Misery Loves Company, Even A Hundred Miles Away
A young damsel dabs her tears with a handkerchief, waving goodbye to her dashing knight as he sets sail to the other side of the world. Or a red-lipped, hair-perfectly-curled woman kisses her well-dressed soldier as he steps onto the plane. For a more modern interpretation, an anxious woman hugs her long-distance boyfriend goodbye as she steps on the train, just for them to immediately bombard each other with “I miss you” texts and all their doubts before she even leaves the station.
Long-distance relationships have been happening since long-term relationships were a thing. Whether it’s a hundred years ago, and your sweetheart is flying halfway across the world to fight in the war, or it’s 2023. It’s unlikely your sweetheart is enlisting, but you still find yourself miles apart. And we thank god it’s not a hundred years ago — it’s way easier to maintain a relationship separated by distance in today’s world, with the ability to Facetime each other with one click and a semi-decent connection. But even with the rougher parts smoothed over, we still have to wonder: is it even worth it?
Long-distance relationship has a 58% success rate. At first glance, that seems like a lot, but it’s barely over a fifty-fifty chance. Odds are, most people try to avoid any significant relationship. You wouldn’t put the fate of your relationship on hoping that you get tails on a coin flip, which is pretty close to your chances of a long-distance relationship working out. Another devastating statistic: the average long-distance relationship ends in 4.5 months. Imagine putting all that energy and pain into maintaining a relationship that can’t be physically present in front of you… just to crumble in less than half a year?
I could simply be a cynic, worn down from being a warm shoulder for my friends to weep on after one disastrous long-distance relationship after another. But as a keen observer and avoider of anything that can cause great pain, it’s not hard to see the downsides.
First, there is the loneliness caused by a complete lack of intimacy that is supposed to come from a relationship. Every special moment and casual, day-to-day things that should happen with your partner just don’t happen that way. Instead, it’s replaced with a longing feeling and a wish to be somewhere else. Envy that your friends can spend every day with their partners while you are stuck with a version on a phone screen.
Then comes the jealousy and clinginess. It’s going to be tough to see your partner do fun and amazing things without you and with people you don’t know. That green-eyed monster can be hard to keep down, especially when you’re the one who keeps missing the fun parts and the big stuff. It’s almost as rough as having your partner constantly begging you to blow off all your plans to Facetime with them and slowly cut off the oxygen to any social life, keeping you up all night to fit in some insane time zone difference.
But the instability of your future has to be the worst part. Relationships that are only long-distance for a few months have a greater chance of surviving because of the eventual end goal. They will be back together soon enough; they just have to get through a few months apart. But when neither of you knows where the future is heading? That is a recipe for heartbreak and spending hours listening to cheesy love songs.
There are simply so many difficulties in maintaining a relationship that are happening right in front of you that trying to keep a significant relationship going a hundred miles away is just looking for misery. That is not to say it’s impossible. If you think it’s worth the risk, then go for it! But if I had to flip a coin on my chances of a successful long-distance relationship, I wouldn’t bet too much money on it.
Strike Out,
Rameen Naviwala
Boca Raton
Rameen Naviwala is a content writer for Strike Magazine Boca. A water sign that enjoys rom-coms and reading melodramatic novels, she spends most of her time with headphones on and scribbling down whatever thought comes to mind. You can reach her at rameen.naviwala@outlook.com.
