My girlfriend and I are in a long distance relationship, I am studying in Europe while she is studying in Asia. She is extremely unhappy in this situation it seems and I don’t like seeing her unhappy, I also don’t want to lose her. What should I do? On another note she also continually hints that there are lots of guys chasing her now that I am away, is she trying to make me jealous or are there are motives?
Long distance relationships have been known to have a very low success rate. That’s because relationships themselves are very tricky and adding distance from each other adds extra strain onto the relationship. With such a huge distance between you too, it’s really not surprising that there might be issues.
The first thing you should realise is that your girlfriend is feeling insecure. That’s why she might be hinting at getting lots of interests from other men. It can be seen as a kind of test to you from her, to try and find out if you get jealous or not. To her, this would mean that you do care. Some guys take this form of testing as manipulation and get angry at it, but you shouldn’t get angry at her. It just shows you she feels insecure and needs to be reassured that you care about her.
You probably feel insecure too, and her mentioning things like that might give you the impression she’s looking at other options. Honestly, this happens with a lot of couples, long distance or not. It’s a very common play, and the best way to fix it is to simply talk. You need to tell her exactly how you feel. Tell her the part where you don’t want to lose her. You should also tell her how you feel about her saying the things about the guys. If it makes you angry, tell her that. You don’t have to be aggressive in your approach, but you should be honest.
Hopefully by opening communication better, you’ll be able to come up with ideas on how to reassure each other. Try and come up with a plan together on how you can spend more time. For example, why not set up a date night each week? This could be when you too skype each other at a specific time, play an online video game together, watch a movie together or simply talk face to face. You can also agree on how often to text each other, or try and chat to each other at least once a day. The specifics for these things should be decided by what works best for the both of you.
As students it may feel impossible to come with a time when you next see each other, but it can really help to try and plan that anyway. That way you will feel like you have something to really look forward to, and that your relationship is more solid and going somewhere. If you don’t have plans to physically meet, it can really damage how you feel about the relationship, for example, making you ask yourselves how legitimate it really is.
Another interesting way would be to send physical letters to each other. Snailmail has a closer, more romantic feel to it that emails or text. You can also print photos and put them in the letters, stickers and badges and just other things that will have a physical presence that will solidify the presence of your own relationship.
Finally, and this is my own personal tip from my preferences, why not surprise her by sending her flowers every now and again? Flowers are beautiful and romantic and having them sent from someone far away from you can feel extra special. With long distance relationships you have to go the extra mile (no pun intended) to really make sure your partner feels secure in the relationship.
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