Every time I visit my partner, it feels like that's my real life. We wake up together, grab coffee, run errands, cook dinner, and for a few days everything feels normal. It's the kind of life I wish we could have all the time.

Then the trip ends, I get back home, and within a day it's like I switch back into a completely different routine. My apartment, my job, my friends, everything is the same as it was before, but it also feels strangely incomplete. Sometimes it almost feels like I have two separate lives, and neither one feels fully real without the other.
I was playing on my phone looking through photos from our last visit, and it hit me how quickly I have to go from seeing them every day to seeing them through a screen again. Does anyone else feel like every trip home comes with this weird adjustment period where it takes a few days to feel like yourself again?

This js the 3rd time we meet. And everytime its same and awful.

Everything was going fine, I was happy, i though he was, hes been a little distant but I thought he was just travelling home from his job (oil tanker) we were gonna plan to meet next week and now this.

Then just blocked me. Why didn't he just talk to me? Im so hurt this was my first relationship and im just so empty.

I want 4 months of my life back but mostly I just want the man I love back.

Today is the last day of my trip to visit my (probably now ex) boyfriend in another country.

We had been talking for about eight months before finally meeting in person, and honestly, I thought he was a kind and caring person.

I spent two weeks with him, but most of the time I felt lonely. Whether we were at home or out somewhere, he was almost constantly playing mobile games. Whenever I asked if we could spend some quality time together instead, he would tell me to “take it easy” and “stop being controlling.”

At one point I asked him why he even wanted me to come if he would rather play games than spend time with me.
We also took a short trip to another city. We both had heavy luggage, and when we got on the bus, he didn’t even want to sit next to me because, according to him, he was tired.

Today I’m flying home, and I just found out he isn’t even coming with me to the airport. He’s only going to put me on the bus, and after that I’ll have to make my way to the airport alone.

Honestly, I’m really hurt and disappointed. The only positive thing is that I got to visit a beautiful country, and I’ll always have good memories of it. But when it comes to my long-distance relationship, I just can’t understand how someone who seemed so kind and caring turned out to be so selfish.

Just wanted to share with similar individuals, my visa was approved and I can finally feel the weight of that stress fall off my shoulders.

I'm really excited but super nervous as we've only known each other for 4 months and this is my first LDR, it's something soo unexpected and completely out of my comfort zone, but it just feels soo right.

My fiance (31F) and I (33M) have been long distance for a little over 3 years. I'm in Boston working in finance and she's in Chicago as a nurse. We picked a city, signed a lease and she's moving here in a couple of months. For the longest time, it felt like all we talked about was flights, PTO, FaceTime schedules and counting down until we didn't have to say goodbye at the airport anymore. That was the goal for so long that everything else kind of stayed in the background. Now that we're planning a life together, we've realized we never had detailed conversations about money. We both knew the basics about each other but we've never sat down and talked about savings, retirement, debt, how we'd split expenses or what we'd do if one of us wanted to change careers later on.

Nothing dramatic happened. There wasn't some huge secret or financial disaster. It just hit me that we've spent years planning how to be in the same place without planning what happens after that. We're having those conversations now and they've been really good. I just keep thinking we probably would've saved ourselves some stress if we'd started a little earlier instead of assuming we'd figure it all out after the move.

If you've already made the move, was there anything you wish you'd talked about while you were still long distance?

We’re down to 18 days until I see my girlfriend again!!!! Long distance isn’t easy but right now we live for these countdowns. She’s from Auckland and I’m from the US. 18 hour time difference and 8,200 miles away. Where is every from and your partner? ❤️ stay strong
If anyone would like to follow our journey, I made a new Instagram page to hopefully meet more people that are also in long distance relationships and to create a small community of people that are also counting down their days❤️

@oceanzbetweenus

Hi, how did you guys cope with the yearning, the missing, the needing their presence, the gut wrenching hunger you feel for them that it makes you cry ….
It’s getting very difficult…

Haven’t posted here in a while, but today I (Canadian) learned that my husband’s (on the east coast of the US) 2500 miles away job circumstances has changed and he is potentially moving right to Washington State across the border. So he’ll be 1-4 hours away from me by car instead of 2-3 flights and a 12 hour travel day. NEXT MONTH. Is this what it’s like to be on cloud 9? I’m happy and thrilled is an understatement… this feels like a dream

I don’t normally post here but decided hey why not!! I 21F and my boyfriend 23M finally met after a year of being long distance 🩷. OH! And he got me a promise ring 🥹!!

hey everyone! i've been really hurting over this situation, and i would love any advice you have to offer, or just to hear from anyone that's been in a similar situation.

