Long-Distance Relationships Pros/Cons Ramble

Hello everyone. My brain is confused about being tired or awake, so I should keep this brief to help speed up the process. Today was a day that should be described as just that, a day. Michelle and I got to try out a new restaurant (well for me) and spend time together and have more good meaningful conversations, but at the same time, I had to leave to fly back here because work. Things will get nuts for both of us with work (Michelle much sooner than me), so it was good to have this time together as well as plan out the days for our next visit.

Being in a long-distance relationships has positives and negatives compared to a more traditional relationship, which makes sense. Normally, people jump right into "you two must never see each other" while kind of glossing over the other stuff. To be fair, yes, I wish I could spend time with Michelle face-to-face more often, but at the same time, there are things that I think we have better than same-area relationships. We collectively get to know more cities/areas for road trips and visits and stuff, visiting the other person provides an opportunity to get away from everything (including the town where you call home), and we established early on that communication stands above every other value out there.

Of course, the actual visits are definitely the best part of the relationship because it's time where you can actually go and explore parks and split a pizza and do other stuff in the same physical space. I'm sure all of this is nothing new to anyone who knows about LDRs, so I'm going to share something that seems a little less obvious. My least favorite part of the visit is the first phone call after leaving.

There are kind of two ways that you can even think about that. On a romantic side, hearing the other person's voice when you were just along side them sucks, especially when they are also sad that you're not there. Again, this makes sense when thinking about relationships. However, this was kind of my second reason for this being the least part of the visit. When it comes down to it, technology can't truly replace face-to-face conversations.

Our typical pattern for ending a visit is Person A driving Person B to the airport, saying goodbyes in person before Person B goes through security, and then talking on the phone while Person A goes to his/her car and drives home and Person B goes to their gate and waits to board. I get so annoyed with myself because I have to ask Michelle to repeat herself so much on that first phone call. Cell service aside, we always the usual culprits of background noise in the forms of airport intercoms, driving a car, and other people in various forms. The thing that gets me the most is that I have to spend so much more time focused on the acts of speaking and listening rather than the subject matter itself.

A mere 20 minutes before arriving at the airport, I can mumble gibberish words to Michelle in a silly voice and she understands it. Well, okay, she hears what I'm saying, even if I'm not making sense. We can talk about any sort of subject matter and be really engaged in a conversation. On the phone, however, it's much more difficult to make off-hand jokes or little mutterings without it bleeding into the white noise of the background noise and cell phone silence. Sure, I don't have perfect hearing in general, but it just sucks to not have visual clues and simply ask "what?" to the air as I hold a piece of metal and plastic to my face.

Clearly this is one of those blog rambles, so hopefully it wasn't too weird to read as an outsider looking in. Today was National Hanging Out Day, which was the best way to describe the day Michelle and I had before going to the airport. Tomorrow... oh boy... tomorrow is Chinese Language Day. Yep. That's the holiday and I'm sticking to it.

DFTBA