love

Fiance and I currently live 70 miles apart. it sucks. We have lived 70 miles apart for nearly 4 years now. It's hard to believe. Two different cities, two different counties for that matter. When we first met in high school, we lived 10 miles apart. We saw each other just about every day. We're not much of phone conversation people. While we do talk every day, it rarely lasts more than 5 minutes. Just a quick update, more to hear each other's voices and say our "i love you's" than anything else. Our relationship works best when we are together, in person. enter difficulty with long distance. Despite the distance, and LA traffic and out of control gas prices we have seen each other at least once a week almost every week since we moved here in 2006. It was a necessary sacrifice for our relationship to work. The longest we have gone without seeing each other was 2 months while I was studying abroad in Europe.

Have you ever read The Five Love Languages? Fiance and I read through it as part of our own personal marriage prep and both loved it. To summarize, Gary Chapman explains that there are 5 different love languages, or ways that we perceive love: Words of Affirmation, Acts of Service, Quality Time, Physical Touch and Gifts. Each of us speaks a different love language, and when someone else speaks the same language we feel most loved. If your language is gifts, you feel most loved when you receive gifts, big or small lavish or simple, it's the thought that counts. The difficulty comes when we speak different love languages. If you are gifts but your partner is words, you will want to give them gifts to show you love them, when they really just need words. It doesn't mean you will be unsuccessful in your relationship or shouldn't be together but it can cause underlying misunderstandings and tension. The book tries to teach us how to speak each other's languages. That loving someone the way they need to be loved may not come naturally. There's a quiz at the end to determine each of your languages.

Mine is Quality Time, which translates into, well obviously spending time together. Undivided attention.  Followed closely by Physical Touch, this translates into needing time together, in person, hugs, holding hands, etc. Thus the long distance makes things difficult. I think most of our fights result from the simple frustration that we can't see each other every day. Fiance's number one is physical touch and so the concept of me needing just simple quality time is less intuitive for him. In depth conversation, and wanting to go places to have experiences with him are important to me but it's difficult for him because he just wants to snuggle on the couch at home and watch movies. Just having this understanding makes things a little bit easier.

You know one thing I'm really really looking forward to in marriage? Being able to see him every day. Knowing he'll be there at the end of the day. Being able to talk to him in person when I have a crap day and not have to cry to him on the phone and then try to go to sleep alone in my house. Having done the semi-long distance thing, it is not something I will take for granted. While I definitely like and need my occasional alone time, it'll be nice to know he's waiting to eat with me and make me laugh until I can't breathe.