I know I'm a few hours behind on this first post in the above-mentioned series, but it was accurate when I scribbled the draft earlier this evening! As promised in a previous post, I am elaborating on some thought on doing marriage when your love is thousands of miles away. Without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, I give you the first list in the series:
Eight Things That Are Hard About This Long-Distance Marriage Thing:
8. The time difference is dumb. With Drew's work schedule, the only times we've been able to skype are late in the evening for me (during his lunch hour) or early in the morning (late in the evening for him). So if we want to talk, then basically one or the other of us has to have a bizarre sleep schedule, depending on the day and what time we pick to try to skype. We have been blessed, though, that it's worked out that we could skype or talk or text or at the very least email back and forth almost every day since he's been gone.
7. Communication is harder because there are fewer chances to get the non-verbals. So much of human communication--especially with someone you're really close to, I think--is transmitted through pathways other than actual words, whether it's inflection, facial expressions, hand gestures (I do this constantly), or even posture or eye movements. Skype definitely helps with this, but sometimes poor lighting or poor internet quality distort the non-verbals so much that they can hinder as much as they help.
6. Long-distance tests trust. You aren't there, so even more than usual you have to trust that your spouse is trustworthy. I know my sweet husband is 100% trustworthy (and I'm uber-grateful for that!), but nonetheless I've had to rely on my trust in him rather than first-hand knowledge of his devotion like if we were sharing a home. So in the long-run this is probably valuable for us, I think, because it's strengthened the trust, but I could imagine that this is hard for a lot of couples in similar situations.
5. It's hard to have shared experiences--you aren't able to go to church together, to hang out with other people together, to have dinner together, to see and experience the same events together, to even watch a movie together. So you miss out on opportunities to interact with one another over a shared experience. Inside jokes are a lot harder when "you had to be there" but you couldn't be, y'know?
4. The flip-side of the lack of shared experiences is that you and your spouse are each having a completely different set of experiences and circumstances, so you're growing and adapting and thinking about and responding to totally different things. So you have to be a lot more intentional about conveying personal narratives and telling anecdotes and generally communicating what you're thinking and feeling and how you're growing and changing (because the truth is we are all always growing and being shaped by our experiences and in turn shaping our future experiences and actions), because otherwise it's harder to grow together rather than grow apart. It can definitely be done well, but it does take more work that when you're able to flop on the sofa together at the end of the day and just chat about stuff.
3. It's hard to just 'hang out'--yes, you get face time through video chat/VOIP pathways, but there's an intentionality to sitting down at your computer to spend time together that limits how much "just being there" that can happen--unless you both intentionally agree to "just hang out" and leave the video on while doing your own thing, like both reading books or something. As one can imagine, that takes a lot of the spontaneity out of the "just being there." Furthermore, since you only get a limited amount of time to share together each day or each week, you want to spend it catching up and making up for all the above-enumerated aspects of married life that are made more difficult by the distance, and you miss out on the just being together, the occasional doing-nothing together that is one of the most natural things about sharing a home with your best friend.
2. You miss out on the small stuff, which in many ways is one of my favorite things about being married to my best friend. When you're thousands of miles apart, the following are just a handful of the kind of things that can't really happen: spontaneous dance parties in the kitchen to the music in your head, laughing at ridiculous billboards or signs while driving, sharing a funny or intelligent quote from a book as you're reading it, pointing out a really awesome sunset when it's suddenly the perfect mix of colors, stealing kisses when bumping into each other in a tiny apartment, falling asleep or waking up curled up together. Those sorts of things are some of the things I'm most looking forward to about joining Drew. :)
1. No hugs. And no kisses, either. This long-distance thing stinks. Only 8 days to go! :)
Ok, that was long and kinda depressing. But I get to see Drew in less than 8 days now, which is decidedly NOT depressing! :D
Cheers,
Emily
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