Long distance relationship advice

It might be new for some, but must be a known fact to many, the relationship I am in now is quite long distance. Just imagine for a moment. You’re situated in a beautiful castle, with loads of nature and gorgeousness around, the amazing forms of Radha Gopinatha and the sweet cows that form part of the community. And you cannot share it with the man you love the most [with exception of daddy of course, but everybody knows that’s a different kind of love]. Wouldn’t that feel just heart breaking? It kind of does. Everything we’re building on now is memories, and we just keep going to build more on those. For me it’s even easier, since I get confronted with the very places of those memories every single day. The difficulty for me is in the fact that it hurts to be on those places and to get drawn back in time when we were there together and laughed or sometimes we could be very mad at each other. Still, I cannot imagine the difficulty that he must be experiencing, having only memories and not even the tangible places to sit and remember. It should be the other way around maybe, because since I’m a girl it can sometimes bring me to tears, having him so close in mind but at the same time so far away. But on the other hand it’s quite good. It helps me to focus my mind on him and him only [and Gopinatha of course ^^]. I shall be honest with you, whoever you all may be. In previous relationships I have cheated and I could care less at the time. But in this one I don’t even want to think about the possibility of such an event happening, nor would I ever be excited to participate. Those days are far behind me, and at the first sight of him as my boyfriend I decided that I will never look back to those days. That decision most probably saved my life, since I’m having no trouble at all maintaining loyal to him. The fact that he is the most sweet and handsome and the most understanding-but-at-the same-time-a-determined-leader-type person in the world is also helping a lot. Seeing where he is going in life gives me the motivation to work extra hard, in order not to stay behind or to pull him down. That is definitely one of the ways to fall. Seeing the other person as lazy and boring will bring irritations, feelings of disrespect and cracked loyalty [because someone else who comes peeking around the corner might have some more ambition in his/her lives and usually people are in it to win it, so that will give even more frustrations].  Right now I might think that almost everything in my life has a weather forecast of a partly clouded sky forever [except for the weather in Belgium] but if I want to be true to myself and him I also have to recognize that I am a human being and that although things now may be quite smooth, in a couple of months after not seeing each other for [so it seems] ages, we might lose some of our determination or natural attraction. Those moments/weeks/months/however long we will be apart, will be the real determining factor whether our love and our memories together are strong enough to keep going the distance.

• ·         Just saying for now, make up a list of things that you’re going to do for your partner.
• ·         Things that [s]he actually likes.
• ·         Take pictures of stuff you’re experiencing and send them to each other.
• ·         Sometimes a long long long email will shed some light on your recent thought processes. [S]he cannot read minds, unless [s]he’s a full-on yogi.
• ·         Surprise each other sometimes with a little gift that easily can be sent through mail, or like Narottama Rewah; just stuff your girlfriends face full flowers, she’ll definitely love it.
• ·         Try and be as understanding as you can be toward each other. You should be experiencing the same sad feelings when you miss each other. Express it sometimes. Not too often, once a day is enough.

Having said that, another thing is that if your love and communication is not strong enough, things will eventually never work out and it is better to find out in a way like this than to get married and settled and maybe even children and then suddenly you realize that you have always been believing in a big pink cloud. If you can get through a long distance relationship [with pain and difficulty] and you can also be together for a longer period, if you don’t start blaming each other when everything goes wrong but keep a cool head and realize that things sometimes just work out differently than expected, then I would say you are in a relationship that is helping you and your partner in the same way or that is necessary for both of you individually. And and and, most important of all, keep talking and keep having the most respect for each other. It would be the best if the other one doesn’t even have to think about worrying about you, because you’re such a good girl/boy. That would build so much trust and faith and add extra qualities to the foundation of your [already loving and appreciating] relationship.

XX Ranga d’n relationtherapist.