How to Make a Long-Distance Relationship Work With Travel: Women Who Travel Podcast - Condé Nast Traveler

How to Make a Long-Distance Relationship Work With Travel: Women Who Travel Podcast - Condé Nast Traveler

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This week, as we kick off February, we're chatting about a major reason why Traveler editors have zipped back and forth across the globe: long-distance relationships. Joined by community editor Megan Spurrell and journalist Sarah Walton, we're diving into the ins and outs of making a cross-continent, let alone transnational, relationship work—all backed by some 10-plus years of first person, long-distance relationship experiences between us. Some key takeaways? Always have a plan for when you're going to see each other next. Don't worry too much if your friends and family don't understand. And since you're traveling already, planning a trip to a new destination may be better than visiting each other at home.

Thanks to Sarah and Megan for sharing the highs and lows of living thousands of miles away from your partner. And thanks as always to Brett Fuchs for engineering and mixing. To keep up with our podcast each week, subscribe to Women Who Travel on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And, if you have a minute to spare, leave a review. We’d love to hear from you. Be sure to sign up for the newsletter to keep up to date with our live episodes, meetups, and trips, too.

Read a full transcription of the episode below.

Meredith Carey: Hi everyone and welcome to Women Who Travel, a podcast from Condé Nast Traveler. I'm Meredith Carey and with me, as always, is my co-host Lale Arikoglu.

Lale Arikoglu: Hello.

MC: This week we are doing something a little different and speaking from the heart on a Women Who Travel love hotline of sorts. With Valentine's Day coming up, we decided it was time to chat about the ins and outs of long-distance relationships. Joining us this week, are community editor, Megan Spurrell.

Megan Spurrell: Hello.

MC: And journalist, Sarah Walton.

Sarah Walton: Hello.

MC: Who have both lived the LDR life.

MS: Sure have.

MC: So I would love to start, maybe with Lale, and ask how the long-distance stretch or stretches of your relationship started and whether or not you had a plan on how you were going to tackle surviving that time apart.

LA: Oh, we had absolutely no plan. There was no plan at all. I was in my early twenties. You don't have plans then. I barely have plans now. I think we knew pretty quickly that we were onto something pretty good and it definitely wasn't like any relationship that I'd had before. Obviously it's slim pickings when you're 23 but we were excited. And I think, just before we started recording we were talking about this, which is that you kind of had two options at the beginning of relationship when you're from different places—and different countries in my case—which is that either you can be totally logical and sensible and just call it quits before you even get emotionally invested in each other.

Or if you're like me who watched far too many rom-coms growing up, you get swept up in the romance of it all and you let yourself enjoy it and then by the point where you actually have to start planning, making those decisions, it's too late and you're totally invested.

MC: You're past the point of no return.

LA: And you're like, all right, I guess we're just in this together now.

MC: Megan, how about you?

MS: Yeah, I think, when we were talking about this yesterday, I was remembering that the first high school boyfriend I ever had also started as a long-distance relationship because I was going on a summer trip, blah blah blah. But I feel like it's something you never plan, but you also, you right away have to be like, How much do I like this person? Am I willing to go through a lot of inconveniences for them? And you start asking yourself those big questions so much sooner. And I think, for me as well, right when those questions came up I was like, yeah, I would do some crazy things for this person. I would travel a lot and spend a lot of time on the phone and become a lot more familiar with Skype. Sure and then you just suddenly you're doing it. In my case it's five years later and you're still doing it.

SW: I agree to absolutely no plan whatsoever. I think you would have told me at the time that I would have been doing a long-distance relationship—six years in the end—I'm not sure I would have actually gone for it at the time. But you don't think like that.

I met my boyfriend while we were both traveling and assumed it was a little holiday romance and it kept going. And you're right, it does make you have to make big decisions early on because you can't break up with someone who's just flown across the world to see you. Vice versa, if you put all that money on a plane ticket, when you get there, you don't want them to turn around and go, "Oh, it's not really working now." So you have to be quite sure.

At the same time, I think it means you develop a very different kind of relationship because you spend all this time apart and you'd have to talk to each other. People assume that because you're separated, you don't have a strong relationship. And I think it's the opposite because you really get to know that person with just talking for hours on end in between your trips.

LA: I think that's such an interesting point because part of it for me is that we met when we were really young and so a lot of people, older and my peers included, I don't think necessarily took how serious I was about it particularly seriously.

