Is Distance in a Relationship Like a Knockout Punch?

Geo­graphic desir­abil­ity.  What is it really?  Sim­ply put: It’s the dis­tance within which a per­son is will­ing to travel to see some­one that they’re in a rela­tion­ship with, or look­ing to get into a rela­tion­ship with.  Sim­ple enough, right?  It’s not always so cut and dry, though.  For instance…I’ve been told that Orange County is too far from Cul­ver City to make a rela­tion­ship work.  It really isn’t that far. In L.A. traf­fic it’s a good hour drive or so… Really, it’s not that bad and I call b.s.  Though, I should say that my tol­er­ance to drive a long dis­tance to see some­one I’m with is higher than many oth­ers (aka geo tar­get­ing ones sex life)

In real­ity, some peo­ple don’t like dri­ving more than fifty miles to see their sig­nif­i­cant other.  I sup­pose I can under­stand that.  I mean, I don’t like com­mut­ing an hour to work each day… How­ever, com­mut­ing an hour to get laid… Well, that’s a dif­fer­ent story.  I have pri­or­i­ties, dammit!

Liv­ing out­side of someone’s geo­graph­i­cally desired radius can be a deal breaker.  I think it’s only a deal breaker, though, for those that aren’t ready to com­mit to a rela­tion­ship or ready for the work it takes to make a long dis­tance rela­tion­ship work.  Because of that I nor­mally advise my friends against such rela­tion­ships.  I’ve tried them and failed and I’ve seen other friends fail in their long dis­tance love pur­suits.  I kept say­ing, “Guys, it’s a bad idea. Just enter the crotchu­lar kick­ing con­test instead and save your­self the phone bill!!”

My friends, Phil and Janet, have been mar­ried almost four years now.  They met on the inter­webs.  He lived on the other side of the pond, in Eng­land; while Janet lived in the sub­urbs of Orange County.  When I heard this, the cynic in me told Janet, “This is doomed.  How are you going to share a cross con­ti­nen­tal romance with this git?”  For months they cor­re­sponded via email, IM and Skype.  Daily.  I mean, lit­er­ally, Daily and for a cou­ple hours on end.  I thought it was weird and it was obvi­ous how much time Janet was putting into this long dis­tance rela­tion­ship and I was wor­ried about her.  What if it failed?  What if the guy sim­ply found a geo­graph­i­cally desir­able woman to take sex­ual lib­er­ties with?  There was so much that was out­side of Janet’s control…

Finally, the two of them arranged to meet.  She was going to fly to Eng­land for New Year’s.  In my mind, I thought that she would get there and he might run off and leave her at the ter­mi­nal.  Per­haps they real­ized that they really don’t get along; or that one of them doesn’t like how the other kisses.  I mean, really, there’s a lot of shit that can go wrong when meet­ing some­one the first time.

When I talked to Janet, after she met Phil, she was happy and gush­ing.  I was relieved and she was obvi­ously very happy.

She returned and they got back to their hi tech long dis­tance rela­tion­ship with­out skip­ping a beat.  Phil came out to visit and Janet’s friends and fam­ily got to meet him and every­one really liked Phil, even this guy. =)

I believe it was the third visit, maybe the fourth, that Phil pro­posed to her.  The rest is his­tory, as they say.  How­ever, the les­son that this some­times cyn­i­cal guy learned is that rela­tion­ships, no mat­ter how far the dis­tance, will suc­ceed when each per­son puts in the work and the commitment.

Armed with this rev­e­la­tion, I was hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with a good friend of mine, Kev.  He was talk­ing about this girl he was pretty crazy about, but she lived a good twelve hours away.  He had a look on his face, like he knew what I was going to say… I looked at him and I told him that if he really wanted to make it work then it was going to take a lot of work by him and his girl.  If they resigned to be com­mit­ted to each other then any­thing is possible.

His expres­sion lifted and it was full of excite­ment.  He obvi­ously had some of the same doubts that I had.  The human heart never ceases to sur­prise me.  Go get that girl, Kev.

Related posts:

1. When is it Time to Stop Dat­ing Around and Get Serious?
2. Do the Hol­i­days Affect Your Relationship?