discern in person and date like a “normal” couple would. For some long-distance couples, one person may move during the dating period, during engagement, or even after the wedding. In any of these cases in a long-distance relationship, this is a huge step, and one that shouldn’t happen without much discernment and communication.

Are you up for the challenge?

The adjustment in going from a long-distance relationship to a short (or perhaps not exactly short, but shorter!) distance relationship can be very challenging. After the move, unless both parties have moved to a new city, one person’s entire life has changed, and one person’s has not. The person who moved has to adjust to a completely new job, living situation, friends, and life—and their significant other must learn how to support them in that.

Both individuals must learn how to adjust to a loss of total independence when dates and spending time together in person all of a sudden becomes a possibility. You must figure out how often you will talk over the phone now and when and how frequently you will spend time together. This is both exciting and hard, both fun and difficult, and there are two main keys to a smooth adjustment that my now-husband and I put into practice: communication and empathy.

Communication is essential to the success of any relationship, but is especially crucial to the success of a long-distance move.

Each party must be able to (or must learn to!) express their feelings about how things are going from their perspective, or things can fall apart very quickly. Each person must be willing to share their honest feelings about their needs, wants, and expectations in the relationship in light of all the changes that have taken place with the move.

If one person wants to hang out every night and the other person wants to hang out just three times a week, that must be discussed openly and honestly. If one person’s family lives in the city where you both now live, it is very important to have discussions about a realistic amount of time to spend with that family.

A weekly check-in on how things are going may be a very helpful tool for making this happen! Take some time every week or every other week to ask honest questions like, “How are you doing with the changes that have happened in our relationship? How can I support you well in your new life in this city? Are you happy with the direction our relationship is going?” Talking directly about different feelings that come up is something that helped my husband and I navigate the change with transparency and support for one another.

Empathy was the second most important component for each of us in the big move.

We had to learn to navigate these life changes together and give one another room to make mistakes and struggle—we were both learning and had to be flexible in that. My husband, who had moved from another country, called me from the grocery store one day distraught over the lack of knowledge he had about American groceries and what he should buy to eat. In that moment, instead of feeling frustrated, I had to show compassion to his situation, understanding that this was just one of the many changes he was enduring for the sake of our relationship.

Compassion toward one another, especially in mistakes, is key. Both people will mess up and will disappoint the other (as in any relationship), but sometimes emotions can be heightened, especially soon after the move, and a greater level of mercy must be put into practice. Allow one another to exhibit their humanity, to make mistakes, and to grow.

The inescapable reality is that sometimes after the move, things go very well—and sometimes, things do not go well at all.

For my husband and I, it went well. He proposed four months after the move and later moved to America permanently, but this does not happen for everyone. Both of these components are key either way—communication will help you to navigate and discern together, and empathy toward one another’s new lives will be helpful in the midst of the challenges.

So talk to one another, give one another room to grow, and don’t forget to enjoy being so close to one another and sharing a laugh and a dinner at the same table. My husband and I often recall the times where we would have given anything to be in the same room with one another—this is a tremendous help in not taking the lack of distance for granted, and remembering to truly just enjoy.