If you decide to maintain a long-distance relationship, be prepared for the format of your online communication to change. All posts, photos and videos are a kind of blog that you keep for one person. Within the framework of this blog, you need to talk about everything that happens to you.
It is important here to give as much detail as possible: what you were doing today, with whom you talked, what you saw, what you liked, what disliked. It is important that a person who is far away could better understand you and feel how you live.
- Talk
Of course, various messengers are much more convenient than Skype – you can be in touch with them all day. But still try to talk to each other more often – and preferably on video call, and not write messages. In correspondence, it is impossible to accurately convey intonation, even if you have been together for a long time and know each other perfectly. In a telephone conversation, you do not see each other’s facial expressions.
- Talk about the little things
If you feel like you have absolutely nothing to talk about every day, stop inventing topics for conversation. This is what gets in the way of keeping in touch – trying to come up with a topic for conversation. People who are nearby do not need it, and your task is to create the illusion that you are within arm’s reach. Therefore, talk about the little things that a couple living together would talk about: about household chores, about work, about the fact that the cat was hunting a vacuum cleaner again. This will bring you closer together.
- Feel free to express your feelings
How to keep a long-distance relationship? Writing cute messages gets boring in the second week, lisping with a telephone receiver is somehow stupid, video communication also does not dispose to special tenderness. But it’s important to understand that you need it. You have already lost a huge layer in the relationship – lovers express most of the feelings non-verbally: holding hands, hugging and kissing. While you are deprived of this opportunity, you will have to make up for it with words.
- Communication
Do not use the same messenger to correspond with colleagues, clients, and your loved other. Sooner or later, this will unwittingly create unnecessary tension.
Imagine: you have dozens of work correspondences on WhatsApp, you are online almost all day long and answer important messages, and his/her messages fades into the background. Sometimes messages from loved ones hang unmarked for several hours.
Feelings aside, this situation seems normal: personal life should not interfere with work. But in the eyes of a partner, everything looks a little different. Basically, he/she watches you sit online for hours and ignore his/her messages. Even the most understanding person will sooner or later become offended and lonely.
A separate messenger eliminates unnecessary negativity. When you enter it, you make it clear: “I’m online just for you”. Choose the messenger in which you and your partner have the least number of active contacts.
It can be a popular messenger from another country, which very few people use here, or a messenger that everyone has forgotten about.
- Voice messages
Voice messages from colleagues and friends annoy many, but with a loved one, everything is different. When there is no opportunity to meet live, it is pleasant to hear each other’s voice.
- Video calls
Because looking into each other’s eyes and hearing each other’s voices can make everything feel alright again.
Seeing each other is very important, so try to make regular video calls. You don’t have to sit in front of your laptop for hours every day and have long conversations. A video call creates the illusion that you are spending the evening at home like a regular couple.
And here’s an interesting thing, as long as I remember them, my parents did this when my dad went on working trips. You can cook dinner, and then at the same time eat it in front of the camera and chat, or do your own work, periodically flipping phrases. All this time, it will seem that the loved one is really in the room.
Sometimes, don’t turn off video call when go to bed. It is very pleasant, it seems that you really fall asleep next to your loved one, you hear his/her breathing and how he/she tosses and turns in a dream.
- Music and Movies
Watch together. In their free time, almost all couples watch movies and TV shows. Organizing a joint viewing remotely is also not a problem. Unfortunately, hugging and covering with one blanket will not work, but you can still achieve the effect of presence even having a long distance between both of you.
The simplest solution is to call on FaceTime, for example, and play a movie at the same time..
- Gifts and surprises
In a long-distance relationship, everything is built on micro-moments, it is very important that both partners constantly show feelings, be active and find ways to surprise each other.
Even a sudden sticker or a voice message can cheer you up, and in order to please your loved one with something material, any delivery service and even a transfer via bank will do.
Try to be in touch as much as possible. A million ways have now been invented for this. Let’s say thanks to the progress that we do not live in the Middle Ages, when one letter could wait for several months. Tell him/her how the day went, ask about his/her day – let you be involved in each other’s life. Send photos, shoot videos and use all the achievements of humanity that are useful in your case to the maximum. So you won‘t feel the distance between you two.
“distance is not for the fearful, it’s for the bold. It’s for those who are willing to spend a lot of time alone in exchange for a little time with the one they love. It’s for those who know a good thing when they see it, even if they don’t see it nearly enough”
― Meghan Daum
