Difficulties In Long-distance Relationships

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

What are the disadvantages and dangers of long-distance relationships?

From my own experience, I will say that for me and my partner, such a relationship became a test, in the end we could not stand it, and the partner decided to try to be realized on land (he used to be a sailor). Now he works in my business - he deals with promotion issues, sales, and I just create content.

Here we do not consider the relationship in the context of temporary separation for a year, the relationship between partners who live separately, but see each other regularly. Let's talk about long and constant separations for 3 months / six months - that is, you are with your partner for some time, then apart, then together again.

In Odessa, there are many families with long-distance relationships - mostly, these are the families of sailors (but there may be truckers, and those who earn money abroad, or maybe one of the partners is serving time in a prison), when the separation period is from 3 to 6 months.

It is directly about relationships of a love and romantic nature between partners at a distance. If we talk about relationships with relatives, with parents, then the distance for high-quality separation carries only a positive charge, like life separately. Relationships with family members tend to get better when you are away from each other. Moreover, if we talk specifically about parents, only in this way can you take full responsibility for your life, taste all its charm, live the way you want, and realize your desires (in other words, live your life, and not the expectations of others, in particular of your parents).

So, the very first minus of long-distance relationships - the feeling of intimacy dissipates somewhere within 2-3 months of separation (the image of a partner begins to resemble a hologram - he has scattered, you cannot touch, there is an imprint in the soul that has become transparent). Perhaps you may even begin to feel that you are losing touch with your partner, respectively, it is difficult for you to understand where is reality and where is unreality.

Projections appear - it becomes more difficult to distinguish where the partner is, where his feelings and words are, and where yours (as a rule, the super Ego participates in the projections). Some parental attitudes emerge, fear of criticism from their side or condemnation arises, fear that you will be abandoned or rejected. After a while, if communication continues, you may begin to hear humiliation, insults, "attacks" on you, insult, you will feel rejection in every word. For example, a partner is good at selling, unlike you - the insult is included in the dialogue: “What are you trying to say that I am incapable and I can’t do anything ?!”.

People with an avoidant and counterdependent type of behavior (the psyche is predisposed to run away from relationships, to distance themselves), which is associated with insufficiently good relations with parents - overprotectiveness, lack of emotional contact (all this is transferred to your relationship with your partner on distance using the projection mechanism). If in the psyche there is already some kind of rejection, devaluation, condemnation, somewhere rejection, all this is attributed to the partner. And the further the partner is, the easier it is to hang your projections on him. Relatively speaking, this is your inner world, your inner theater, where the introjected casts of your parents play the role, at the same time becoming your own voice, but still scolding you. When a person is completely alone, it is quite difficult to swear with oneself, therefore, you need to hang your projection on that man or woman who is now far away, and quarrel with him / her (although the person did not mean anything like that).

Even in a well-formed couple, trust falls. Why is this happening? Your inner child is offended by your partner because they left you. This moment is especially acute if in childhood your parents left you with your grandmother, nanny, aunt, and you were in pain because of this. In this case, trust in your partner will drop sharply, and you will not understand why. It is illogical to be offended by a partner who makes money, because you agreed, you were satisfied with his business trips, but your inner child simply refuses to understand this, and no sober arguments help, the resentment is deeply embedded.

Aggression appears on the partner, and he has the same process.

Regardless of which of you left, the inner child feels that he has been abandoned (for both partners), aggression appears ("You are evil and bad, you left me!"). When the partner returns, the two inner children look at each other in disbelief: “Can I trust you? Or will you leave me again? Should I open up to you? Should I be vulnerable with you? Or maybe you shouldn't fall in love with you again, merge with you? After all, it hurts to break the connection …”.

The inner child is unbearable from the mere thought that here he has opened, and here he has closed. For psychological stability, there must be training or the absence of certain traumas (you were not abandoned, not rejected, you did not feel emotional coldness from a parent, etc.). If all this is there, the discomfort in the relationship will only intensify, and each time it will break up your trauma.

You will experience retraumatization every time you break up. Often, people with rather deep attachment traumas enter into relationships at a distance (they did not feel connected with their mother, or, on the contrary, felt overprotective, felt abandoned or really abandoned them at certain moments in life).

I will give an example from professional experience - a couple came to therapy with a problem of retraumatization; the partners did not have long business trips. One of the partners was from a shelter, and for him this moment was unbearable. A couple of people constantly faced pain - I was abandoned, left, betrayed, and now I need to reunite again, each time to restore closeness when a partner comes (from a flight, comes from abroad and other options).

Retraumatization will be painful every time. Even if people live together for 20 years, the next separation and meeting is a difficulty, rubbing against a partner (it's like building a relationship with a new person). After some time of living together, people burn out, their feelings are strongly washed off. By the example of sailors, a man begins to feel like a wallet, and a woman is really more attached to money, it is safer. We are not talking about the fact that she stopped loving her partner - it became unbearably painful for her every time to be included in emotions and to experience grief from separation, then to open up again, to enter into intimacy … and again separation! That is why, after years of such a relationship, the woman seems to be waiting for the man to leave (“Let him go to earn money!”), But all these are words, and there is a gaping wound in her soul.

It's up to you to decide whether to build a relationship at a distance, to accept or not with all the disadvantages that will be. There is no need to live in the illusion that it will be easy - no! Either you erase your feelings for your partner and go into complete burnout, use denial, or it will be quite difficult for you.