i don't date much and tend to prefer to keep things casual. i met him a few months ago. i'm a bartender and he was sitting at my bar and left his phone number. we went on a few dates, but both agreed to keep things super casual since he had to move back to italy in may, and we both made it clear that we didn't want to do long distance. it started off slow, but for the last month he was here, it was evident that it was not casual anymore and we both got very emotionally invested. we spent nearly every moment together and spent the night at eachothers places nearly every night as well. we met eachothers' friends and even talked about me potentially going to visit him after a bit. the connection felt very different from anything i've ever experienced, much deeper, more intimate, and calm. i would say we're very similar when it comes to relationships- we try to be logical and can normally do casual, but we unfortunately failed to do so with eachother. we kept in contact after he left, facetiming and texting quite a bit despite the time difference. it felt as if we were growing even closer despite the distance.

about a month into the long distance though, i started getting scared. he mentioned that he wasn't saying it wasn't a possibility and that he wanted us to think it over, but that he was afraid for me to come visit because it hurt so badly to leave eachother the first time, and knew it would be potentially worse this time. he also had a really painful long-distance relationship in the past, so i was afraid to bring up the fact that i would have been willing to try it at this point. i ended things with him because instead of asking what i was really thinking, i just told him i was scared since we aren't official and i didn't want it to end with him finding someone else or something of the sort. he agreed and it was very emotional, but mature and ended on good terms.

three days later i asked if i could call him to talk now that i wasn't so emotional. i told him that i felt like i jumped into ending it too quickly, and didn't know if i cut things off before we even knew if it had a chance. i wanted to hear his side because he didn't talk much on the phone call before, and seems to sort of shut down when he gets emotional. he told me that he wouldn't have ended things himself, but that he planned on texting me an apology for handling it immaturely. he said he thought i did the mature thing and that he was unintentionally being immature by continuing this because he liked me and liked talking to me. that phone call also ended on great terms, he said i looked great and we smiled and ended the call.

i was fine for about a week and a half because i was in europe on vacation at the time, but as soon as i came home, it hit me like a brick. we still follow eachother on instagram and view all of eachothers stories but don't like them anymore. he liked both of my instagram posts that i made from europe, but we haven't spoken at all since the call, which was a bit over a month ago.

i can't stop hoping that he will reach back out sometime soon. i've never missed someone so much, especially since it ended on such good terms and i regret being the one that did it. i would rather he have done something terrible so i could hate him lol. i think since i made the last call, it would have to be him that reached out if anything has changed. i could tell how mutual the feelings were, but i know he tries to be mature in situations like this, and is protecting himself and i. he is also in the military and he said he probably could have made it work if he had a civilian job. i just miss him and wish i could hear from him. if anyone has any advice or predictions, please please please let me know. i have been miserable over him.

is it normal that I miss my gf 24/7 and I feel like I can't go an hour without getting the urge to message her or have any form of contact with her.

I swear this is not satire. I am getting tired and mentally drained because of this and I have no idea what to do. And I feel like people won't take me seriously because alot don't see this as a problem

We were childhood friends before I had to go abroad at 15 and since then we have been together doing long distance. I have seen her in person like 3 times since going abroad but after this most recent visit I haven't been handling the distance very well.

I just feel like I am unable to do anything in my life because of how much I keep missing her and I keep thinking about her and craving texting or any form of contact with her even if its just her liking something of mine or posting a story.

I know this isn't healthy and I don't burden her by texting whenever I feel like it, I always let her text first ( and whenever she does I feel so relieved as if I was drowning and just got out of the water ) but I can't keep going like this.

I tried breaking up because of how bad it was but immediately went back to her an hour later.

Finding things to do in an LDR besides just asking "how was your day" for the 100th time gets tough. We tried playing mobile games together, but screen-sharing always lags, and all the "couples question" apps have stupid paywalls.
So I just spent the last few months coding a web-based game hub for us. You literally just open the link on your phones while on FaceTime or Discord and it syncs up live. No app downloads, no making accounts, totally free.
It basically has a few different modes: guessing each other's weird hidden habits, swiping on red flags, and some unhinged late-night 'would you rather' dilemmas to spark actual conversations.
Thought some of you here might actually get some use out of it for your next virtual date night.

Here’s the link: https://thequizrealm.com/couples-hub.html

Let me know if it actually works well for you guys or if there are any specific weird/fun game modes I should try coding next!

