Long distance relationships are challenging for two primary reasons:
Your relationship isn’t “real” until you’re in the same city full-time.
You’re not in the same city until someone is willing to move.
This is why I don’t recommend them to my Love U clients. But if you’re gonna do an
LDR - like so many women do - here’s the best way to ensure you’re making all the right decisions.
Stick around.
I’m Evan Marc Katz, dating coach for smart, strong, successful women and your personal
trainer for love. Welcome to the Love U Podcast. Keep listening to learn 7 tips to make a long
distance relationship work. When we’re done, I’ll let you know how you can apply to Love
U to create a passionate relationship that makes you feel safe, heard, and understood.
I've done long distance. I know people have done long distance with success. I can never recommend
it as a primary way to go about things. There's always going to be a better chance of someone
in your city, however bad you think your city is. It's always easier to get something off the ground
in your own city. But I know from having coached for 17 years now that people are going to do long
distance no matter what I say. If you're going to do it, here's how you do it. Seven quick tips.
Number one, the guys should come to you first and stay in a hotel.
You do not get on a plane to go visit a guy. The guy shows his investment in you by coming to visit
you. Respecting your need for distance by staying in a hotel. Whether he ends up staying in the
hotel is a separate story. But that's the plan. You can't have a guy fly cross-country and assume
that he's just going to sleep in your bedroom. That puts a lot of pressure on that first date.
So he comes to you. You don't go to him. Number two, once you've got something up and
running, maybe even at the very beginning, you talk. Not text every night. So texting is easy.
Lots of people have relationships that exist primarily in the form of texting.
It's not a relationship. Texting isn't a relationship, texting isn't a real conversation.
Texting is I'm running five minutes late. Hey sweetie, I can't wait to see you. That's
what texting is. So you're going to have a long distance relationship. It needs to go
deeper because you're not around each other as much. You need to go deeper. You need to
have a real conversation to get to know each other. Texting is not going to do the trick,
so schedule time. And my wife when we were first dating, we weren't long distance. She'd say to me,
You know, after about a month, “Hey, Evan, just give me a call when you go to sleep every night.”
That was our thing. I can call her whenever I want, whenever I am done with work. She'd always
pick up the phone. We'd have great conversations and that provides momentum and depth. Because
distance kills momentum in depth, so you need to put in more energy at the beginning.
You can think you're having a relationship by text. In my opinion, it's not enough to elevate
it to a strong long distance relationship. Number three, if you can drive to each other,
see each other every weekend, if possible. If you have to fly. Try to see each other,
every other weekend, money permitting and lots of people maintain long distance relationships.
And just based on the fact that they're lonely, sad, feel they're slim pickings in their area.
And then they anchor onto someone and they text them every day, and they may talk once a week,
see each other once a month. Something like that is a really, really low bar for what a
relationship is. It's more like the ability to say you've got a boyfriend rather than to have a
boyfriend. It's like having a job, but you only go into the office once a week. So really, within the
structures of what's possible, you want to be all in on the relationship to make it as real as you
possibly can for a relationship that exists from separate cities. So definitely make the effort
to see each other every weekend. If you could drive every other weekend if you have to fly.
Number four, alternate between your home, so one person isn't
the one who's always sacrificing. I see this kind of thing happening all the time where one
person is always going to the other person and it feels a little bit imbalanced and we can try
to justify that. Maybe one person has all the money. That's a justification. Maybe one person
has a really small place. There's all sorts of reasons that you could compromise on this.
I don't want to make these rules into the Ten Commandments. They're not.
But in general, relationships are about compromise, and it tends to work a lot
better if you're alternating who's visiting each other instead of one person taking the sacrifice
and leaving town every single time? That kind of thing is going to build up resentment eventually.
Number five, try taking a week to live at each other's place to see how you get along
in larger doses. The hardest part about long distance relationships is that it feels like
vacation love. I go on vacation, you meet someone special at the hotel, you have a great connection.
It's like the bachelor. Like it's exciting. It's fun. Taking a week, taking quality time out,
working remotely from someone else's house for a week or a month. To see how you get along when
you're together, living together, brushing teeth together, making little decisions and getting in
each other's space together. That's a far better test of your relationship than whether
you can, you know, flirt by zoom or flirt by text. Have good Zoom calls and have amazing sex.
That's the surface part of a relationship. Number six, integrate with your friends and
family instead of having a relationship separate from the rest of your life. That's one of the
things that often happens to long distance relationships because they're not as real
as the ones that are based at home where you see each other. You know, three times a week can leave
your weekends open for each other. The family and the friends never really get to be a part of it.
They exist in almost a separate ecosystem because you're visiting him, he's visiting you and you've
got your little, your little love bubble that nobody's really privy to. So you can be deeply
in love with someone that no one in your family knows. It's not what your friends actually know,
and vice versa. So try to integrate that person into your life. A. because that's part of what
love is, is merging lives. And the other thing it's also useful to get feedback from your friends
and family about what they think of your partner. Not that you should get that much primacy to what
other people think, but I think sometimes that kind of stuff is relevant, and what you don't
want to do is get engaged to someone that no one in your life has ever met before. Makes sense.
Number 7, make a choice. After about six months as to who is open to moving. Six months is a made
up timeframe. It's not like the right answer. The whole point is you need to be able to really say
you're in love, really willing to sacrifice, really willing to push your chips into the
middle of the table. And if you can't figure out in six months if one of you is willing to
move because neither of you is willing to move but you want the other person to move for you,
you might be at an impasse and you don't want to let this go for one year or two years where you're
just avoiding the topic about who's going to move. So it's the kind of topic that you deal with once
it's kind of gotten real and then someone has to express the intention and the willingness to take
steps forward to make your integration, your real relationship and person into a reality.
And so those seven steps without having asked are exactly what my sister did when she was living
in New York and her long distance guy was in San Francisco. They dated for six months, exactly this
way, talking every night, flying back and forth every other weekend, alternating who went to whom,
meeting each other's friends and family. My sister left New York, moved to be with her boyfriend
after six months. They lived together for about two and a half years to see if it was real before
they decided to get engaged. I officiated their wedding 12 years ago. That's right, I am a
minister of the Universal Life Church. Give me a call. I'm even doing another wedding next year.
So to sum up, I don't recommend high risk relationships. I don't really get it and I'm
never going to endorse it. I also know that people are going to do what people are going to do.
And if you're going to do a high risk, high reward, long distance relationship, you'd be
well-served to follow these seven rules to make sure you're making good decisions and that you're
on the right track to ensure that if you're going to seek this kind of time in your relationship,
that it is the best chance of succeeding. I really hope it works for you. Good luck.
My name is Evan Marc Katz. Thanks for tuning in, talking to the Love U podcast for more episodes
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Watch my free video on how to gain confidence, attract quality men and fix your broken man
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in a community that helps you get the love that you deserve.
You can have. It can be yours. Look forward to seeing you in class. Take care. Bye bye.