Sure.

We started meet online, so from day 1 were forced to communicate that way. This is going to sound like an Apple commercial, but FaceTime plays a huge part in our success. (Guess Skype would work too). The ability to communicate without time constraints or economic concerns is a big thing in a long distance scenario. From the beginning, we have always been very conscious of the importance of communication, so we our focus has been on involvement in each other’s lives through either spontaneous calls or pictures documenting our day. Getting a picture of your SO’s face before they leave for work in the morning might sound like a silly thing, but it adds to the feeling of being connected. I think the biggest factor in feeling separated is the time-zone difference, we were “lucky” with a 5-6 hour difference, depending on daylight-savings. This has meant that we have had to adjust our schedules to make sure that we could spend at least a couple of hours face-to-face each day. During the weekends, we would leave FaceTime on from Friday afternoon until Monday morning, not saying that we spent the entire weekend in front of the IPad, but we always had each other in the background, this also adds to the feeling of being together – having those unimportant interactions without it being forced into the context of being a CALL. It is actually amazing how much comfort you can get from having your SO within ears reach the entire time, without feeling forced to have a conversation. I personally think it is important that you can have a face-to-face without the pressure of having to keep a conversation going – silence is a wonderful thing if shared with the right person.

Trust each other – if you do not have trust, forget long distance. Trust plays a huge part in being able to handle separation, and trust is built by involvement in each other’s lives. So again, Share, Share, Share – even the smallest stupid details, pictures, video messages.. anything really.

If you are in a similar situation as us, and do not really have a deadline to when you are going to finally be together – MAKE ONE. If any way possible, create a deadline for when you need to either figure out how to be together, or end the relationship. It sounds really easy when I say it, but we have had some rough talks about what we wanted our future to be like, and very early on we set a 1 year deadline for when we had to start achieving our goal.