Fear vs. Trust in LDRs (Long Distance Relationships)
There’s something about long distance relationships (LDRs) that brings out agony, ecstasy, and fear. Agony and ecstasy are hard to remove from an LDR. However, when it comes to fear, the solution is trust.
How do you develop trust? How do you nurture it so it keeps the fear at bay?
Here’s Badass Counseling's perspective so you can prepare yourself and protect your relationship.
Sven Erlandson Describes His Long Distance Relationship
We had half-met at a bar in Minneapolis.
I had gotten off work and gone across to Mackenzie's Pub. There I bumped into a woman whom I'd chatted with while waiting tables. Now, we got a chance to talk more. We walked and talked into the night. That night, I fell in love with this dancer, who was traveling with the first national touring company of a Broadway show.
The next year and a half was spent on long phone calls in the middle of the night, after her evening performances and my work day, and trips across the country to spend a few days with her in Dallas, Boston, Miami, or San Francisco. It was both glorious and it sucked. I cried every time we said goodbye, and my heart leaped every time I got a call from her (this was before texting had become mainstream; hell, before I even had a cell phone).
The fear of whether she was cheating with other men, whom she daily encountered as an itinerant performer on stage. The fear of whether she was even talking to other men, which I knew she obviously was. The fear of whether she'd leave me. All of these fears were part of my daily existence. Admittedly, these same concerns were part of her long-distance relationship (LDR) life with me.
Fear.
How Fear Corrupts LDR Relationships
I know of nothing that has greater power to corrupt an LDR than this. But it doesn't just infect LDRs.
Fear can seep into relationships where one person travels a lot for work, works very long hours, or even where responsibilities – such as a dying family member or a heavy child-rearing load – create a severe shortage of time together. Fear can creep in anywhere, as can the discontent that fear fears (in a partner), as well.
Thus, I know of no greater inoculation against fear and LDR decay than trust. Nothing. Everything long-distance rises and falls on this one thing.
Trust.
Why is Distance so Difficult on Relationships?
The short answer is that when a lover is not physically immediate, there begins a dearth of reassurances. When a partner is near, there are small touches, looks, hugs, intimacies, and banal conversations that often get lost amid the distance. But also, there is the loss of just plain presence.
Even when we're not touching or interacting with a person, we are present to each other, sharing the same space, engaged in the mere passing of time together. That's a powerful hooch to the soul.
Just as importantly, it's a balm to the nervous soul.
Absent those elements, it can be very easy for the mind to wander, overthink, and devolve into fear.
That's when the damage starts, the yarns get spun, and the questions take root. And trust begins to erode, not because of the other person, but because of my own fear.
LDRs Require the Mastering of Self
And, this leads to the harder answer to the question of why LDRs are so difficult. LDRs can be very hard for the same reason really anything can be very hard. It's because it requires the mastering of self and all that is raging inside one's own mind, particularly the fears.
See, so often people seek and use relationships, often unwittingly, to assuage the very fears, pain, and long-ago implanted messages of their own lack of worth. The partner and their presence become the cure to the pain and fears of aloneness. Rather than being an addition to an already happy life, the relationship becomes the antidote to having to feel the power of that loneliness. This is, tragically, far too common.
But, what this means is that if the relationship either starts as or becomes a long-distance one, then the antidote has a lower rate of efficacy, as it almost works against itself. The lover is both present and absent, simultaneously – present in the relationship, yet absent physically and thus not producing the deliverables that the receiver needs. Resultingly, the heart-wrenching uncertainty can be even worse than being alone, strange as that may seem.
Again, it is the fear virus infecting the operating system. For it not to do so demands that a person engage the process of self-mastery, of flushing out all of the pains and BS beliefs they were taught about themselves, particularly as a child. And, that's damn hard work whether in or out of a relationship.
>> See Why and How to Heal Your Inner Child
However, it's reasonable to assume that if a person got into a relationship, at least in part, as a way to avoid that inner turmoil, they ain't about to start deliberately going into and healing that pain now when the LDR has become challenging. Self-mastery was never on the table. Instead, it's always easier to take a drug, particularly the uniquely strong one known as a relationship.
For, the presence of even a hard or bad relationship/love is, for a great many people, preferable to no relationship at all. Because, the presence of a person, even a person who treats me poorly, wanting me is confirmation that I matter. Whereas, if there is no one here loving me, those old messages creep in and flood the brain and heart. You know the messages:
I'm no good
I don't deserve love
See, I'm not important
I'm unlovable
No one wants me, etc.
And few things in life hurt more than those messages that got pressed into the wet cement of the child's soul, the same ones you've been running from your whole life and that the love was intended to dampen.
>> See 9 Badass Questions About Emotional Incest
How Do You Maintain a Long Distance Relationship?
Well, the true answer, unwelcome as it may be, is that you actually have to begin the process of self-mastery. There's no other way around it.
