On long-distance relationships

I have managed to make it through my teen years without losing my naivete.  I never wanted to be naive; it just happens to be part of my personality.  But that word carries negative connotations by the time one is college-aged, as I am.  Naive implies childlike, innocent, too trusting, overly optimistic, unwise.  While naivete implies innocence in a certain sense, that does not mean one who is naive is always completely innocent.  What many of us forget in our world today is that it's ok to be optimistic, trusting, and even hopeful.  Some of us have lost sight of that.  To me, the reason a lot of really good relationships fail has to do with a lack of naivete.  I realize my story does not apply to everyone, but what I know is that there have been and will be plenty of other people who feel this way.  This is for them, to encourage them, because I know that at some point, they will need it.

I started dating my boyfriend, whom I will call James, in my junior year of high school.  At that time, I didn't really know him well, but we were in the same group of friends.  I thought it would be fun at least, and when we got bored with each other (that's what I expected to happen), I would break up with him.  Easy.  At this point, it must be stated that I had never been in love before- I'd had crushes on boys, I'd had a boyfriend, but I had never experienced that elusive feeling of love.  That makes sense; I was only seventeen at the time.  At this point it should become all too obvious that I did fall in love with James.  I wish I could say it was instantaneous, that from the moment he asked me to prom I knew we would be together forever.  Not really.  But anyway, soon I fell in love with him.  So in love, in fact, that I could see myself being with him forever.

But there was a problem.  I was going to college soon, and I was planning to go far away from my hometown.  We both knew this, and we also knew that he was going to stay in our home city for school.  Since the beginning of our relationship, I had planned to break up with James when it came time for college, if it lasted that long.  As the senior summer drew closer, however, I found myself incredibly sad at the thought that I would have to end something so perfect.  So I made a decision to ask him what he thought we should do.

He said we should try to make it work.  Knowing him, this didn't surprise me.  For me, though, it was not so simple.  I like to think of myself as a romantic at heart, but I am also a realist.  All that I had heard from the older, "wiser" adults was that this would never work.  We would certainly be broken up by thanksgiving break if we tried this, and it would be because one of us found somebody else.  Someone would get very hurt.  That much was sure.

How easy is it for us to let others influence us?  Even when they don't really know what they are talking about?  There was no adult in my life who really knew how strongly I felt about James.  My parents expected me to break up with him.  They wanted me to.  But here's where my naivete comes in.  I didn't listen to them.  I couldn't.  I knew in my heart that if I ended this relationship, it would be the single biggest regret of my life.  So I agreed with James; we would try to make it work.

Here I am, one month into my college experience, two thousand miles away from James.  And yet, we have not grown apart, as the wise adults claimed we would.  If anything, we have grown closer together, and we talk more frequently now and have more interesting conversations than we did when I was back home.  Of course, it's hard as hell.  I have already cried several times because I miss him so much.  There is so much I want to do that I can't.  Cell phones and webcams help, but any time you completely lose the physical aspect of a relationship (I'm talking like, even a hug or kiss), it's extremely difficult.  But we're making it.  Every day, we prove them wrong.  "They" don't really matter of course, but it feels good to provide an example for people going through the same situation, or for people who were like me.  If you really want a relationship to work, and you are committed to making it work, then it can.  My mother gave me this advice: if you love a person, and they love you and treat you well, and you can see a future with them, then you should stay with them.  It would be foolish not to.

Don't protect yourself by letting statistics or risk make your decisions for you.  Be naive, be overly optimistic, be hopeful about the things you want, the people you want.  Right now I'm staring at the photo collage James made for me before I left.  It's all pictures of us, and they have in common that the two people in them are both happy simply to be with each other.  Even though I can't stand next to him right now, I am still happy.  I'm happy that I was able to let go of the worries everyone around me put into my head, happy that I am still in an amazing relationship, happy that when I come home for thanksgiving, I will actually have something to be thankful for.  So what do I know?  Long-distance relationships can work, and if it's really love, then love is enough to make it work.  Is that naive?  Maybe.  But in a good way.