5 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t End Your Long Distance Relationship
Staying far away from your significant other can be very tough to handle. It’s even more annoying when you are walking down the road and you see cheesy couples on display.
As frustrating as it appears, you do not need to end your long distance relationship. Not only is it possible, but you can also enjoy lots of benefits from it as an individual, and alongside your partner, as a couple.
Keep reading to find out five interesting reasons why you should reconsider breaking up with your partner because of geographical distance.
Long Distance Relationship Enhances Personal Growth
The mistake many people make is that they spend less time improving their talents and skills when they start dating. They skip piano lessons to go on dates and spend the time they are supposed to use to learn online courses to do video calls with boo.
Nothing wrong with it by the way. After all, they are in love.
Nevertheless, being in a relationship is not an excuse to quit personal development. Much more than ever, when you are in a relationship, you need to ensure you are growing. No one wants to be with a liability and you don’t want to deprive yourself of self care.
This is why it is essential to keep improving. Everyday, strive to become a better version of yourself. For you, and for your partner. Relationships are not only about cuddling, going out on dates and posting on social media. Any relationship that doesn’t aid the personal growth and development of the parties involved is unhealthy and unnecessary.
When you find yourself in a long distance relationship, you shouldn’t give up and think that you are not really dating because you can’t do all the aforementioned activities. Those things do not define a real, healthy relationship.
In a healthy relationship, you have time for personal growth. You are intentional about improving and developing. Long distance relationships provide you with that merit.
You have more time to read books, listen to podcasts, care for your body, attend workshops, etc. You have the time and space to grow as an individual, while also learning very important virtues like patience.
Long distance relationships teach patience when the overwhelming feeling of missing your partner seems to choke you at night. Just kidding, but it teaches you how to wait and that is a trait everyone needs in a relationship– close distance or long distance.
This is not to say that all of these things cannot be achieved when you’re close to your partner, but it can be better achieved in one where you have the space to actually think.
Long Distance Relationship Enhances Individualism
When you fall in love with someone, it is very easy to stop seeing yourself as an individual and start seeing yourself solely as an attachment to someone. You move from ‘I’ to ‘we’ or ‘us’. You stop making decisions for yourself and it becomes difficult to make any decision without getting your partner’s approval first. It is unhealthy.
Co-dependence is a mistake many people make in their relationships. It is unhealthy because your identity becomes contingent upon someone else. You should first live for yourself before living for another. It is also why breakups are tougher for some than others.
They get so caught up building their lives around their partner that they don’t know how to live by themselves when they get separated. It has even led to suicide in the case of some people.
However, when you are in a long distance relationship, you have ample time for yourself. You know you are in a relationship with someone but you are also conscious of, and building yourself. You have more time to know and understand you.
A lot of people don’t know themselves, talk more of what they want in a relationship, or in a partner. It makes them create excessive ideals and causes unnecessary heartaches when the person does not meet their expectations.
When you are in a long distance relationship, you have time to meditate and think about who you are, the kind of things you want in life, and what you want in a partner.
Long Distance Relationship Promotes Self Awareness
It is very easy to lose oneself in the euphoria of being in a romantic relationship. Some people become so consumed that they begin to lose sight of themselves in the relationship. However, long distance relationships promote self awareness.
Self-awareness is a state of individual consciousness with regards to knowing and understanding your personality, desires, feelings, and even motives. When you have more time to yourself, you can settle down to assess yourself. It is in this process of self awareness that you can discover your strengths, and exploit them to become a better version of yourself and a better partner to your significant other.
Understanding is very crucial for a long distance relationship to work. It is the core of this type of dating; the foundation on which you can ever hope to build anything. When you both understand each other, it can help you know if the both of you are really serious about each other. When that has been checked out, you will be able to let each other discover yourselves.
There is no better partner than one who has been good to himself or herself first.
Self awareness is very important for any relationship to work and it is easier to find the time and space to do it when you are in a long distance relationship.
Long Distance Relationships Help To Test The Sincerity Of Your Feelings
There are two popular tests that help to measure up the sincerity of your feelings: the test of time and the test of distance. Being in a long distance relationship helps you to know if you truly love someone.
In a close distance relationship, it is very easy to be infatuated with someone and call it love. You fall in love with the idea of the person and not the person themselves because you eat out together, go to the movies together, take baths together, etc.
However, in a long distance relationship, you love the person for who they are because you are knowing them from afar. You can easily see the errors and red flags. You can also use it to find out if what you feel is really love or lust.
This doesn’t mean that people that cannot handle long distance relationships are insincere or that they never truly loved their partners. No.
Still, love is the greatest force on earth. When you really love someone, you wouldn’t want to picture your life with someone else and you become creative enough to devise a solution to make the relationship work.
Long distance makes you get creative on how to maximize your time with your partner when you are apart. This way, whatever time you do get to spend with each other becomes even more valuable and memorable.
Thank God for technology too, there are many ways to enjoy being in a long distance relationship. You can enjoy movie dates, cook together, read a book together and see each other as much as you want with the use of technology.
Long Distance Relationships Allow You To Pay More Attention To Your Other Relationships
It is not so difficult to become invested in a relationship so much so that you forget your family and friends. While romantic relationships are really beautiful and medicine to the soul, platonic and familial relationships are also essential for your overall emotional and mental health.
When you completely immerse yourself into one relationship, it becomes your everything. In worst case scenarios, that relationship can bend or break you at will. However, when you also divert some of your love and attention to your friends and family, it gets balanced out.
Long distance relationship gives you a lot more free time to focus on all the other relationships in your life. You both will become very good in communication, not just with yourselves, but also with all your loved ones. This will help you to build a solid relationship with your partner and your immediate family.
It is unhealthy, dangerous even, to focus all your emotional and mental energy into one person.
It is very important that you create time for that best friend that stood by you through all your past five breakups, and your mom that stayed up all night tending to your sick body. They might not give you the excitement your partner gives you, but their presence in your life should not be undermined.
Conclusion
If you know you want something serious with your partner and you are able to make your long distance relationship work, you have a higher chance of making a marriage work. This is because you’ve seen the flaws, had enough time to work on them and distance is no longer an issue for you. So, don’t give up now.
It will not be easy, but as long as that person is worth it, do not end that relationship because of distance. Love endures and bears all things. Good luck!
All images were sourced from Unsplash.com
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