But you fast track a lot of the decisions that you sometimes um and ah over for a long time in a relationship. Even something as basic as like are we exclusive? What does that mean? Are we allowed to see other people even though you're in completely different continents? We spoke for hours and hours over Skype.

Actually thinking about having the person fly over to see you reminded me of the first time that my now-husband, because it worked out, spoiler, Chris flew over to see me in London and I was very broke and was saving up money to be able to come over to New York. So I was actually living with my parents for a while. Chris arrived at Heathrow, and very characteristically was totally unprepared, had no information with him including didn't have my parents address. I'm waiting at arrivals, Terminal Five, it's actually where the Love Actually opening scene is filmed. I was ready and then everyone comes off the flight. No one appears. Still no Chris. Time goes by and then this unknown number phones my phone and it is U.K. immigration and they had detained him. It was because he had not been able to put an address on his landing card. He had put something, which was that he knew the neighborhood that my parents lived in, so all he had written in all caps was Notting Hill.

I had to speak to this immigration agent on the phone for quite a while and vouch for him and say that he would be sent back to America within so many days and it was a whole ordeal. He's American and has great passport privilege. So you knew he was going to be fine, but it was a real introduction to our back and forth across the ocean.

MC: I feel like they would have just thought he was some crazy person who had some obsession with Julia Roberts.

LA: Completely. He looked like an absolute idiot.

MS: I'm getting images of Joey in Friends when he first goes to London.

SW: Oh, I had exactly the same situation. This was at a very small airport in the northeast of England. It was a very small flight. It was probably about six people and after about 40 minutes, my partner still hadn't come through. I was the only person waiting and then two burly immigration security officers come out and come up to me and say, "Are you waiting for someone?"

LA: That's what they said on the phone.

SW: "Who would that person be?" Then they proceeded to question me for about 10 minutes, but quite personal questions. "When was your partner last here?" I couldn't remember under the pressure because he'd been coming to the U.K. a lot. Then they were saying things like, "So are you planning to get married?" And I was like, "Why? What has he said?" It was like they'd spoken to my parents or something and were trying to get some answers.

It's things like that where you don't expect to have to suddenly worry that your partner's going to get picked up by immigration and not allowed in for a holiday for entirely innocent reasons.

LA: My dad got like very on his high horse about it and was like, "This is ridiculous. Why should he have somewhere to stay? He's a free spirit. What if he wants to sleep on a bench in a park?"

MC: Classic.

MS: We need more people like your dad.

LA: Truly, we do.

MC: I want to go back to something you were saying earlier, which is that, both of you were saying, that sometimes people don't take your relationship as seriously and I feel like a lot of times long-distance relationships, you don't overlap with the things that are going on in your personal life and in your work life and your family life. How do you grapple with sharing those things, with making sure the other person is included, that you are included in their day-to-day life? How does that pan out, in reality?

MS: Well, actually a couple of years ago we wrote something on Traveler that was in defense of the long-distance relationship. We had a bunch of different editors on staff write something they'd learned or why they still believed in it. Mine was all about how your worlds don't overlap and you have this person who is so important to you, but also none of the other people in your world know them because they're on the other side of the world.

To me that has always been harder than integrating into Henry's life because the two of us, Henry and I, can FaceTime each other all day long. I think sometimes you love talking about each other's days and sometimes you realize that doesn't really matter anymore and you just want to talk about a random movie that you watched or watch a movie on Skype together. That is a thing, I'm sure we've all done it.

I think what's really hard is when the people who are so close to you are like, "I can't believe I still haven't met this person. Like who is he?" I think that's what can feel so unsettling sometimes. I think what I've learned is you have to really block it out because otherwise it starts making you think like, oh my gosh, am I crazy? Is this person even real? Why hasn't my sister met someone I've dated for two years now and lived in Lima, Peru with. I don't understand. I think that's something that I still don't know how you do it because until that person visits and it lines up when your other people are around, it's kind of like you have to understand that you're going to be in this sort of isolated little bubble, but it's a really good bubble.

SW: It's hard I think for your family as well. I think my parents still feel like they would like to know Brian better, particularly because I think my brother's wife has just been a huge part of our family since she was a teenager. So they know her really, really well in comparison. They feel that they haven't had the opportunity to get to know him as well, particularly now that we are living together and they realize he's probably, hopefully, going to be around for awhile. So we've made an effort to try and do big family occasions. So he's been over to spend Christmas with my family or new years and try and get all the family together at once.

In fact that was the first time he met my parents was on Christmas Eve or right before a really big Christmas, the family Christmas with the entire family there ,and he stayed for four days. Intense.

