Monday, January 24, 2011

Long Distance Relationships

I thought I might start off by talking about the one question that comes across everyone's mind when they find out that my girlfriend lives in a different country. "How are you able to manage your relationship with her being so far away?"

Now, let me give you a quick background. I'm currently living in Canada near Toronto, Ontario. My girlfriend lives all the way in metropolis of Tokyo Japan. To give you an idea, that's over 10,000KM away from where I am. Not sure if you can anymore long distant than that. We have been together for 3 1/2 year and of that we have only had 1 1/2 years of actual time together. Currently we are at 6 months without being together and we both keep waiting for the next chance that we can finally be together.


View Canada to Japan in a larger map

Now to get to the answer to my question, I simply say to everyone, "I use Skype everyday to keep in touch." The program offers us a chance to visually see each other and to talk about whatever might be on our minds, the same thing that most normal couples would do with each when they are able to meet up. We mostly spend a couple of hours talking with each other, which really does build a strong relationship over all. Because of the visual aspect of using such programs we get the chance to feel closer to each other, though nothing beats actually seeing each other in person.

Each of us makes small sacrifices to meet up with each other on Skype. The first difficulty that we had to overcome is the time difference between the two countries. When she returns from work, it is still two hours away from dawn. I must make sure to set alarms every morning, regardless of amount of sleep, to wake up to see each other. For her, she will often stay up until midnight or later to talk with me, even though she must go to work the following day. As it is right now, she currently lives in an apartment with 4 other girls and two of them are staying in the same room as her. The main reason behind the tight space is because one of her friends is just staying for a short time, while the other friend is just a good friend and roommate. So right now, she must leave her room to enter a cold kitchen to set up her computer just to talk with me and not bother her other roommates. If she is unable to use the kitchen as other people are busy using it, she must remain in her room and type to talk with me, which does make things to be very comical at times.

When it comes down to it, we still do need to see each other whenever possible. As it stands right now, I have traveled to Japan 4 times since we started going out with each other. The second time around I stayed for 10 months teaching English. Now each time we do actually go and see each other, we try to extend all available vacation time to the trip and we force ourselves back to work upon our return with no real time to adjust to time zone changes. We don't do it to punish ourselves, but to simply make the most of our time together.


Holidays and anniversaries can be very difficult on each other when we are so far away. This is the second year in a row that we haven't been able to spend our anniversary with each other, but we try to make up for it when we see each other next or before it. We also make sure that we meet up on those special days not matter what happens in our personal lives.