Things we learned after more than a year apart
Do you feel emotionally exhausted from being separated from your foreign partner for a long time? Or do you feel anxious of going into a long-distance relationship with your partner? Maintaining a healthy relationship can be mentally difficult if you’re in a long distance relationship with your partner, especially if they live overseas.
However, these 9 tips will help you maintain a healthy relationship, connect emotionally with your partner no matter how far away each other, and relieve your anxiety even if you don’t live in different countries from your partner. Please read, try them and don’t give your love over the distance!
Long-distance relationship across different continents
Before going into this topic, we would like to share a little bit of our international relationship history and about why we’re in a long-distance relationship. We’re an international couple living apart for a while. Yuki is Japanese and lives in Tokyo and Hannah is American and lives in Ohio. Our distance is over 6,500 miles and we’ve been in a long distance relationship for more than a year.
At the end of 2019, coronavirus was first discovered in China, since then it has spread all over the world and caused a lot of confusion, damage, and change to humanity. After WHO (World Health Organization) declared it a pandemic, many countries restricted their borders in order to prevent the spread of coronavirus. These travel restrictions brought and continue to bring difficulties into long-distance relationships, including ours.
Our hardest long-distance relationship experience
One of the hardest parts of our long-distance relationship in 2020 was when Hannah lost her job in Japan while waiting for the Japanese government to loosen its strict travel restrictions. She held a CoE (Check out this article if you want to know about how to apply for a working visa in Japan) which allowed her to apply for a work visa.
However, she couldn’t fly to Japan to work even though she had legal permission to work. In addition, the travel ban inhibited foreign residents who had been living in Japan for a long time and just went back to their home countries to see family. The government did not allow any foriegn residents to reenter Japan even if their life, family, and work were in Japan.
International long-distance relationship in the time of Covid
In an attempt to incite change regarding this unfair situation, we wrote a petition to ease a travel ban for foreigners who weren’t able to come back to Japan because of the restriction, International students who weren’t able to study in Japan, and international couples who are in the same situation as us. We tried everything we could but sadly the company notified Hannah that they couldn’t wait any longer and had to replace her.
This unfortunate incident happened right before the government decided to ease their border for student and working visa holders. We were sad and disappointed but we didn’t give up. We received messages from people who signed our petition and we were happy for them that they could be in Japan again. Their success motivates us to keep positivity in our lives.
Where do we go from here?
After an unfortunate set of circumstances, we had to accept that the long-distance part of our relationship is going to last even longer than we expected. So we started implementing these 9 things to maintain a healthy relationship. Even though we’ve experienced a lot more emotional distress than before, we’re still together even after a year of not seeing each other. We know what we want to accomplish together and this keeps us going towards our future. We keep going one way or another but mostly because of the following tips and techniques. You should definitely check them out and try with your partner as well.
1) Check in regularly
It’s common advice to communicate regularly and clearly but sometimes that’s hard to do or feels unnatural. We found it to be helpful to have a weekly check-in where we asked each other about our recent feelings and discussed our relationship. This creates a natural time to bring up important topics or explain feelings. It is our “how are you really?” time.
2) Question game
When all you can do is chat on the phone or video call and you’ve already watched all of Netflix’s offerings, conversation can get mundane. That means it’s time for the question game! We take turns asking each other questions and replying, the topic can be anything; we’ve discussed things as serious as politics and philosophy to the most basic like favorite foods and colors. Sometimes it’s also fun to quiz each other about a memory together, “remember that time the police pulled us over? What were you thinking when that happened?”
3) Talking about your relationship to other people
We discuss our relationship with our friends sometimes. Verbalization makes it easy to process things and good friends give good advice. Please take what others say with a grain of salt as you know your own relationship best. Stay with your friends who can give you positive vibes. Positivity is not only important for your relationship, but also your life.
4) Facetime
Video calls are a lifesaver! It makes it easier to communicate when you can see your partner’s facial expressions and body language. Set a schedule to facetime and actually do something together over the video call. You can cook, have the same food, workout and play games together, all of which are great activities to do for fun.
5) Create a goal
A casual long distance relationship is not cut out for the long-term. Without aspirations for a future together fighting through the loneliness and challenges of long distance seems pointless. Have a concrete goal and take steps together to attain it, even as you face roadblocks and have to change direction. We set up some goals like writing a blog post every other week and what we want to achieve in the near future, such as where we want to travel after the pandemic, etc.
6) Be as direct as possible
We have found it helpful to be very direct and straightforward about our needs. As a partner we won’t be able to meet the other person’s every need but we won’t be able to meet any unless they are communicated. Be clear about your needs and discuss them with your partner. Ask questions! You should feel comfortable talking with your partner about anything.
7) Online dating
Even if you can’t go out and do something fun with your partner because of the distance, you can still enjoy dating online. Due to the pandemic, people are stuck in the house but there are plenty of ideas to have fun with your partner while staying home. Cooking food while on facetime is a fun way to feel like you’re together with your partner even though you’re far away. If you don’t feel like cooking, you can order food for each other through apps like Uber Eats and GrabHub.
8) Send a letter occasionally
Your daily conversation tends to become monotonous if you keep texting or calling on the phone while in a long-distance relationship. Why don’t you forget the availability and convenience of technology and send a love letter to your partner by mail. A handwritten letter will always make your partner feel loved by you no matter what you write. Likewise, you will be happy and excited to read what your partner writes when you receive their letter.
9) Have items for a long-distance couple
There are several items you can easily buy on Amazon that make it easier for long distance relationship couples to let others know they’re thinking about each other and express feelings even while far away. For example, the distance lamp for long-distance relationships. You can change the color of the lamps by touching your lamp. You can make some secret color codes between you and your partner like blue is sad, red is angry, and green is happy to show your feelings even if you’re far apart from each other.
Here are some other items for long-distance couples
We know being in a long-distance relationship is emotionally tough and sometimes exhausting, but you can definitely maintain a healthy relationship with your partner if you work together to maintain intimacy. Please let us know if you have any questions or any other good tips! We’d like to hear your opinion! Also, if you are in a relationship and don’t know what activities you can do with your partner, you should definitely check this post about online dating and activities ideas for long-distance relationship couples.
Thank you for reading and we hope you have a great day!