The long and short of relationships

Making it work despite the thousands of miles between them.

“The best thing about my relationship being long-distance was the breakup,” says graphic artist Kinza.  For the five years she spent studying in the UK, Kinza kept up a long distance romance with her high school sweetheart Rahim in Pakistan.

But when the realisation came that the relationship had to end, the distance that had made communication so excruciating over the past 5 years, that had robbed them of physical intimacy and plain old companionship, was exactly what made it so easy to disconnect herself from him completely. “There were no reminders of him scattered around my city, no mutual friends who needed to be told,” says Kinza.

Whether they’re high school sweethearts separated for the sake of a foreign degree or a nikahofied husband and wife waiting for their paperwork to come through, couples in long distance relationships face the unenviable prospect of living without their better halves, of being miles away from the one they would be closest to. And in lieu of the bitterness of separation, the distance gives them the important lesson of emotional independence.

“Long distance relationships aren’t for everyone,” says media professional Zareen who has kept the fire burning despite the fact that she and her boyfriend of three years are rarely on the same continent, much less the same country. With education and dynamic careers keeping them peripatetic, the couple has relied on Skype and phone calls to keep the relationship intact. But, as Zareen would readily testify, it has not been easy. “If I had met Asim in my early twenties, our relationship wouldn’t have lasted a day,” she says, talking about the emotional clobbering one takes at the hands of long distance love.

Amna agrees. Now married to her long time boyfriend Arif, she still remembers the ache of being thousands of miles away from him with bitterness. She first met Arif, the son of her father’s friend, when she visited the US as a teenager. The connection was instantaneous and the two kept in touch. As the adolescent crush blossomed into a full on relationship, the difficulty of separation was aggravated by the growing pains of young love.

“I hated him for living so far away,” Amna says. While her friends went on double dates and performed other coming-of-age rites, she would always be sitting in front of a computer screen, chatting with Arif, or simply praying for the internet connection to work. The worst she remembers from those days is when she told Arif to go to his prom with a female friend, not wanting him to miss out on such an important high school experience, though it stung that she couldn’t she be the one going with him.



Reema had an equally difficult time when she and Abbas decided to stay together after high school because they knew they had something special. As they separated for university  — Abbas in Toronto and Reema in Lahore — each had the gumption to realise that the other would grow into a different person. Still, with the distance driving a wedge, it was often hard to come to terms with their partner’s choices.

“I couldn’t understand why Abbas had picked up smoking and other substances in Canada,” says Reema, speaking about an issue that became a serious threat to the relationship at one point.

Not being there in the moment, environment or country meant that one half of the couple could not understand the cultural norms by which the other had to adhere to. This was the case with Kinza’s boyfriend Rahim who felt uncomfortable if she went clubbing with her friends in the UK. For Kinza, going to the pub or clubbing was a normal way to hang out and have fun with her friends, a position that was often difficult to explain to Rahim.

While technology often plays the card of a villain in these relationships — power outages and internet interruptions can leave both boy and girl antsy and fractious — dramatic differences in time zones make things considerably worse. This is what happened with Mifrah who had secured a Fulbright scholarship to the US before she married Waqar, who himself was studying in Germany. Their long distance relationship was compounded by the fact that it was also their first year of marriage, when a couple is working out all the chinks in communication. “I had to follow a really weird schedule to be able to talk to Waqar, who used to get back home at nine. It screwed my sleep cycle,” says Mifrah.

When one of them was going through a particularly busy time, the other would inevitably end up feeling neglected, something they learnt to deal with over time. “Whether I was cooking, studying or working on the computer, I’d keep Skype turned on all day. Sometimes we would even fall asleep talking, and wake up the next day to find each other still online,” says Mifrah.

But nothing at all can make up for missing milestones in each other’s lives and not being there in person for life’s ups and downs. “It would always seem unfortunate that Abbas wasn’t ever physically present on my birthdays or at my graduation,” says a wistful Reema.

On the flipside, after so much independence, it is being together that can feel strange.

“You take time adjusting to so much togetherness. Then, you feel this euphoria that you’re finally together as a couple. Then, before you know it, it’s time for him to leave and you have to adjust to being alone again,” says Zareen.

Kinza disagrees. “If you have real chemistry, being together as a couple in real life never feels strange no matter how long you’ve been apart,” she says.

Despite all those hours of talk time, the long emails, the chat marathons, there are many things left unspoken and undiscovered in long distance relationships and togetherness can bring its own surprises, some milder than others. “I didn’t know that Abbas liked to clean so much, and he was surprised that I wasn’t as enthusiastic as he was about picking up after myself!” says Reema.

Kinza faced a somewhat bigger shock when she and Rahim got together. “When I met Rahim’s parents in real life, I realised that we had completely different backgrounds,” says Kinza, spelling out the reason why her long distance relationship did not work out. Some things are just not communicable through Skype and Google Talk.

While many relationships stand the test of time, it takes something extra to weather both time and distance. “Distance is a great way to test a relationship, grow independent of your partner, and develop your friendships with others,” says Reema.

Couples who do stand the test of distance can claim with some credibility that their love is stronger. “You have to give each other blinding trust as there just isn’t any place for drama,” says Zareen.

At the end, despite all the highs and lows, both partners must have a strong will to make it work. “You eventually learn not to be envious of couples who are physically together all the time and really enjoy your small bouts of togetherness,” says Mifrah.

Published in The Express Tribune, Ms T, January 27^th, 2013.

Like MsT on Facebook for your dose of girl talk.