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This post was originally written in December of 2022. It’s now February, 2024 and my partner and I are now living together in New York. Looking back on this post, I’m feeling joy at how relevant these lessons still are to this day and at our overall journey.
My partner and I have been doing the long-distance thing on and off for the last four and a half years. When we first decided to formalize our relationship in 2018, we had just graduated from college in Florida and I was getting ready to pack my bags and start graduate school in New York City.
Reflecting back, I don’t think I ever questioned if we could do it (thanks, new relationship energy). But what I didn’t know, was how we’d do it, and what it would do to me. My partner and I’s journey together has been joyful, invigorating, and nothing like I’ve ever experienced before. At the same time, it’s been boring, turbulent, and forced me to realize that I had a lot of learning, unlearning, and trusting to do.
So with that said, here are 6 of the many things that my relationship has taught me about healing from relationship trauma, love, and intimacy.
1. I don’t have to accept the projections and judgments of others (regardless of whether I asked for their opinion or not).
Long-distance relationships are still considered to be a bit more on the taboo side. It’s a bit unfortunate, however it’s a truth which means that a lot of folks either have a limited understanding of the nature of LDR’s, or have their judgments based on previous-experiences (which tend to have been largely negative). When my partner and I were just starting our relationship, I took every opportunity to talk about him. In some ways it made the distance and my well of emotions feel easier to manage. In other ways, it was a nightmare that just further fueled my own anxieties and made me question whether or not the decision to date was right for me in the first place.
To my initial shock, I received the most toxic of judgments from other members of the queer community who often ridiculed my attempt at making a relationship work that in their eyes was doomed to fail. This commentary, combined with my inexperience, manifested in this belief that I had to do additional emotional labor to “save” a relationship that didn’t need saving in the first place. I began to withdraw a bit, not out of a loss of hope, but out of fear that what hope I had left would soon be taken from me. I took mental notes of things that I wish were different in my relationship, however instead of naming those things and working on them with my partner, I began falling into a cyclical thought pattern “confirming” all of the negative remarks from folks who didn’t even really know me or my partner in the first place.
After some time, I realized that what I was subconsciously interpreting as signs or predictions, were actually the insecurities of others being projected onto me. I had noticed that without fail, whenever I mentioned my LDR, the conversation quickly shifted to folks unloading their emotional pain that had never really been resolved. Once I realized this, my own anxiety lessened, and instead of falling head first into the LDR mythos, I began having open conversations with my partner about how we would like our relationship narrative to take shape. This leads me to my next point.
2. Communication and imagination are pillars to cultivating intimacy.
Let me start by saying that when I think about communication, I’m thinking not just about what I say/do, but what I’m not saying/doing and my motives and feelings for doing so. My partner and I are both really strong communicators. This isn’t something that I would’ve said a few years ago, but that’s largely because I believe that my general understanding of communication was a bit narrowed. In the beginning stages of our relationship, it became abundantly clear that we lacked a cohesive relational language. This ultimately contributed to a lack of safety or trust in how we convey our ideas or experiences.
Of course in the beginning, this was fine, as we were just figuring things out. But after about the year mark, that’s when things started to feel a bit different. You see, we were experts when it came to envisioning a future together. There was no question that we were able to see each other as long-term partners, however when it came to talking about ourselves in a more vulnerable, nuanced ways, we often ran into a bit of trouble.
When conflict arose, although we rarely got into full blown arguments, we usually ended up having drawn out conversations that were often left unresolved. Those conversations, although selfishly remedied my own anxieties in the short-term, created resentment in the long-term and reinforced a growing belief of possible incompatibility. It wasn’t until I spoke to a dear friend of mine over the phone that I realized that our conflict cycle was supported by miscommunication and a refusal for either of us to “go there” with each other.
Surely we had seen each other in vulnerable moments, but we never really processed together or allowed ourselves to know what informed our vulnerable parts and how they mingled with each other. We needed to not only communicate, but communicate in a language that the other person could understand. Once that happened, conflict felt less threatening, we were able to create pathways for our imagination to become reality, and our emotional intimacy improved.
