Long Distance - A Girl's Perspective
Shellie is not only my teammate here at Emory but one of my good friends as well. We are both in long distance relationships (LDR) so it’s awesome to always have her there to talk to and relate to.
As soon as I started to ask her questions her face just lit up with pure happiness and excitement. Just thinking and talking about her boyfriend made her bubbly and exultant, I couldn’t help but smile myself. Shellie and her boyfriend, John, have been dating for over two years now. “It’s going great, I love it.” You could just tell how genuinely happy she was with her relationship; this was something I could personally relate to. Deciding whether or not to pursue a long distance relationship is a very tough decision. “From the get co I wasn’t sure that HE would want to, so that’s why I was unsure about it. We never even talked about it until January of our senior year and once we did we realized that we both wanted to.” Shellie and John had officially been dating since the summer before their senior year, June 26th to be exact, and even if they were both thinking it, they hadn’t even talked about an LDR until halfway through their senior year, but for Shellie she was happy they talked about it then so that they could start taking advantage of the time they had together. My boyfriend and I started dating at the start of our junior year, and we had known going into senior year that we wanted to continue dating after high school. So I know exactly how it feels to want to take advantage of your time together because it truly does go by so quickly and without even realizing it you’ve graduated, packed your bags for school and are flying thousands of miles away from your best friend; and that’s one of the hardest things to do. “But we just knew it was worth it,” she explained to me when I asked her why she would want an LDR. “He’s the kind of guy that I don’t think I’d run into anytime in my life after this. So I think I was fortunate, and we were already best friends and we already loved each other so much.” Being best friends before getting into a relationship is absolutely amazing – I can vouch for that myself. “I think we were strong enough (to have an LDR) because we were so close as friends before we got together that we just knew we could do it.” I know what she means, my boyfriend is a once in a lifetime kind of guy, and I genuinely wouldn’t want to be with anyone else. And the fact that we believe in each other and in our relationship so much, just like Shellie and John, is what makes both of our LDRs possible. |
But as in any committed relationships, tough times are inevitable and communication is key – especially in LDRs. “The first month was the hardest,” Shellie was explaining the difficulties she faced her freshman year of college with her relationship. “It was hard not only because I missed him but the first month of freshman year you’re so busy, meeting so many people, making so many friends, and I was so used to having him with me 24/7 so we would just talk about everything. He knew what was going on in my life and I knew what was going on in his.” You truly don’t know how busy you are until you get to college, and the first month was definitely tough for me, too. “We finally realized how we take each other’s presence for granted.” It’s the little things you do in a relationship, like going out to run errands for your parents, or doing homework together, or literally just laying on the couch watching TV, that you miss the most when you are apart; and it’s the little things that you truly do learn to appreciate.
“He’s a part of my life, but I’m not dependent on him in my life here.” Shellie went into how with an LDR, you’re allowed freedom and since college is a place for you to find yourself it’s really good to be able to do that on your own. She said “it’s really nice to kind of just find my own people.” In high school, my boyfriend and I had all of the same friends, but at Emory, I’ve developed this whole new set of relationships that he isn’t connected to – and I do believe that having your own friendships and group of people outside of your relationship with your boyfriend is extremely important, as does Shellie. But one of the things that really him home with me while I was interviewing Shellie is when she made a comment about time. “I think it’s just that time is really precious and we’re realizing that.” Sometimes, we just let time fly by without taking advantage of every moment we have, and sometimes we are too busy trying to make the most out of every single second of every single day that we forget to just live and enjoy life. But time is precious; it’s something you can never get back, and just like Shellie, I plan to make the most of the time I have, not just in my long distance relationship, but with my entire college experience as well. |