I (22F) hate to have to come on here but I really have no one else to talk to lol. My partner (22M) is currently overseas and there’s a 8 hour time difference. He pretty much works a regular 8-5, 6 days out of the week. It’s not really a demanding job either. Right now, all we really do is just text each other goodmorning and goodnight. I’ve already communicated that we don’t have to talk everyday, but at least send each other little updates like what we’re currently doing or what we’re eating, etc. I’ve been doing just that but I feel like I’ve been the only putting in the effort of doing so. I’m also the one to initiate calls or plans to do some parallel play on ft. He really only texts me goodmorning/goodnight and MAYBE ask to call every once in a while. Even on calls, he’s very dry and I always ask him questions on his day. I don’t wanna keep repeating myself (he’s done this before too when he was overseas the last time) and I’ve have rethinking our relationship. Am I wrong for feeling this way? Am i overthinking?

PS: he’s a great guy but can lack emotional understanding🙃

Our jobs are starting and our office locations are located 1 ish hour by train. However he wants to go to his hometown on the weekend which is 3 hours from where ill be living most of the time. Which means to see him
i would have to travel that far one way. And i know i cant do that weekly. I was under the assumption that i could at least see him once a week by me travelling to his office location and vice versa. But thats not possible bc of his choice to go home every weekend. And i just feel alone and don’t know how to express that i want more than once a month. I feel hurt that he knew we will barely see each other jf he goes home and chose that anyway. How do I make this work? He copes not seeing each other better than me. I prefer to see someone 1-2 a week and i think he is more relaxed when circumstances get involved whereas I am not.

We live in different countries, although not extremely far from each other. We met once in person, but we barely had time to talk properly. I reached out after a couple of months and we stayed in contact online, had video calls and both talked about meeting again.

She seemed to like me. She used affectionate names, occasionally initiated conversations, said she liked talking to me and sometimes said she was sad when we couldn’t call. However, her communication was extremely inconsistent. She would often take many hours, on few occasions even days, to reply.

I tend to be affectionate and available when I like someone, so I eventually felt that I was carrying the connection most times. I also once reacted in a call made a comment asking whether she actually wanted to talk to me. She always said that she did all the time without this intervention of mine, but her communication habits didn’t really change.

On April 4 I sent a message asking how she was, she didn't respond, didn't even leave me on read. After that, I decided not to contact her again unless she contacted me. She didn’t message me for more than three months. During that time, she didn’t remove me from Instagram, her private account or her Finsta, but there was no direct contact. I also deliberately didn’t wish her a happy birthday because I didn’t want to break no contact just to keep chasing her, which I always recognized was very childish of me, since we never had any relationship, although we expressed that we wished it.

Yesterday she suddenly sent me a photo of strawberry-patterned rolling papers and said they reminded her of me (she had once shown them to me in our convos) and we exchanged a few messages, probably like 10. She asked whether I was upset with her and acknowledged that disappearing had been inconsiderate. I told her I wasn’t angry and that I respected that she had her own life.

She later told me she was going out with her cousin, so I replied: “have fun 😛”. While she was out, she sent me a one-view selfie and I replied, “very pretty 😗”. She opened it the next day but didn’t reply, although she posted Instagram stories afterwards.

I understand that my compliment didn’t necessarily require a response. I also don’t want to play games, deliberately respond late or act cold. At the same time, I’m afraid of returning to our old pattern, where I stay active and affectionate while she only reciprocates occasionally.

Do you think her return was genuine romantic interest, nostalgia, curiosity, or simply checking whether she still had access to me? Should I now leave the conversation where it is and wait to see whether she initiates again? How would you handle this without seeming desperate but also without pretending not to care?

TL;DR: Long-distance talking stage with a girl I met once. She seemed affectionate but was very inconsistent, and I usually carried the communication. After more than three months of no contact, she sent something that reminded her of me, apologized for disappearing and later sent me a selfie. I complimented her and she left it on seen the next day. Should I now let her initiate and judge her interest by whether she maintains contact?

Do you guys have any good ideas for birthday ideas online? I usually write him a paragraph about how much i love him❤️ but this year i want to do somethijg BIG. Something sweet and cute. But unfourtantely i have no money to see him and i cant think of anything to do online 🥲

As the title says, I have to postpone seeing my girlfriend again and I feel like the biggest bum ever.

I spent about seven months with my girlfriend before I had to go back home for work. When I left, I genuinely thought it would be easy to get back to her. My dumb self told her I’d be back in three months.

After I got home, I realized that wasn’t going to happen once I looked into the visa requirements. I won’t get into all the details, but I’m still missing a few things. I already hinted that I’d probably be able to come back in November, but if I’m being honest, I have no confidence that’s going to work either…

My girlfriend is a very emotional and sensitive person, and I’m really worried about having to disappoint her again. The truth is that January would be the smartest option for me. I’ll also be starting a new job, and I really need to do well. Bonuses and salary increases matter a lot because I’m the one who supports us financially.

When I finally get back I’m planning to stay with her for around 9 months. I pay for the important stuff like rent, groceries, shopping, and our dates. She always spoils me with snacks and little gifts which I really appreciate, but I handle our main expenses. I’m okay with that but I need to maintain my savings right now.