LA: Throw him right into the deep end.

SW: It is. The whole thing about long-distance relationships, it's in at the deep end.

LA: And so the two of you found quite an interesting way of meeting up and seeing each other regularly. Tell us a bit about that because I'm very intrigued because I did mine—it was like a job—I did it so differently.

SW: We went on holiday, we went on a lot of holidays. I was counting up earlier and I think it was 35 countries over six years. Don't ask me how many trips there were because we repeated some trips. We did see each other at home and spent time in each other's home countries, home cities. But I was trying to remember how we started doing that and it was not really planned. We'd seen each other. I visited him, he'd come to see me. Then I think Brian just said, we were trying to decide when to see each other again. He goes, "I've always wanted to go to Istanbul" and I'm like, "Me too. Let's go to Istanbul. Okay." Then that turned into an eight-day trip where we did Istanbul, Cairo, and Dubai, sort of whistle-stop all the way through.

We just really enjoyed it. It was a very different experience to seeing each other at home. There was always something to do. You were having all these amazing experiences together and it became really addictive. So after that we decided, well, let's do another trip. From there, each time we left each other, we had made a rough plan of what we were going to do for the next place and the next destination we wanted to go to and carried on from there. It became our thing for a long time.

LA: I think that was also really interesting because from my experience, traveling with someone is usually a pretty good indication of whether you want to live with someone.

SW: I agree.

LA: What were some of the sorts of things you learned as you started to tackle the challenges of traveling together?

SW: Always, when you're booking a hotel, check what the bathroom is like.

When you're booking a hotel, check what the bathroom is like, because on your, essentially what is your second date with someone, if you turn up and discover it has one of these fancy open-plan bathrooms, it leads to very interesting situations. You do! These bathrooms, they don't have proper doors. They have one of these big glass panels. You know, you need some kind of privacy at the beginning of your relationship. So I spent a lot of time ringing hotels going, "I'd love to come stay with you. Could you describe your bathrooms to me, and particularly how solid the door is?"

MC: I feel like from the outside it seems like it's the perfect way to create new memories where no one has—and this isn't the right way to put it—but the upper hand, like no one is in their place. So by going and traveling somewhere new, you're both experiencing something for the first time versus going to a place and seeing how someone else lives their life on the day-to-day.

SW: Absolutely. Yes.

MC: Did that come into play at all when you were thinking about it?

SW: Yes. I don't think I realized it at the time that that's why it works so well because no one was under pressure to be the host. You were taking it in turns to decide what you did next. Taking it in turns to decide who picked the next restaurant. And when you're traveling you see each other at your best, I think, if you love traveling—but also at your worst when you have to get up at one in the morning for the midnight flight that's then delayed for 10 hours and you're stuck in an airport with each other and you're tired and grumpy and that's when you really see what someone is like and it... Just like as you have to spend hours talking to each other, it forges a very strong relationship, I think.

LA: You're kind of forced into a lot of the mundanities that you can avoid in the early stages of a relationship when you're in the same place, which sort of feels like counter-intuitive.

MS: Well and I also find because of... We were talking about how this relationship can feel isolated from your everyday life. When a person you're in a long-distance relationship with comes to visit, there are so many obligations. It's like this friend wants to meet them, or your family another time. And it ends up being a lot about other people sometimes, which I think can be really hard. And when you're traveling it's about you. It's the two of you doing your thing. We've done, Henry and I have done so many different versions of long-distance but we had a period where we were also meeting up in different places and I think we figured, we're already taking time off work. We're already flying halfway across the world. It can be a different direction or we can make a trip out of this.

And I think that's also how you keep feeling like you're having new memories with each other and it's not just like an obligation of slogging back and forth between two places, which I think is kind of what grinds a lot of people down with it. They can't handle just going back and forth, back and forth and feeling like it's just something they have to do. I think that's also can be an indicator of when maybe the relationship isn't one worth going back and forth for but still even the best they can be really tiring and exhausting.

SW: You make a really good point of that idea. It's just the two of you and imagine a really good dinner date where you feel like there's no one else in the room. And now imagine that for four whole days in a city together. And my partner and I now live together and we do things like argue about who takes the bins out and very mundane things and I still want us to go traveling. We have trips booked and I'm still really looking forward to it. We'll spend all day before with each other, but it'll be different when we get there because again, it's the two of us in a new place.

MS: Okay. I have to say though, after having been long-distance, once you are—whether it's when you're traveling somewhere together or when you're finally living together for the first time—isn't the best thing though finally getting to argue about who takes the trash out?

