How To Survive A Long Distance Relationship

In the first few months after meeting The Woodsman, my top Google search must have been “how to survive long distance relationships”, usually read with a bowl of ice-cream on one hand, and a box of tissues on the other. When we first met, I was in ministry school in California, while he was in the process of relocating from Indiana to Idaho. Unlike most couples who are forced into long distance relationships, we chose this life. Or maybe it’s more romantic to say, this life chose us 😉

Our first date was a month after he asked me to be his girlfriend, and consisted of me flying 5 hours across the country and him driving up to Chicago to meet me. You can read more in our love-story, but the long and the short of it is, once we found each other, we knew we had to be together, and we would figure out what we needed to figure out. So our journey has definitely been unique, but in it, I’ve found 8 tips that might help someone who finds themselves in a similar situation.

How To Survive A Long Distance Relationship 

1. Take it slow. Be sure you’re protecting each other’s hearts, be prayerful and take your time deciding if this is something that will work for you and if it’s what you want. Once you both choose and resolve to do this together, nothing can stop you.
2. Pray. The Woodsman won me over the second I said, half-serious, in the middle of a conversation, “can you pray for me…”, and he stopped what he was doing, wrote down a prayer and sent it to me. Prayer has been so crucial for both of us, especially those first few months. Yahweh is truly an ever-present help in time of need.
3. Get into a routine. I know the word “routine” doesn’t exactly evoke feelings of passion and excitement, but in this season, you want to hold on to whatever form of security you can give/get from each other. For us, knowing that at the end of everyday we would talk and every morning he would be the first voice I hear, was such a lifeline.
4. Skype & text whenever possible! You’ll be surprised at how easy it is to connect over Skype. We were lucky enough to have the time to spend hours at a time on Skype after we met. After moving to Idaho, we couldn’t Skype as much so it became a special treat when we could and it really helps 🙂
5. Hope. It annoyed my friends to no end, but I was always on countdown mode to when we would see each other next. There’s a difference between wishing away your life, and living in hopeful anticipation of the future. Go out, live your life, enjoy every moment, but remember, it’s also OK to be excited for the future – it’s an exercise in faith.
6. Don’t go to bed angry. Learn to communicate and not hide things from each other. We learned pretty quickly that it’s unfair and never works out well to leave the other person to guess what you need, or how you feel if you don’t tell them. So TALK and be VULNERABLE.
7. People. Oh my word! By far the biggest challenge. You will definitely face some unsupportive people with stories of how their uncle’s cousin was in a bad long distance relationship, or the “don’t get your hopes up” people. Don’t blame people for their reactions, at best they’re just trying to protect you. I learned pretty quickly that the only voices that matter are Yahweh’s voice, the Woodsman’s voice and my voice. We’re the only ones fully invested in this relationship and who have all the information.
8. Mentorship. We are big into mentorship, and definitely invited our mentors and parents into the process. Personally, I had to create boundaries around what I was looking for. I’m already a pessimist by nature, so I needed people in my life to tell me everything would be OK, and that this was going to be an amazing journey. Their biggest responsibility was to make sure we were doing relationship right, and teaching us the skills we needed to learn, not to tell us whether or not we were going to make it.

Any more tips? Please share down below! If you have any questions or are in this season too and need some advice, feel free to chat with us!