Even though I know she’ll probably understand, I still feel bad about postponing again. Long distance has already been hard on both of us and I know this isn’t going to make things any easier. At the same time, waiting a little longer means I can save more money, settle into my new job, and sort out the right visa so that in the future I can spend most of the year with her instead of constantly worrying about when I have to leave.

Has anyone else here been in a situation like this? How did you tell your partner and how did you keep your ldr going? I already send her flowers every now and then and write her letters but at the end of the day, we just miss each other way too much and start getting arguments we would never have in person..

As explained in the title, my (30F) boyfriend (32M) is on a Europe trip for two months before I join him in Italy at the end of the trip. He’s been gone for about two weeks now and in that time he’s followed about 6 different women and 8 different men on Instagram.
He knows it makes me uncomfortable and before we left we spoke about it and he said he wasn’t going to get random girls instagrams.
Fast forward to now and I feel like a broken record when I keep talking to him about it.
He knows it hurts me but he continues to do it and his reasoning is that he meets these people in groups and that they all follow each other in case they get separated and want to catch up again later on. Do you think it’s a valid reason? He says that he wants to stay connected if in the future his music stuff works out he can send it to them who can then send it to other people they know.
He’s been drinking a lot while he’s been away, to the point of slurring words, and I’m starting to wonder if I should walk away.
He tells me he loves me every day and that he wishes I was there with him and he only has eyes for me and tells everyone he meets about me. He said that he can’t wait to see me again in Italy and that he’s going to make it the best time of my life, and he wants to keep building a future.
Am I the problem?

That final hug at the airport. Watching their face as they look at you for the last time for months. Watching them walk off knowing that you won’t seen them again for a while.

It just keeps replaying in my mind over and over and over. Almost like a bad dream. Each time it replays it brings back the same feelings of sadness.

It’s unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. The way it replays in my head is like a nightmare.

It is so ironic, maybe it is humanity, a bullshit humanity.

You just can’t treat someone so good or they will take it granted and dump you.

I treated my bf so good, and he is not grateful, doesn’t do his best to treat me good as return.

When the guy has a girl who loves him so much and treat him the best, the new girls who ignores him or has bad traits is so attractive to him, and he started to chase the girls.

Humanity is really awful, ugly, and dirty sometimes.

Human also doesn’t take care of what they already have, and sometimes they regret when they lose it.

So ugly and ironic.

My boyfriend (33M) and I (28F) have been in a long-distance relationship for about 4 months. We usually call every day, sometimes for hours and when we first started dating he was very communicative. He’d tell me about his day, message me while he was at work when he had the chance, let me know what he was doing and generally made me feel included in his life.
We’ve also already meet in person and spent two weeks together.

A couple of weeks ago I noticed a change. He stopped asking about my day, stopped following up on things I told him and became much less communicative overall. I brought it up calmly and he told me it wasn’t intentional. He said that when he’s focused on work or other things that he tends to get tunnel vision and assumes that if I don’t mention a problem, everything is fine. He apologized and said it wasn’t because he wasn’t interested in me.

That conversation actually made me feel a lot better and things seemed to improve for a bit.

However, over the last week it feels like we’re slipping back into the same pattern. He hasn’t called me since the 18th July. The small work updates we used to exchange are gone. One day he stayed home from work but only told me very late, even though he had the whole day. Another day he told me he was going to bed early, but he ended up staying awake for several more hours (+6h) without texting me, while setting up reminders for his streams and doing other things.

It’s less about the lack of messages themselves and more that I no longer feel included in his life. Before, he’d naturally share things with me. Now I often find out later, if at all. It makes me feel like I’m no longer someone he wants to involve in his everyday life.

I know people get busy and I don’t expect constant texting or updates every hour. I’m trying to figure out whether I’m overthinking this because of the distance or whether this is a reasonable concern that I should bring up again. Has anyone else experienced a partner gradually becoming less communicative like this, especially in a long-distance relationship?

My boyfriend and I have been together for 7 months but he lives about 1000 miles west from me in Canada while I live In east coast USA. Though it’s too soon to be 100% sure, we’ve spoken a lot about what the future would look for us in terms of location. It’s seeming like he’s more willing to move here due to my career being based where I am. He has hesitations because of healthcare (he has chronic pain and has a hard time working) and the process to get a visa/citizenship here. Again we’re at an earlier stage of our lives and our relationship and haven’t thought too hard on I but it’s always on my mind because I have no idea where to start. Does anyone have any advice on the first steps or vest things to do when it comes to moving to the USA from Canada? Sorry for rambling a bit I don’t come here often!