3 Ways to Nurture Your Long-Distance Relationship

Dating long-distance isn't easy.

If you’re considering entering a long-distance relationship, or even just widening your geographic search radius on your profile, you might have wondered how it could possibly work to date someone “long-distance.” Maybe “long-distance” to you is anything “out of state”, or maybe it means outside the country. In my husband’s and my case, long-distance dating meant that at the time we met on CatholicMatch in November of 2012, we lived 1,591 miles and two time zones apart, with me on Central Time and him “two hours behind” in the Pacific Time Zone. 

Naturally, interacting across the time zones took some adjusting, especially at first, but we found that developing a routine made the distance seem a lot shorter and ultimately helped us to grow closer together while living far apart. Hopefully, some of our “best practices” can help you as you consider the remote or immediate possibility of long-distance dating. 

1. Cultivate a communication pattern. 

James was a high school Math teacher while we were dating, and I was a night-shift intensive care unit (ICU) nurse. Living in a rural area meant that he taught four 10-hour days each week, and I was scheduled for three 12-hour night shifts each week at my job. Over time, he started calling me each day on his drive to work. Me being two hours ‘ahead’ meant that even if I had worked the night before, I would most likely be off work by the time he drove to school. We talked for his 17-minutes-and-43- seconds drive to school, then I’d wish him a good day, and off he’d go. 

Besides our early morning (for him!) chats, we established a communication routine around my work as well. Since James was a football and baseball coach for much of our dating relationship, we didn’t usually talk on my drives into work since he was still doing after-school activities when I was headed in. Instead, he always wrote me an email just before he went to bed, and then I would read it in the morning when I got off shift. He wrote such encouraging, witty, humorous emails, and reading them, no matter how work had gone, was always somehow both a pick-me-up and a relaxing wind-down for bed. I still remember struggling not to “cheat” by checking my email during my 1 or 2 am “lunch time” to see what he’d written. 

Also, James always texted me goodnight, writing “One less day” until…”I see your pretty face” or “until we’re in person again” or something similar. After we were finally living in the same town and then got engaged, he’d text me “One less day until neither of us has to go home.” 

Through these little ways that we checked in with each other, we learned the everyday stuff of the other person’s life—the people, the places, the activities, and all of the other mundane things that make up day-to-day living. 

2. Do things together...even when you’re apart. 

James and I made a point to do things “together” even when we were far apart. Occasionally we’d have specific Skype dates where we’d both eat pizza and then play Words with Friends on our phones or another game we could both access. We also read an encyclical (Humanae Vitae) together, and discussed it over suppers on Skype. The more that we got to know each other, the more I started to call him when I had an automotive or mechanical or electrical issue I would have previously called my dad about. Since neither of them were local, I started to lean on James to talk me through fixing things (or knowing when something was above my skill level to fix!). 

3. Surprise the other person. 

I tried to send James small care packages to remind him that I was thinking about him, even when we couldn’t be in touch over the phone for several days at a time due to our schedules or to lack of cell service when he’d be gone traveling with his team. I also occasionally clipped newspaper articles and sent them to him with words circled or highlighted to spell out a silly message. One Easter when I was working, James sent me a big chocolate Easter egg to enjoy after I got off shift. I hold bragging rights for all-time biggest surprise, though, as one time his mom drove all the way to the airport to get me (four hours each way) and then dropped me off at his doorstep for a surprise three-day visit. 

Developing communication routines that led us to enter as fully as possible into each other’s day-to-day existence really helped bridge the considerable time and distance gap for James and me. We found that long-distance dating required us to invest very intentionally in making our relationship work, and that intentionality, albeit about different things, is still serving us well almost six years in!