Confession of A Boyfriend on LDR Day 49

46 days. That’s how long I’ve been on this LDR. Duration is a relative concept – any identical duration can feel much shorter or much longer than it actually is depending on the experience. And believe me, this 46 days feels like its been like a long long time.

Why so?

When you’ve been on an amazing relationship with someone for a period of time and have spent so much time together, true to the term ‘significant other’, that someone indeed becomes a significant part of your life. From the habitual weekly dinner and movie dates that never fails to put you to sleep smiling, to the unwrapping of love letters when your special someone randomly surprises you with a gift, to the morning drive to work when you would call each other and try to decipher each other’s dreams, to as simple as a dare to twirl in the middle of a crowd, all these become significant scenes that 

would define joy in your life.   

LDR is an uphill ride simply because it takes away many of your sources of joy and forces you to define new ones.  No more movie dates, no more morning calls on your drive to work (urgh, time difference) and no more twirling in the middle of crowds.

Any relationship would eventually hit a patchy phase and any relationship worth keeping would prompt the process of give and take to learn and relearn how to excite each other and how to make each other happy. LDR, in my opinion, triggers another round of that, where one would be faced with the realization that what worked before, no longer works (difficult to twirl over skype, naturally). And if indeed the relationship is worth keeping, both will have to brave this patchy phase once again and 

define new sources of joy while on a long distance relationship.

For now, Alia and I have invented the ‘over-Skype-high-five’, ‘flowers that appear out of nowhere’ and of course my favourite, ‘boyfriend writes post on LDR on girlfriend’s blog’.

We’re still figuring out how to make this work but give it time, I’m sure we’ll make it work, Inshallah.

To all the folks who’ve been on LDR, what exciting stuff did you guys invent to keep things, well, interesting?
:)

...an attempt to 'twirl' in Disneyland

Written by: Aiman Syed Jaafar