3. My partner’s need for space is an invitation to honor my own.
If there’s one thing that my partner excels at, it’s slowing down, taking space, and giving himself time to process on his own before coming back to a situation. It’s a trait of his that I admired, even though at times I found his process to be confusing. To me, it was unfathomable to not be available at all times whenever someone I cared about “needed” me. I use quotations there to emphasize that the sense of obligation to be there for others wasn’t always something that was explicitly said to me or even expected of me. In fact, it’s more of an enactment of my own relationship trauma around abandonment and desiring for the other person to still view me as useful, reliable, and a valuable asset rather than a liability.
Not only that, but I had an overwhelming feeling of being on “thin-ice” so to speak, which exaggerated my focus on not only being there for others but being there the “right” way before I could even dare think about satisfying my own needs. My partner and I are both very self-sufficient people, however that self-sufficiency coupled with my own refined high threshold for suffering culminated in my overbearing attempts to try and understand my partner, and finds way to prove to him that I could be of service even if he didn’t need me to or ask me to at that time.
When tensions were high, a childlike part of me desperately wanted to know that everything would be okay. I wanted to know that he still loved me, even though his actions made it abundantly clear that he wasn’t going anywhere. I say this to share that the more I observed the way that my partner took space for himself, the more that I realized that his alone time wasn’t a threat to me. When I understood his need for solitude – whether it happened during a conflict or otherwise – the more that I understood that I also deserved the freedom to allow myself time to myself. I had interests that I wanted to pursue, hobbies to explore, and needed to learn that I had an obligation to myself to provide the caretaking that I had wished that I had.
In the earlier iteration of our relationship, I recall the amounts of times that I would instinctively accommodate my partner, and his schedule. To me, if my plans were cut short or interrupted in any way then it was worth it as long as we got to speak to each other. My justification was “we’re in a long-distance relationship”, which meant that we had to take every opportunity to speak even if we had prior plans. To be honest, that was a very immature – albeit very common – thought process that only furthered me from the other people and things that brought me joy.
Years later it’s nice to feel safe enough with someone where we can both have room to be ourselves, and focus on our busy lives with the confidence in knowing that we get to come home to each other emotionally and build upon the story we’ve created together.
4. Sex is not owed.
So, what does sex look like when in an LDR? It’s a question that for some reason feels like the elephant in the room, however to be honest, sex in an LDR doesn’t look much different than sex in other relationships. Earlier I brought up that a lot of people tend to project their own insecurities when questioning someone about their LDR. In a lot of cases, it came down to not only sex, but a fear of not being able to satisfy their partner’s needs or realizing that their own needs weren’t being met. I will say that this is something that came up initially for us as well (in our own way), but when I say that sex is not owed, I mean that!
The truth is, sexual arousal, desirability, and sexuality in general can (and will) fluctuate. What sex looks like is not a direct reflection on your relationship, nor does it dictate your intrinsic value as a person. Period.
As a survivor, my relationship to sex and my body has been murky. In the earlier stages of my relationship, much of the sex that we had felt obligatory. Now, this doesn’t mean that sex wasn’t fun or enjoyable (it definitely was), but being in a LDR added a pressure to sex that sometimes felt overwhelming. There were stretches of time where we wouldn’t see each other for months. So when we did, sex felt like a no-brainer, so much so that when we didn’t have sex the first thought was “is my partner mad at me?” or “is there something wrong?”. Thankfully, my partner never pressured me into having sex, which made our exploration around it more approachable.
As my partner and I began building language for each other, we were able to communicate our desires as they related to sex. As we talked, our definitions of sex and intimacy became more expansive. This helped us become more curious, and more excited to be together. This was also helpful for me, given my history, and has allowed us to move to a place of earnestly checking in, and being upfront when we do vs. don’t want to have sex.
Something else that I’d like to mention is that sex is a spectrum, and intimacy can be cultivated in ways outside of sex. For example, my partner and I had recently visited Niagara Falls. On our second night, I really just wanted to lay down next to him and sleep. I’m a person who is typically always on the go, so much so that it has started to age my body in ways that have alerted me to my need to slow down. By that time, we hadn’t seen each other for 8 months, and all I wanted to do was be next to him. For me, it made me feel closer to him and allowed me to feel much more energetic for the rest of our time together.