SW: Yes.

MS: That's so sweet.

LA: It does feel like a luxury once you finally have it, although the novelty wears off pretty quickly, I will say.

MC: You have that first argument and were like, "Okay."

LA: And we actually don't argue about the trash, because Chris is very good. If anything I’m the one that's the lazy one, when we argue about different things.

SW: Have you ever used the, "I moved across the world for you."

LA: Oh, 100 percent. Actually, No. I mostly have when I'm really hungry and tired and I can't figure out what I want to cook for dinner, I'll have a meltdown in the supermarket and just be like, "What is wrong with this country? Why are there so many options? Why don't you just have plain couscous? Why do you have 10 different flavors?" And there's a lots of the "this country" that he gets.

MS: It's funny, I hear a lot of "this country."

LA: It will be the other way round if and when we live in London and he will have to adjust the quirks of the British people.

MC: And you'll have to just sit there and take it after all these years.

LA: Be very, very patient. Yes. And I love America, just for everyone listening.

MC: I am curious how you all justify personal travel and trips that you take to visit other people or other vacations that you spend not traveling to see that person, when you have someone you need to be visiting in a long-distance relationship?

LA: I think that's a good issue to raise just in that having a long-distance relationship is very expensive and you kind of like have to be a certain level of privileged to be able to have one in the first place. You have to be able to afford those flights or that train or to have a car to drive to wherever the person is. And you have to kind of decide how you budget around that and what you prioritize. And I think when we were first long-distance, we were at a sort of different life stage from where we were now where there wasn't as much personal travel happening just because we were living on much more of a budget.

But I remember there was one sticking point where Chris had been invited to a wedding that was in some far-flung place and it was very much a choice of whether he kind of skipped the wedding to see me or skipped seeing me to attend this wedding. And we came to a conclusion and it was, it all worked out. But it was really tough because I was like, "I don't want to deprive you of your own fun and a life outside of me. But at the same time if we don't see other, we won't see each other for six months. And then it's like, six months is a really long time. And I think that was something that I always found really hard to do. And then I would feel guilty if I started planning my own travel without him.

MC: What was the conclusion of the argument? What ended up happening?

LA: Oh, he came to see me.

MS: Okay. I know I'm taking us in a loop right now, but something you said about the privilege of being able to visit each other. So Henry and I went through a stretch where we had two six-month stretches where we didn't see each other because I had a new job and had just moved and then he couldn't come into the country because he has to be out for a certain amount of time each year and it was really expensive. And I remember people being like, "Well, how often do you guys see each other?" That is always the first question people ask when you're in a long-distance relationship. And I'm like, that is not anyone's business. Don't remind me about this thing I'm stressed about. But I remember people being like, "Wow, it's been six months, that's crazy." And I'm like... I would love to be able to just jet off to Peru whenever I want. I would love that. I can't afford it. And that's why we're waiting.

And I think it's like you realize all these things other people don't think about, of course. But it is like a really interesting experience to understand the nuts and bolts of it just beyond the emotional stress of being really far from the person you love. There are just so many other factors that go into it that are out of your control and I think as a couple you have to be willing to stand up for them and you have to also make those choices to sometimes miss out on other things or sometimes be like, "I'm going to prioritize a personal trip, whether it's a friend's wedding, or it's a trip with your girlfriends, or solo trip that like you've been dying to take." You have to make those choices sometimes, but also know that when you start having patterns of either always choosing each other or never choosing each other, they then become your relationship. And that's it.

SW: I think you're right. There are a lot of sacrifices you have to make to be able to get a long-distance relationship to work and I think I never figured out how to get a balance. And I think that's why increasingly over time I felt that it was going to have to come to an end, not the relationship but the long-distance part of it because in, the nuts and bolts of it, I was working every spare minute I had to get enough overtime to have the trips, to have the time for the trips and the money for the trips. So when I wasn't traveling I was at work and it's actually quite exhausting. And the traveling was still lovely to have those experiences, but it was affecting the quality of my life all the rest of the time and it was just too hard to continue.

LA: Well, and I imagine you probably felt that you were almost like living in this weird sort of limbo where you were not committing wholly to being in the place that you were in but unable to commit fully to your partner as well, because he's not there.

SW: Absolutely. Yeah. And you don't feel like you're doing either particularly well and you have a split life. You have a spit life: you have a completely different life with your partner and a completely different life back at home with a job and your friends and family there. And I guess we talked about it early, marrying the two together, but that's what makes... That is the downside. There are many, many upsides of this kind of relationship but that is the downside.

