How do you actively manage the health of a partnership (long distance or otherwise)
In my previous post, I discussed how I accepted a job in the Bay Area while Jason stayed at his finance job in New York City. We’d been engaged only a week or two, and we already had a meaty challenge to tackle: making a long-distance engagement work. Worse still, we didn’t have an end date. The job I was taking could never be re-located to New York. We didn’t even know which city we’d end up in - whether Jason would move to the Bay Area or I’d move back to NYC.
Our solution:
We knew we’d have to be proactive about managing our relationship, so we sat down and brainstormed. Here are some of the strategies that we developed:
· Setting ourselves up for success: Before I received my offer, I was upfront with my boss that I had a fiancé in NYC, and it was unclear when or whether he’d move out to SF. I asked if I could work out of the New York office one week a month (I’d fly in the weekend before and fly out the weekend after), and she agreed. Jason then planned to visit SF one weekend every month, giving us 75% of weekends together. We tried to see each other at least every other weekend.
· Regular monthly check-ins: We have standing monthly check-ins where we discuss how everything’s going in our relationship and give each other feedback. Because it’s an ongoing rhythm, our resulting conversations are significantly less stressful than ones started by an awkward, “Hey…so, we need to talk.” At our last check-in, for example, Jason mentioned that (when in NYC), I’d ask him, “Hey, what’s the weather today?” every single morning. It drove him nuts.
“How would I know what the weather is?” he pointed out. “I haven’t been outside. I have just as much information as you do. Why can’t you look it up on your phone?”
It was a great question! I hadn’t realized I’d been asking that and had no idea it was bothering him. I still catch myself asking, but I’ve (mostly!) stopped. And Jason is a much happier guy.
· Setting up a definitive end date, even if it’s not actually definitive: When I first moved, I found not having a clear plan for our future to be maddening. I’m exceedingly bad at being patient. Even though I know making a plan doesn’t actually impact what happens in the future, having one has always helped me feel more secure. To solve this, Jason and I created a “drop” deadline (the end of 2019), at which point we’d quit jobs if needed to get to the same city. Giving our distance an expiration date (even one far away!) made the day-to-day psychologically easier. We also both love the idea of settling down in NYC, so we added that to the plan as well. I know - it seems ridiculous to plan so far ahead, but the mere act of creating a plan stopped me from constantly cycling through the endless “what ifs” of what could happen. Telling myself New York was the plan really helped. In the end, New York turned out to actually be the right plan, and I moved back to the city at the beginning of 2019.
· Flexibility to adapt: Before I left, Jason and I set up a rule that we’d talk every day, even a quick call. What we didn’t consider was 1) the time difference – by the time I was done with the gym and dinner, Jason was asleep and 2) how insanely busy my job would be. I began to realize several days would go by without us talking properly. By the time we got on the phone on Saturdays, I’d leave out some key events that happened during the week because re-telling all the necessary backstory felt too exhausting. This meant there were big parts of my life he wouldn’t know about, which I hated. I knew something had to change when I woke up one morning to an email from Jason.
“Hi Anusha,” it read. “I changed my Square account email to our joint email, so you can follow my day and know when I got my flat white. You can also see whether I went to Madmen Espresso or Blue Bottle Coffee.”
Communicating via a Square receipt was, technically, communication (and I gotta give the guy points for originality!), but it was also a wake-up call. That day, Jason and I decided to schedule a standing daily 4 pm PT call. it wasn’t always exactly at 4 pm, and we sometimes had to cancel. It ended up happening about 90% of the time. And, if it didn’t happen for a day or two, we could actively plan to make up the time.
· Distinguishing between a want vs. a need: Jason and I decided that while we want to be together, we don’t need to be together. We didn’t have kids. We were both deeply in career-building mode. Ironically, the distance set us up for success (hopefully!) in the long run by giving each of us the space to pursue our career goals vigorously. Once being together became a need (we’d been long distance for almost two years at that point), we both knew we’d put as much work as possible to have the necessary flexible schedules and financial stability.
· Making time together count: When I first started, I worked almost every weekend, even ones where I was in NYC. I started to feel overwhelmed and burned out. One Friday when I was in New York, one of my friends suggested I make an effort to not work that weekend, even though I had a big presentation coming up. She reminded me that I’d spent a lot of time and energy to fly all the way out to NYC (I was coming off a redeye followed by a full day’s work), and I needed to rest and enjoy time with Jason and my friends. She was right. I took the weekend off and felt much better prepared to start the week. I spent lots of time with Jason, including a day trip to an indoor water park (his idea, don’t ask). Even though it was only a few days, it felt longer because we were both truly present and weren’t distracted by the endless demands of weekday life (and, a bonus because of the waterpark: our iPhones!)
Have you and your significant other tried a long-distance relationship? How did you cope? Even if you aren’t long distance, how do you manage the health of your partnership?