sarahhar

Hi,

My name's Sarah and I'm a UK-based journalist researching an article for a well-known glossy, about the new face of "modern marriage". I'd like to speak to married couples who have experience of spending long chunks of time away from each other for work (other countries or cities) and have somehow made it work for them. Or perhaps you've decided it's actually beneficial to your relationship to keep it fresh and maintain independence?

I'd love to hear from you if you're living in the UK and would like to be part of this feature.

madimoff

Let's leave it that I'll be very specifically interested in the response you get, what it says, what you write as a result and what the subs do with it............ I could of course comment but the nature of this forum might suggest I won't.

amazonwoman

I just got married in July and My husband and I live in different countries the longest we have been together physically is just over 6 weeks. we met over to years ago and I plan to move to the country that he is in next year june. I think this long distance marrieage is going to be a very hard test, we have already had some issues.... I have a very full life lots of family friends and things to do, typically he does not... he want to spend more time on the phone or skype than I would.... I have been doing it but feel like i am neglecting some of my other activities... so as you can see it will have its challenges. I would love to hear from others who are living in long distance marrieages. things you do to keep it going ways to overcome lifes stresses

Jellybeans

I don't think long-distance relationships go the distance. Usually they fizzle out.

Duddy

I don't live in the UK, but as a professional (Pro-Marriage) counselor who's worked with hundreds of highly distressed couples, I've been fascinated by the question of what makes a genuine long distance relationship work.

I've worked with couples who start their relationships and even marriages from scratch on a long distance basis and couples separated months and years after living together, because of work changes.

One person gets the dream job in another city, and the other person already has their dream job, in the city where they live.

It turns out that the secret to a healthy, emotionally resilient long distance relationship is the same set of factors that sustain a healthy, emotionally resilient in person relationship.
Successful distance and in person relationships are strongly rooted in:

1) Realistic expectations about what a long term relationship is;

2) Strong relationship maintenance skills (like safe driving skills for driving);

3) The setting up and regular maintenance of protective relationship boundaries;

4) The use of phone and technology to compensate for in person regular contact and emotional intimacy (attachment-based).

Couple who are successful at maintaining a long term, long-distance-based relationship, in my clinical experience, often have more conservative and spiritual values.

For example, I’ve worked with military couples who have maintained strong emotional bonds under conditions of incredible stress.

Sorry for posting without meeting the precise requirements of your original question; but this same topic has fascinated me for years.

There’s not much in the way of solid research on this topic, but there is lots of poor quality usually pop-psychology type opinion and advice/spam out there, just as there is poor quality relationship and marriage advice.

I’m going to follow this thread. I really look forward to any new insight or information that other posters may have to offer or any further insight that you might share from your own research in preparation for your story.

Gratefully,
-Duddy.

__________________
The Pro Marriage Counselor,
http://thepromarriagecounselor.com/

unfinished

hello, interested in these posts because my husband lives on the other side of the planet because of work. We are both examining if this can work, so far we have been doing this for 2 years, after being married for 25 years. He needs to work for supporting the family, but it is a hard life and I have nothing to do but cook and clean there, whereas I have a full social life here and many options. It does involve a language change to be in the other country. It has bought to question however, whether my motives for wanting this to work is that I am in fact happier with my own freedom and it is exposing cracks in our marriage which my husband thinks are cavenous and I feel are only hairline. He won't go to a counsellor on his own because he says that relationship counsellors who counsel only one partner will inevitably tell them to divorce, as they are only getting one side of the story! I think we should separately see a counsellor though to examine this issue.