Recently I've found one of the biggest obstacles of LDR's is that not only do you lose a sense of who you are as a person, but you also lose sight of who the other person is in the relationship. 10-20 minute Skype calls tend to force you onto a pedestal of sorts. You feel the need to preform, to engage, to excite, to entertain. You aim to achieve these in an extremely short window of time and in my case more than not you fail miserably. Through life, you can almost choose a default setting or different versions of yourself to suit the situation you find yourself in, or more importantly the people you find yourself dealing with. When you're speaking to your other half there can't be any deception, there's no escape route, they're can't be because then quite frankly your relationship is built on lies. Not only are you trying to bluff your other half, but you are also trying to fool yourself. And needless to say, he/she should see right through your lies.
We all like to think we're deep thinking individuals with multiple levels and layers of thought and emotion. But at the end of the day, we're not. We are just simple human beings following our primal urges and instincts. In everyday interactions, you can sometimes lose sight of what attracted you to a person in the first place, what made you fall in love with them. You can lose sight of the little changes in the person, their needs and wants. While others see the changes and fail to react or in most cases, they see them and choose not to react so as not to upset the person you love. These little day-to-day mishaps get multiplied by the hundreds when you're on the other side of the world staring at a computer screen. You're sometimes torn between saying something and between biting your tongue..hard.
I found there can be no middle ground when it comes to feelings. You have, to be honest with each other distance shouldn't be a factor. For a relationship to survive you have, to be honest with each other, provoke, entice and cajole each other. You shouldn't let the other person slip into bad habits or allow them to dwell on negative thoughts. At the end of the day, people enter relationships because they need someone. Sometimes we put too much or too little pressure on the other person. Sometimes we project our deepest fears and insecurities onto them. Most of the time we long for their affection and approval and a lot of the time we just end up hurting each other through our actions or words.
Relationships are all about compromise about incorporating another person into your life with sometimes wildly different views, beliefs and emotional needs to you. It's a fine balancing act to care, love, support and maintains a relationship and a love for a fellow human being. We're selfish beings at the best of the time, but you can't afford to be selfish in a relationship whether near or far.
As much as you can't afford to lose sight of yourself and your needs, wants and goals it's doubly important not to lose your other halves. He/she should be your best friend, the centre of your world, the one you think of during every passing day. The one you strive to please, the one you can't fathom a future without.
Good job!
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