I’ve been in a relationship for the last two years with my best friend from high school and we’ve just started long distance. I’m at university whilst they’re on a year abroad. We’ve been struggling to stay in contact and I’m beginning to question whether or not we should be together anymore, especially since I’ve been struggling to stay present and make the most of my university career. I wonder what it would be like to be with other people. What should I do?
Greetings my anonymous tipster. I have a little secret to share with you — you are not alone in facing this problem, and you are not the first person to question the situation that you have found yourself in. I myself was recently in a similar predicament (I know, how scandalous to discover that your old uncle has had a few romantic rendezvous too). Towards Summer’s end, I had to make a decision: stay with the person I was dating and in love with, but in doing so, choose to be in a long distance relationship that was split by hemispheres, or break up. I’ll cut to the chase and tell you that we sadly chose the latter option. I’ll tell you why we personally did so, and maybe my reasoning can help you with your current situation.
Now, I believe that the fundamental basis of any good relationship is communication — you cannot simply decide something on your own that impacts both of you. Everything must be discussed, because at the end of the day you are involved in a relationship, not a business transaction. So, when the inevitable date of my departure started to approach, it became clear that we were going to have to have a conversation about what to do. But in order to have a fruitful conversation, both of us had to be open to the other’s opinion, and willing to alter our own based on what the other thought.
I went into the conversation with an open mind, I had weighed up the options and had an idea of what each meant to me: choosing long distance meant not having to live with the ‘what if,’ not having to suffer under the weight of ‘what could have been.’ It meant getting to have this person who had become the symbol of comfort, assurance, happiness — love — still be in my life. Keeping my best friend. But choosing to stay with them also meant that I was going to have to accept that I would have one foot inside, and one foot outside, the front door of my life. Choosing to break up with them meant the inevitable: losing someone who meant the world to me and who I’d so carefully and cautiously handed over a piece of my heart to (I’m just a big old sap). It meant having to suffer through the processes of slowly severing them from me in hopes that maybe one day in the distant future we could start over as friends. These were the options I had presented myself — then came their stance. They explained that as much as they loved me, they could see no endpoint in sight, a point when we would be together again in the same place, and that that unknowability outweighed the only pro; that we would still be together. This fact overwrote everything else for them, because in the face of it, they couldn’t stand the idea of how it would restrict both of us from fully living our present lives.
Our conversation boiled down to one word, choice. What were we willing to choose? Because at the end of the day, that is what love is, choice. Love is not simply a feeling, a description, it is an act. Because all expressions of love will always fall short when they don’t have the actions to back them up. Love is about actively setting aside time for the person, not only because you need to, but because you want to. It is about scheduling that phone call, putting in the extra effort to make time for an over-the-phone movie night, making sure that you do not go to bed without checking in on each other’s days. It is about doing all of this because the idea of not being with the person is so much more painful than the occasional hassle of trying to organise your life around scheduling time with them. In my case, our act of love to each other was choosing to let each other go, knowing that without an endpoint, neither of us were willing to place the other in the position where choice transformed into chore.
It is okay to have doubts, we all have our doubts, but consistent doubt is where the line becomes blurry. That is where choice begins to fade and the obligation of chore takes over. And when you feel obligated to be with someone, you are no longer loving them, you are pitying them. You are holding both of yourselves down and back, restricting yourselves from the beauty of pain, and the option to move forward with your lives. A part of your old uncle feels like you have answered yourself in the act of asking. I hope my insight and tale has helped. If it’s any consolation, it’s been a month since me and my partner parted ways. I know we’re both doing okay. I know that because I know that if either of us weren’t, we would reach out to the other. But that if neither of us ever do, the fact that we could is a testament of the love we had and have. I hope you allow yourself the space to have something like that too.
Much love and kindness,
Your Old Uncle Egbert xx
Illustration by Amelia Patterson (@patt_paints) for The Student