See, if you don't, you'll become a hyper-clingy/hyper-needy version of your already likely emotionally needy self. Your fears will likely consume you, no matter how many reassurances you get from your LDR partner. You will choke them or push them away from the sheer labor of dealing with all of your insecurities. Or, they will do so to you. Or both.
You maintain and actually improve an LDR by forever going inside to identify the fears and beliefs you've been taught about yourself that are undermining your relationship.
This is precisely the purpose for which I wrote my book, There's a Hole in My Love Cup. It steps you through the process of finding the origins of your insecurities and rooting them out.
>> See What Makes “There’s a Hole In My Love Cup” So Badass Effective?
I also recommend that you start listening to my podcast, The Badass Counseling Show. I not only answer listener questions but actually counsel people on the show, most of which are dealing with some derivative of this exact same issue. And, we learn by watching and listening to others. It helps us understand ourselves and our own difficulties much better. (You can find it on Spotify, Audible, Apple Music, and most other podcast sites.)
How Do You Recommend That Couples Prepare for LDRs?
Well, apart from the obvious (discussed above) of each person beginning to work on their own inner stuff, couples in a long-distance relationship need to work on not only the cliche of better communication (which very often gets misinterpreted as simply more conversation) but the more difficult process of talking out feelings, insecurities, fears, and disappointments. Aye yi yi!
Talking about feelings is hard even for non-LDR couples. Having the courage to express how I really feel, which I call 'radical honesty' in my books, especially when it's small, is tough for any person or couple. But it's soooo very critical to high-functioning relationships, which LDRs have to be in order to not only survive but be life-giving.
The act of sharing feelings, particularly insecurities, and feeling heard and understood is a profound salve to over-thinking and fear.
For the speaker of feelings to feel truly heard and accepted, the hearer must bring a spirit of openness, understanding, and slowing down.
That is the next thing that LDR couples can work on -- slowing down and making time and room for these hard conversations and doing so with the spirit of compassion. Without that compassion for your lover's insecurities and a willingness to not just 'have' but actually express your own insecurities, your relationship is dead in the water. You'll never survive the inevitable worries and wandering of the mind.
Are There Instances Where Distance is Beneficial?
Well, this is a hard curveball in the LDR conversation, because it takes us into the realm of non-LDR relationships.
Distance can be a wonderful tonic to any/most relationships. It can bring breathing room, re-appreciation, and its own fresh set of challenges that can create a renewed vigor to the non-LDR relationship.
Then, also, there are those couples that simply thrive better in an LDR situation. Believe it or not, some do. Some people live in such commitment to their work, their families, their travel, and their health that they prefer to have greater distance in their love relationships.
This is a different breed of cat, one wherein the fear that can afflict the person and relationship is not one of being left or being alone, but of being suffocated; or the fear of having too much responsibility for another person. That can be just as legitimate a fear for this person as aloneness is for the former.
How Do You Know If Your LDR Will Be Successful?
The simplest metric for success in an LDR is whether you have the ability to calm yourself the hell down when you start getting worked up inside. Maybe it's when you're tired, hungry, overworked, or simply haven't seen your lover for a longer than normal time. The virus starts to creep into more empty spaces inside you. The other tensions of life seem to light a flame under your fears, igniting them, and turning them hotter.
In those moments, be they yours or your partner's, do you have the ability to quiet your inner self?
And see, this is why doing the work of flushing out all the past crud is so important.
>> See How To Do An Effective Soul Detox
But also, this is why learning and becoming adept at what I call 'spiritual disciplines' is critical. Spiritual disciplines are those things we use to modulate our own inner anxieties or to flush them out entirely: routine exercise, good sleep, rest/downtime that is not sleep, journaling, alone time, consistent and healthy diet, etc. All of these are mechanisms to re-center ourselves to a state of peace and connection to self, day to day.
If you do not have these tools in your belt, you're absolutely screwed when the worries and spinning minds start to work their dark magic in the heart and mind. If you don't have ways to flush out the fears, they will overtake you, especially -- ESPECIALLY! -- in a long-distance relationship.
The Importance of Trust for a Successful LDR
If you’re involved in a long distance, what issues have you come across and how have you dealt with them? How do you keep fear at bay? Have you prioritized the building of trust with your partner?
Let us know.
Thank you for reading!
-- Sven Erlandson, MDiv, Is The Author Of Seven Books, Including 'Badass Jesus: The Serious Athlete And A Life Of Noble Purpose' And 'I Steal Wives: A Serial Adulterer Reveals The REAL Reasons More And More Happily Married Women Are Cheating.' He Has Been Called The Father Of The Spiritual But Not Religious Movement, After His Seminal Book 'Spiritual But Not Religious' Came Out 15 Years Ago, Long Before The Phrase Became Part Of Common Parlance And Even Longer Before The Movement Hit Critical Mass. He Is Former Military, Clergy, And NCAA Head Coach For Strength And Conditioning; And Has A Global Counseling/Consulting Practice with offices In NYC, NJ, And Stamford, CT: BadassCounseling.Com