MS: I have noticed something interesting. So Lale, you met when you were essentially traveling in the U.S., right. And you guys met while traveling and Henry and I met while traveling. I also just feel like this is an affliction that so many passionate travelers encounter. So many of the people I know who are long-distance relationships, they've been born of travel or living abroad and they're these people who have this interest in the world and people from different places and it just like, I don't know, it feels like if you're someone who travels a ton, this is eventually going to happen to you too.

SW: Well, I always wondered about people who have relationships that start off together and then become long-distance. I guess sometimes it's forced, but if somebody... If a partner chooses to move away from someone they're in a relationship with, I've always wondered how... That must make it a very different dynamic, I think.

LA: I had that.

SW: Oh my goodness.

LA: And clearly we broke up. But yeah, and it was a very different dynamic. The whole experience of the long-distance was very, very different because it didn't feel like we were on kind of an equal playing field.

SW: I think that's important to feel that you're both equally put out by this is important. Yeah.

MC: I think for the friends of mine that they've had to separate after being together, the ones that have worked out, there's always been an end date to that separation when it starts. So it’s that someone's going to grad school or someone's going for work assignment or whatever it is and there is a light I guess at the end of the tunnel that they have to look forward to where they know that their life will return to the way it was, even if that thing happens often. Because I have a friend who is getting her PhD and so she travels for about six months out of the year and sometimes leaves for a year. But they know that for the other six months or a year at a time they'll be back together. And when I've talked to them about it, that's the way that it works for them because if there wasn't an end date, they don't know if they would be able to comfortably do it because it would be too difficult.

MS: Well, that was the advice someone gave me when I started, when I got into this long-distance relationship, was to, whenever you say goodbye, always know the next time you’re going to see each other. We haven't always been able to do it because you don't always have the privilege of that. Sometimes I don't know when I'm going to get off work next or whatever it is, but to at least have this strong focus on being like "We need to have a date soon," of when it is and if it's going to be in six months then fine, but let's pick that time and the place so that we can kind of focus on that and not feel just lost in the muck of this thing that's so ambiguous, it doesn't feel real.

SW: Yeah, I agree. Always know when you're going to see each other next, even if you don't know exactly where or how it's going to happen, but have those dates sorted. It's so important to have something to focus on. At the same time, you do kind of live your life by a little bit of a countdown and it's very hard to fall into the trap that you arrive and you see your other half, and you're so excited, and you instantly go, I've only got six days. Now we only got five days left. And you have to really force yourself to just forget about it. Just enjoy this time and stop the clock for a little while.

LA: Was it hard when you were doing all these travels? Because obviously when you're traveling and you're in a new place, you feel compelled to cram as much in as possible and see everything and experience everything because you're like, oh my God, I'm in Cairo for four days. I have to do everything. But you also want to be together, and a lot of being together is sitting and doing nothing and just watching TV, sleeping late, being lazy together. How did you kind of juggle those two needs?

SW: We did to begin with, we did the proper full on whirlwind through the places we visited. I think we'd been together about two and a half years before we had our first night in on the sofa watching television and it was because I was ill, I think. We'd gone away and we rented an Airbnb in Washington D.C. and I wasn't feeling great. And I said, “Can we just stay in and have a takeaway?” And I remember getting to the end of that night and going, well, we know we can cope with each other when nothing's really happening. So that's probably a good sign. That is quite hard.

MS: Feels like a milestone.

SW: It was a huge milestone just sitting on the sofa. Yeah. I found that hard to begin with. Over time, we started doing more trips where we would perhaps have a couple of days in a city really going for it and sightseeing, and then two days on a beach to just sit and to be calm, and that helped me. I think Brian was probably quite happy to just keep doing lots of sightseeing. And it took a while to sort of get used to the lying about on the beach thing. But yeah, that was what I enjoyed.

LA: Did you find it stressful when you would meet people on those trips and they'd ask where the two of you were from, and where you lived, and you'd have to be like, oh well, so I'm here and he's there, but we're together, and it's a bit complicated? I felt like I would always have to justify our situation in some way to make it more palatable to the person I was speaking to.

SW: I found people found it very romantic. I think we got pretty good reactions from people, when we're traveling. Yeah. People find it very romantic and yes, you do get a lot of questions.

I enjoy telling people about it. I always used to think that... It was when I was able to tell people we've been doing it for four years or five years at this point, then people were like, wow, how nice and you get to travel so much. People, you don't tell them about the downsides. Just the positives.

