the long-distance relationship.

so went to the halloween party at zouk last night with jennhoel, cheemeng, weileng, yeemei and her friends. korkor was there too. debb partied the night before so she didn't go. last night was the first night of partying after a month i stopped going to clubs. oh, saw melissa at the loft too. hehe.. it was a great party. but then, after i reached home around 4.30a.m, i couldn't sleep. i just curled up on my bed, under the comforter and enjoyed the chilly atmosphere in my room. before anything happens, i heard the alarm rang. 7.30a.m. i still couldn't sleep. so i took a hot shower, had my breakfast while watching 'the mask of zorro' on axn and went to work. slept for a while at work tho.

anyway, i did something terrible last night. hmm.. the purpose is to help her out. but when i thought about it today, there is another way to help her out. i just used the wrong approach. but then, i still think that it's not a very bad thing to do afterall.

and yea, i did something very impulsive today. haha! i bought a magazine. yes. CLEO. hahaha! i never really read magazines since high school, but i just don't know why i bought it. and to my surpirse, i read something interesting that i would like to post it up here. so here it goes..



LOVE. LONG DISTANCE.

"Out of sight, out of mind." Or is it, "Absence makes the heart grow fonder?"
The pickle of long-distance relationships and whether they can ever work continues to confound lovers the world over.

Be honest: When is the last time you heard of a successful long-distance relationship? We're not talking about the three-month stint to complete your degree overseas, or the six-month internship outstation. We're talking about serious love stories, the kind that makes you go all warm and fuzzy inside, the kind that lasts more than one year, with no hanky-panky in between, and which ends with a tearful reunion and marriage.

Real-life examples of successful long-distance relationships are few and far in between. Companies are not bound to transfer their employees' spouses with them wherever they go without good reason - without their partners, husbands and wives the world over would be falling in and out of love with strangers!

"Many people choose to give a long-distance relationship a try, with the constant curiosity if it was the right decision to make and if it even stands a chance," says Alina Ruigrok, a relationship expert. "The truth is, a long-distance relationship has just as much a distance of succeeding as any other relationship!" But is there anything that you can do to make your odds of it working out better?

You're not alone... are you?
Diane, a 24-year-old undergraduate, was seperated from her boyfriend of two years when he went to the United Kingdom to complete his post-graduatestudies, She remembers the sepration vividly: "We had spent so much time together during those two years," she says. "Studying, partying, loving... and suddenly, he was out of reach. Before, I always knew I could be next to him wheneverI wanted just by calling a taxi. But with him in England, that was not possible anymore."

According the Steven Blake, author of Loving Your Long Distance relationship, more than 10 million couples around the world, like Diane and her boyfriend, are coping with long-distance love affairs.University students, working couples, people in the armed forces and even Hollywood stars who spend their time making movies on opposite sides of the globe struggle to keep their love alive over great distances.

What's the one thing that is different between long-distance relationship or (for lack of a better word) "close-distance" ones? The answer: Seperation. two lovers could be seperated over miles of desert and sea, or simply by a wall three inches thick. It makes no difference: The fact is, you still cannot see their face, cannot touch them, cannot love them. [i personally don't agree with the "cannot love them" part. i still can love harvey. who said you can't love them when you're seprated?] You can talk to each other until the cows come home of course... but is that enough to keep a love affair going? The sceptics say no, of course. But others are more optimistic.

"A long-distance relationship takes away your ability to see each other on a frequent note, as well as the choice of being intimate whenever you desire, not to mention that there would be a major trust required," says Ruigrok. "Being unable to spend time together in a physical presence makes it harder to hang on to, but does not spell doom for your relationship."

Long-distance relationship can work provided both of you are into it as much as the other, and that's the only true caveat. In a normal relationships, if one person starts to lose interest, the other person is able to reignite the love by a simple touch or caress. Staring deep into the other person's eyes is often enough to remind them why they were once so much in love with you.

Watching the other person laugh out loud at your silly jokes, or to see his lustful gaze sweep across your body on a Friday night about town is sometimes all it takes to bring you back to where you were before.

Not so in long-distance relationships. Bereft of the senses of sight and touch, long-distance love affairs only have one thing to support them: A promise. It has to have an equal amount of commitment from both sides because that promise is all you've really got to hold onto. Sure you can talk and write to each other. But even if someone says, "I love you" over the phone everyday, how are you supposed to actually feel loved? You can know you're loved, of course - he's no liar, you know that much. But can you feel loved if you never feel his breath on your cheek or fingers in your hair? [okay, this is quite what's on my mind few months back. haha!]

Diane's relationship did not survived the test. Other men started showing her attention while her boyfriend was away, and she was lonely enough to appreciate their intentions. Fortunately for her, she didn't have to be the one to end it - turns out her boyfriend was having the same trouble, and when he called her one night to break the news that he'd "found someone else", she was not sure if she broke into tears of heartbreak or relief.

"We barely spoke to each other," says Diane. "In the first month, my phone bill soared to over RM1,000. My parents flipped, and when we had to limit ourselves to short phone callls every fortnight or so. It was so difficult convincing myself that I still belonged to him six months later, to feel like I was in a loving relationship. So when other guys started courting me, I succumbed. [i think she didn't love her boyfriend very much. if they really love each other, that wouldn't happen.]

Diane and her boyfriend tried letters, too, but there were too few and far in between. She remembers feeling a guilty lump in her throat whenever she founds a letter with an England stamp in her post box. "I wish I wasn't doing anything wrong - just some coffee dates and innocent stuff like that. But the fact that I could even agree to that made me realise that my feelings towards him were not as strong anymore, and that was upsetting," Diane recalls.

