Have The Relationship You Want

Here’s a question – from “Alice” – to start this discussion:

“Dear Rori, Please tell me if your principles for successful relationships apply to long distance relationships. Thanks, Alice”

Okay – this is a big one.

How do you have a “relationship” with a man you only see every-once-in-awhile? How can you stay bonded to each other, keep him totally interested, and keep yourself from feeling jealous, insecure, worried, and lonely when most of your contact is by phone and email?

And the answer isn’t as simple as I’d like it to be, because, just like EVERY relationship, each long-distance relationship is different.

So, instead of trying to put all long-distance relationships into one basket, as though the quality of ‘long-distance” is what defines the relationship – let’s look at it differently.

Let’s look at YOUR relationship, which may happen to involve you seeing each other only twice a month, if that, and feeling the pressure during those moments together to have a “great” time, and dealing with all the logistics of traveling.

For starters, let’s look at the level of “commitment” in your relationship:

If you’re engaged, and trying to find a home in one of your cities or somewhere completely new – then you’re committed. That means you handle it EXACTLY the same way you would if he were here with you every single day and night.

If you’ve just met, or seen each other a few times and “clicked” – you may be tempted to see it as a “committed” relationship – even though it really isn’t. And so you may cut out your other options, go “exclusive” and otherwise bind yourself up with a man in an “Imaginary Relationship.”

I’ve seen long-distance relationships work out beautifully – when the focus is entirely on being together and the man takes real, concrete steps to either get you to his home, or come to yours, and it moves along quickly and gets to the wedding quickly.

And I’ve seen long-distance relationships drag a woman to desperation – where she gives up everything, moves to be with the man, and then the whole thing falls apart – leaving her jobless, friendless, and financially ruined.

So – let’s get some basics down here about how to do this when you have seemingly everything working against you:

1.  My Tools around ATTRACTION  (my Modern Siren program has a ton of Tools that will help you with this) are the bottom line here – he must FEEL attracted to you, even when he can’t feel you physically.  Your voice has to do it for him, his memory of you, and the words you say in your emails and texts.

2.  Long-distance relationships get bogged down in logistics – planning trips and visits, planning futures, planning everything – and this is totally NOT what you want to be doing with a man. 

3.  The times you actually get to spend with him physically, up-close and in-person, can start to feel urgent, intense – and yes, very romantic and passionate – in a way that pushes the relationship and your feelings faster than it really is going.  In other words, the intimacy is being artificially produced by the difficulty of getting together – so that when you finally DO get together, to try the relationship out for real in his city or yours, it doesn’t measure up to the intensity of the few-and-far-between visits you once had.

And often, because his true feelings and readiness for a lifelong commitment have never been tested – you find out way too late that he’s not really ready, or even ABLE to do the job of a real relationship.

Let’s explore some ways to take care of yourself, and still move the relationship forward in the next posts…let me know with your comments here what your story is, what experiences you’re having, and how I can help.

Love, Rori