The Secret to My Relationship? Distance
By Carita Rizzo
“So, you’re moving to…Baltimore?”
Every time I tell friends that my boyfriend of eight months has moved back home after 13 years in Europe, they look at me quizzically, and ask me that very question. The answer is no. My home is in Paris, where over the past five years I have built a life. I have no intention of leaving. And still, here we both are, confident that our relationship can survive the literal ocean between us.
Our relationship was unusual from the start. In the early days of the pandemic, I moved from France back to my native Finland, with every intention of leaving once the situation got better. Mike, a US transplant to Helsinki, told me on the first date he was considering a return to the States. Though everything about us said “temporary,” the way the relationship progressed made it clear there was no end date in sight. When restrictions lifted and it was time to return to our “real” homes, we started booking flights to see each other. One month together, one month apart, give or take.
This might seem like a lot of hassle, but as someone who didn’t think a romantic partnership was in the cards again, Covid tests and long-haul flights are a small sacrifice to make for a situation that, to me, sounds almost too good to be true. I’d get to stay close to my family and friends; keep the home that provides me both emotional and financial security; and be with the man that I love?
Was I deluding myself in thinking we could sustain this dream?
According to Adrienne Rusk, an LA psychotherapist, living apart can actually confer relationship perks. “The beauty of some of these relationships is that the mundane, tedious tasks are not part of life. You have more time to play, and what I mean by that is that the time that you do spend together is really intentional,” she says. “Oftentimes in long-distance relationships, you have a stronger emotional connection because there's more time talking and really getting to know each other.”
If distance makes us communicate better and feel fonder towards each other, why aren’t more people doing this? (Outside of the obvious issue of finances.) “This is not a one-size-fits-all approach,” says Rusk. “It depends on your individual needs and stage of life. What is important to you when it comes to having a career, having children, having a house or an idea of a home? The more self-aware you are, the more able you are to have the kind of relationship that you want.”
There was a time when what I thought I wanted looked very different. I was 23 when I packed up my life in two suitcases, said goodbye to family, friends, and a budding career, and left Helsinki for Los Angeles and the man I would two years later marry. Having grown up in a family where my mother moved around from country to country for my father’s work, I took that kind of sacrifice for granted. “Someone had to move,” I’d said at the time. For that relationship, it was true. It would never have lasted any other way. But my move into a life that was already well established also created an imbalance that set our dynamic for years to come.
“I am not alone in finding greater emotional fulfilment in my 40s. What allows us to establish better partnerships, be they romantic or platonic, traditional or unconventional, is a sense of self that only comes with growth. ”
In my 20s, I viewed relationships as rigid and unforgiving, going through the motions like a fixed itinerary: First comes love, then comes marriage, then you co-mingle funds, assume each other’s debt, establish joint accounts, file taxes together, apply for a mortgage, buy a house and acquire life insurance. Because you share a roof – and are so very financially intertwined – no one has anywhere to run. You'll live happily ever after, or at least, exist together ever after. A decade later, when I realized that a shared roof is no guarantee of an everlasting marriage, I was shocked. And I wasn’t alone. Turns out, proximity and joint finances do not equal marital success.
It wasn’t until years after my divorce that I started to think about what kind of relationship would actually serve me. For a long time, the only close connections I had capacity for were friendships, which has set the bar high for my romantic partners.
I am not alone in finding greater emotional fulfilment in my 40s. What allows us to establish better partnerships, be they romantic or platonic, traditional or unconventional, is a sense of self that only comes with growth. “I’d refer to it as ‘the decade difference’,” says Rusk. “In your 20s, you're still figuring out who you are. You are learning and oftentimes repeating whatever has been familiarized for you. You also have a flexibility that you likely will not have in your 30s. By the time you reach your 40s, you have a very good sense of who you are, what you want, your own inner worth, and the value that you bring and expect in a relationship. Our boundaries are stronger.”
At 42, I don’t pretend to have the answers to a long-lasting relationship, but I do know that giving up a life I love for a more conventional partnership isn’t the key to my happiness, and I am not asking someone else to make that sacrifice either. “When you begin to really affirm what feels right for you, and own that nobody else can tell you what's going to work for you, that's such a place of empowerment,” says Rusk. It has taken me a long time to articulate what will work for me. I just wish I could tell my 23-year-old self that one day the right person will listen.