Is It the Long Distance in Our Relationship or Am I Falling Out of Love?

Reader’s Question

I have been in a long-distance relationship for the past two years. In the first year and a half our relationship was great, despite the distance. I was truly in love for the first time and couldn’t wait to start my life with this person. Since we were both in college, we couldn’t move closer to one another. I would spend my summers with him, and during the school year we would visit each other at least one weekend per month. But now, after all this time being separated, I’m starting to feel like I don’t want the same things I wanted with him before. I’m becoming increasingly withdrawn from him and from our relationship. I don’t know if the distance is to blame or if my feelings have simply changed.

I care for my boyfriend, and I can’t see myself with anyone else — but I’m increasingly emotionally tired of our relationship. I can’t handle the distance anymore. I use to want to fight for our relationship, but lately I don’t see the point. I’m tired of living only for the future where all we do is think about how great everything will be once we are finally together. I want to live my life now, not later. But at the same time I don’t have the desire to drop everything else I’m doing just for him.

Can it be that I’ve simply fallen out of love? Maybe I never really loved him to begin with. I’m young and feel really juvenile for even asking these questions. I can’t move on because I still care for him but, at the same time I don’t want to be in this long distance relationship anymore.

I really need some advice.

Psychologist’s Reply

Several prior posts have addressed the special challenges posed by long-distance relationships, and you might find some of these helpful:

Your particular situation necessarily comes with some good news and some bad news. The bad news is that the extra energy, passion, and drive that often accompanies being “in love” for the first time inevitably has to fade. The good news is that moving out of this phase of a relationship doesn’t necessarily mean that you never really loved a person in the first place, nor does it mean that there aren’t some things that can be done to help you enhance the “here and now” experience of your relationship instead of merely banking on the future. The most important thing to do to ensure this is to plan activities for your relationship — even activities carried on from a distance — that you both love and can look forward to. That will help to make this particular phase of your relationship stimulating and satisfying. You might even remember these times fondly as you progress to subsequent stages, provided you take steps to make the time you have now more meaningful to you.

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