To my previous thought, we get to determine what sex looks like for us, how far we’d like to go, and how we want to cultivate intimacy. Honoring each other’s agency and bodily autonomy is a priority, and is how safety continues to be practiced.
5. Grief & joy can, and often do, coexist.
As with any relationship, you and your partner are living individual lives that will often overlap in many different ways. This includes how you and your partner process and share emotions with each other. There have been plenty of moments where my partner’s and I’s different emotions have demanded attention at the same time. Birthdays, trips, scheduled calls, and any other random occasions have all been accompanied by feelings both positive and negative. As I’ve been learning to exist in my body again, there have been times where I have retreated into my logical process out of fear that I’d be “too much” or that my feelings would ruin an otherwise happy moment between my partner and I.
It has taken a lot of unlearning, therapy, and acceptance on both of our parts to move to a place where our feelings are less threatening and treated more like a signal to something that may need attention. One of us could be having a family emergency, while the other celebrating a personal achievement. Someone can be drained, while the other can be feeling silly. We could both be nervous, but expressing that nervousness in different ways. I have since learned that there is room for both of us, and that if I feel like I’ve taken too much space or not enough, then we can always make room.
6. Moving from conflict avoidance, to conflict acceptance is vital.
Conflict does not feel good. Just because it doesn’t feel good, that doesn’t mean that it should be avoided. This is the case even when there are moments where conflict is very inconvenient. Sometimes, conflict just happens, and the sooner that inevitability is accepted, the sooner you and your partner can work on skills to manage it. This is something that is an ongoing process, and it will be for as long as my partner and I choose to love each other and build our relationship.
My partner and I have very different, but oddly similar approaches to conflict. At times, what upsets us can be unpredictable, which has led to plenty of conversations that are also exhausting (especially when it seems like the conversations go nowhere). Learning about our different conflict styles, while figuring out long-distance has been a true test where I think that my partner and I are very patient in our own ways. I think that that patience has also contributed to our own conflict cycle in ways that haven’t always been helpful, which can be hard to name and accept when it’s clear that we’re both doing our best.
In a previous conversation, I had mentioned to my partner that I needed space to be angry or to bring up an issue without him internalizing it as a fault on his part. I am a Black man, and for a lot of Black folks, we are not afforded room to be upset or express our pain safely due to how we are then treated by witnesses to our emotional suffering. On the flip side, we are expected to be sponges for others in a way that objectifies us and reinforces the cultural belief that we are to be in service to others.
My partner had never made me feel like I couldn’t be myself, but I still felt compelled to share that thought as a way for me to give myself that room. My partner is really great at taking in information, hearing feedback, and making room without compromising his own needs. However, he is still a person – this man also does not have a poker face – so its very clear when something impacts him whether he vocalizes it or not.
Through his care for me, I can tell that sometimes when I hurt it hurts him in a way that suggests that he’s taking on that weight himself. Historically, observing this has caused me to retreat or not be as open about my experiences, which very easily resulted to almost unnoticeable conflict pattern that truthfully had nothing to do with us as individuals. Conflict acceptance made this pattern more clear, and helped us to better understand where the conflict was coming from, which parts of us were being affected, and how we wanted to move forward.
The truth is, at the core of this conflict was the reality of how oppression and racism will continue to harm me, how I want to protect my relationship/my partner from the fallout, and how he wants to cradle me from the systems that are hurting me in the first place.
Here and now
It’s been four and a half years since my partner and I decided to walk through life together, hand in hand. We’ve learned to introduce ourselves to each other, and are still working to embrace change as we transition into different stages of our lives. Our 5th year anniversary is in June 2023, and by that time, we both would have finished graduate school and subsequent training in our respective fields and will beginning the process of finally looking for a home that we can build together.
This long-distance relationship has been one of the most challenging things I’ve ever experienced. At the same time, it’s been incredibly rewarding, and I look forward to the growing, holding, and loving that’s left to do.
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