How to Make a Long-Distance Relationship Work

Guest Post by Mallory Love, Destin Pfaff, and Rachel Federoff

Long distance is tough. Whether you are a country away, a state away, a town away — or even just twenty minutes away in a city like Los Angeles (twenty minutes that are actually ninety minutes thanks to traffic) — it takes a lot of effort, patience, honesty and desire to keep a long-distance relationship alive.

“Think of it as a work trip.”
“I will see you soon, I promise.”
“Home is where the heart is, so you are where my heart is. Over there, that is just where my stuff is.”
“It is not a goodbye; it is a see-you-later.”

People may make comments like these to soften the blow of saying goodbye, but they can still be painful to hear and generally don’t make it any easier. Simply put, missing someone you love stinks, especially when it comes to a long-distance relationship.

So, how do you make feeling a million miles away from your partner a little less miserable? Well, even though starting a relationship with someone who lives more than two hours away from you isn’t recommended, sometimes love just happens.

Here are a few tips to keep your love alive while far apart and how to keep your sanity intact at the same time:

Setup your next date

Always have a set date, tickets purchased, and your calendar blocked for your next rendezvous before you have to leave each other. Planning in advance makes the sting of being apart a bit easier to take since you know exactly when you are going to be together next.

If you’re running out of date ideas, take a look at the article 3 Simple Concepts That Will Improve Your Dating Life for a list of creative and unique date ideas.

Spend a little down time together

Save your favorite shows and movies to watch together. With streaming platforms like Kast, you can experience the exact moments while watching, talking, and laughing together about it in real-time. Though streaming a movie while miles apart is not as good as cuddling with your significant other on the couch, it helps create a moment of connection for you both.

Plan an adventure

Plan vacations with each other to create moments to look forward to in your relationship. Do not limit your only time together to your homes and city. Add excitement into your reunions. Make sure to plan fun trips, meet in exotic locations, try new restaurants, and put effort into finding exciting adventures that you can experience together.

Maintain a connection

FaceTime is one of the best tools to use to connect with your long-distance partner. We know this may seem like a no brainer, but maintaining daily or weekly video calls is a relationship saver when you cannot be physically present with your partner. You can schedule regular video dates with one another that neither you nor your significant other can break or reschedule.

During these video dates, you can act as if you’re in the same room, even though you’re actually far apart. There are tablet monitors that let you have extended video conversations with one another and can also be left on in a room so that you both feel you are in the same space together. You can even take it one step further with Virtual Reality headsets that let you virtually be in the same room together while miles apart.

Have an end goal

Finally, in a long-distance relationship, it is essential to have an end goal in sight for you and your partner to eventually live in the same area in the future. This is key. Whether the plan is to live in the same city four weeks from now or four years from now, have a concrete date set and create an active plan to get you there. If a date is not set, there is room for “possibly, maybe, and hopefully” when thinking about the future and your lives together, which allows for much higher odds of the relationship dying as time goes on.

Internationally renowned matchmaking, dating and relationship experts Destin Pfaff and Rachel Federoff are best known and loved for their work on BRAVO’s The Millionaire Matchmaker. The couple founded the original Love and Matchmaking™ — a full-service, modern, high-end matchmaking and love coaching agency.