Maintaining long-distance relationships, whether this is a friendship or romantic, aren’t easy. The three key factors you need are trust, dedication, and communication. without these, I’m sorry to say that your relationship won’t have any kind of foundation.

Many people have dealt with this issue, usually because of distance, external forces, or education. Some long distance relationships aren’t so bad; you get to see your partner in person every weekend or probably every two months. Sometimes you might only get to see them during the holidays. Or maybe even once a year if you live both live very far apart. Some don’t get to see each other in person until they are able to gain the money and/or independence in order to be together. This is the real test to see if you can truly maintain a relationship despite most odds.

Don’t get me wrong, long distance relationships aren’t for everyone, and that’s ok. It’s hard to trust someone so much while also getting to them through dating them. Normally, if you are in a relationship with someone very close to home, it would be fairly easy to keep tabs on them to make sure they aren’t being unfaithful to you. But it’s much harder to trust someone who you can’t see all the time. Unless you snap each other every second of the day, the only thing you can truly depend on is trust. No body’s perfect but you have to be the bigger person and trust in your partner so don’t display distrust in your relationship.

Now let’s say there a moment where you don’t trust them. Communication is key to this issue. No matter the subject, if you trust your partner, should be fine to talk about together. If something is bothering you or your partner, it is crucial that you talk about it. Holding it in could be a temporary solution. But over time, it could fester or keep happening until one of you brings up every bad thing that ever happened that no one wants to talk about. If you ever feel uneasy or uncertain of something of something pertaining the both of you, talk about it; instead of fighting, you could look back at this time and laugh.

Having both of those key values make up most of the relationship. However, you two might not know how long it might be until you’re able to physically be with them again. This is where dedication comes in. If you intend on being with each other in hopes of seeing them in person someday. You need the dedication to let you know that you’ll be able to see each other one day. But until then, you have to have patience.

Also just because you can’t “see” them doesn’t mean you can’t see them. Thanks to the 21st century, we are to not only call but also video-chat with the person we care about. There have also been new pieces of technology, like this ring both of you wear. When both of you have the ring on you can feel their warmth around your ring; and vice versa. From my experiences, it’s important to have a balance between relationship and own life but as well as time with and without. Answering text messages is simple, now if I was out with friends I may be distant but if I’m not otherwise engaged in a demanding activity I can easily reply quickly. Outside of that, communication as to what you’re doing and with whom goes a long way. Some view it as being too controlling, even I did when my ex asked me to, but I realized that it helped to build trust between us and in the end, we were better off for it. If you feel like you can’t tell your significant other what you’re doing and with whom, you probably shouldn’t do it. This is just how it is in long term distance relationships. When you’re together you can hold each other’s full attention at all times but once that time together ends like you two have two separate lives from each other… you have other obligations. So they aren’t going to dote on you and be as affectionate as they are when you’re together because it’s not realistic. There is literally distance between you. Either the two of you have to get comfortable with the fact that you’re not going to be in each other lives very much because you live far apart, or you’re not going to have lives outside of each other, because you’ll always be on the phone/computer.