Technology helps... or does it?
Some say Diane could have tried modern tachnology to help her keep in touch with her boyfriend more frequently. What with instant messaging, SMS, email and Internet telephony, you'd think that keeping the flame burning despite being apart would be easier than ever. Sadly, it's not. The problem has always been finding the will to stay in touch. If a long-distance relationship is going to fail, it's not going to do so for lack of technology, but lack of commitment. [true. very true.]

"If you want your bond to stay strong and loving, you have to hear from one another often, leaving as little room for any of you to start getting paranoid about anything," advises Ruigrok.

There are more ways to keep in closer contact with each other these days than ever before. New technologies and services pop up all the time that make communication cheaper and more fulfilling. But all of it can do nothing if the two of you are not commited to the relationship, and are ready to face the hazards a long-distance love affair entails: Jealousy, envy, loneliness and paranoia (the cancer of all long-distance relationships - when both of you constantly worry about the other person's level of commitment, and are afraid of losing them)

Once you're aware of the chanllenges in long-distance relationship, it becomes much easier to anticipate the problems that will arise and to plan for them. The first and most important thing many couples seem to forget is that their seperation is not indefinite - in most instances, there is a planned time for being away (completing a degree, fulfilling a contract), after which the person who has gone away is supposd to return. Kepping that moment in the horizon, much like you would the last day of school, will help you remain focused.

It also helps if the two of you talk about the time ahead as much as pissible as it approaches, reminding yourselves that your time apart is temporary and you have all the you'll want with each other up ahead. Beware the partner who prefers to be vague about how long he's going to be away.

"You do not want to end up waiting forever," warns Ruigrok. "There will be a day when you and your partner will have to start planning a serious future. If your partner truly loves you and wants to be with you, then he would not want to wait forever to be with you." [ouch.]

Change is good... or is it?
Even worse is waiting for that day, and then learning it was all for nothing. People change - especially young people - when they stay in different countries. Even if your relationship survives the time and distance apart, there is a very good chance you will reunite only to find that you don't like each other anymore.

Some girls will no doubt find these changes nice - foreign-accented boyfriends are always nice to show off among friends. [eww.. if harvey comes back with a weird accent, i'll just ask him to shut up. haha!] But like them or not, changes are inevitable, especially if the seperation involves different countries. You cannot expect someone to go abroad to study or work and not return at least a little altered. Diane, for instance, found herself rather glad she did not wait for her boyfriend when she met him upon his return (they wanted to remain friends).

"He came back with an awful English accent and arrogance that i dislike immediately," she says. "Before he left he was courteous, kind, even friendly. But now he was like 'Oh you know in England we do this and that'... as though he were English and not Malaysian!"

If you manage to stay in touch frequently, then you will grow with these changes, of course. But even then, you might find them unacceptable. One of the reasons that Diane tired of the late-night phone conversations with her boyfriend, rare as they were, was because all he ever talked about was himself. "Typical of people that study overseas, he began to think of himself as superior to the rest of us, I guess," Diane says, not a little bitterly. "He was overbearing. Lecturing me bout everything like a bloody university lecturer!"

Finding the will - and means - to stay in touch is probably the hallmark of all successful long-distance relationships. But the quality of your communication is even more important. Even if your time to speak to each other is unlimited, make sure it's time well spent. If either of you spends too much time talking about your problems, or yourselves, then all you do is make the conversations unhappy ones, full of anger and frustration. Don't waste time bickering about how one of you makes more effort than the other to call, or why the other person is never at home. Don't waste time crying because it only racks up the phone charges and makes the other person sad. And whatever you do, never accuse or hint at the other person being unfaithful - that's when paranoia sets in, and when the sleepless nights begin.

Make an effort to make sure you bring joy to other person in your brief messages. Remind him all the things he loves about you, and remind yourself about the things that you love about him. The more smiles you send each other over the miles (yes, they can travel through phone line and Internet!), the happier both of you will be, and the better your odds are of making your long-distance relationship work.


At a dead end? Red flags that your long distance lover is not as serious about it as you are :

He never calls. It doesn't matter who can make calls more cheaply. If he makes no effort to his bank and call you at least now and then, there is a pretty good chance he's having much fun without you to call.

He never talks about the future. He might say things like, "Well talk about the future when I/you get back, ok? For now, let's deal with the present." This means he's unsure about the future with you because he may have other options where he is that he wants to explore. (but of course, he's not going to tell you that.)

He makes no plans to get together with you. A lover - a real lover -will always try to overcome the odds and find at least some time to spend with you. He could save money to buy a ticket for you to come see him (or the other way round), he could organise a company trip to his hometown (where you are, convenient enough!), he may even plan a vacation to somewhere in between and ask you to meet him there. If he does nothing like this over the course of a year or two, he's just not willing to put in the effort. Note: Remember you can make the same plans so don't be shy!

He prefers email instead of phone calls or instant messaging. Of course, email is cheaper than phone calls. But although this might be his main contention, there are other benefits to email which he won't mention. Firstly, he does not have to make sure his room is quiet to answer email. Secondly, he does not have to answer email immediately, unlike instant messaging. Thirdly, if he goes on a romp with a girl, he can always say that the local internet connection was "down" over the weekend. How will you ever know?

You start getting interested in other men. It's not always the man's fault, you know. Sometimes, a relationship can end with you. Make sure you regconise the signs that you are losing interest in maintaining a long-distance relationship, and be honest with yourself about it - you won't be the first, and you won't be the last. Be sure to also fair to him, and tell him how you feel. He may try to change your mind, but you can't blame him for that.