Online Dating: Going the Distance

One of the many benefits of online dating is that it makes it very easy indeed for you to meet people from all over the country and indeed all over the world – people you wouldn’t have had the chance to meet if you hadn’t been open to trying dating online. Of course, this comes with a few challenges unique to itself.

Maintaining A Good Long-Distance Relationship

Long-distance relationships can be brilliant – but they can also be quite difficult to maintain. If you think you’re shortly to find yourself in one, there are a few things you might want to think about doing once the two of you are definitely ‘together’.
  • Skype, Google Hangouts and other video call services are an absolute godsend to anyone in a long-distance relationship. Calls like that are absolutely the next best thing to hanging out with someone, and you can use them to spend quality time with your partner in all kinds of ways: watching films or television together, sleeping next to each other in your respective beds, even playing board or card games together if you put a little thought into the setup.
  • Make sure that whatever happens you speak to each other every day, and be careful to have plenty of different methods of communication available to you both. Vary between email, text message, IM, phone calls, video calls, social media and any other way of keeping in touch you like – it can be particularly lovely to sometimes post each other real letters.
  • Above all, make certain that you both go to an effort to make time for each other. It can be much too easy to let contact slide when you’re long-distance – not doing so should be a conscious effort on both your parts.

Make Sure You Have A Plan For The Future

If your relationship is a serious and primary one, you don’t want to ramble on long-distance indefinitely without a plan for the future. Make sure you both know where this is going: is one of you going to relocate? Who and when? What are you waiting for before you do that?

There’s a lot to think about when it does come time for one of you to relocate, but the most important thing of all is to not do it too early – make sure your relationship is ready for it when you do – and to ensure that as quickly as possible the relocating partner builds up social networks and support systems in the local area outside of the relationship, perhaps by joining local groups or clubs.