LA: I feel like all my close friends and family were super on board with us from a very early stage because they're great and that's why they're my close friends and that's why I love my family. But I think there definitely were people who loved the romance of it until it turned out that we were actually serious, and it wasn't a bit of fun and then they couldn't wrap their head around it and like you were saying, Megan, would ask sort of oddly personal questions. Like, when are you going to see each other next and do you think it's going to work out? Do you think this is going to be forever? And I'm like, do you ask everyone about their relationships that way?

MS: Well yeah, and people say things like, “That's so crazy.” And I know they're just reacting, but when you're like I know it's crazy. This is really overwhelming to me. I don't want to have two different world clocks on my phone that I check all the time. And I think you have to focus on the positive and share that with people. But I have definitely experienced people who are just like, “Wow, I could never do that.” I'm like, okay,

LA: Well you're not doing it so.

MS: You're not doing it and I'm really trying to keep the stamina up sometimes. But I think yeah, it is only about you two ultimately. Something that was interesting for me because we started dating when I was in my early twenties, and I feel like at that age, and especially before that, something you care so much about when you start dating someone is what your friends think.

Like, is he actually cute? Is he kind of weird? Does that thing he does kind of annoy you or do we love it? This external validation, I feel like now I don't care. If I like someone I like someone. But that felt a lot more important to me at that time. And so I remember being like, what if we date for two years and I bring him home, my friends are like, “He's a weirdo. He is just so weird and I do not see this working out.”
And obviously I got over it and friends met Henry and were like, he's lovely. And I knew he was lovely, but it was... To be younger and going into something like that, and to date someone for so long before your people met him also made me be realize I really can't think about other people's judgment. I have to just have this be about me and us or it'll never work.

SW: It's interesting to hear that because I was—I'm not going to say I was old—but I was nearly 30 when I met Brian, and he's a couple of years older than me. And 30 is no age, but already people are beginning to sort of start wondering when are we’re going to settle down. And for us I think the questions early on from friends and family was, well, which one of you is going to move? And they would say it to our face, which one of you is going to move? How are you going to sort this out then? And, we'd just have to go, we don't really know yet, we haven't had that conversation. We don't have an answer clearly because we're still traveling to see each other.

And it's interesting to hear that you actually have the same pressures. It doesn't really matter what age you are. You still face those same pressures of people wanting that to be a temporary situation. Oh, well that's nice, you're traveling to see each other, but you should stop doing that. You should settle down.

MS: People have so many opinions about other people's lives.

LA: Well it's also just essentially speaks to an expectation to conform to like a certain way of living and not to sort of sound like having a partner in a different place is some sort of “I'm a citizen of the world, and I walk to my own beat or whatever.” But it doesn't fit nicely in a box in the way that the path of a relationship when you're both in the same place does to people. And I remember sort of talking to my mom about it because I was feeling really frustrated and feeling pressure from people to be able to answer to them for what on earth this thing was that I got myself into.

And my mom was just like, firstly, people are dumb so they don't listen to them. And she was like, just wait until you have a baby, because the questions will get that much more intrusive and rude. She was like people love to ask about other people's lives. It was quite good advice because then I kind of just realized that it wasn't anything personal and people are always going to ask that about something that they're curious about.

MS: Well, and you also realize people are literally asking about themselves. So when someone's asking you about wow, how can you handle the uncertainty of it? It's because uncertainty is something that's hard for them. And I think when you're just like, no one's actually asking about me. Everyone's trying to figure out something they're working on in their minds and then you just stop caring. But it still is disarming at first, for sure.

MC: I'm now going to ask you all a personal question.

MS: Get out.

LA: How dare you.

MC: Lale and Sarah, you guys have both ended—Sarah for you quite recently—the long-distance part for now of the relationship. What has going from being long-distance to living together done? And what have the different challenges shown up? That's not a sentence, but we'll go with it.

SW: It's been lovely. It really has. We always used to say we traveled a lot and we didn't live with each other, but it always felt like coming home when we were together, and now we actually do have a home together and it's really nice. And it's a bit of a new adventure. We are having to deal with the more mundane side of things. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. That's quite nice.

I know that travel will always be in our future together. We'll always keep going on trips, as many as we can from different places. Just visiting each other's families, is going to involve travel. But having those exotic, adventurous trips to strange places is something we'll keep doing. It's all been positive so far, but like I say, it's only been three months. So who knows?

LA: I feel like you've had enough time to figure out whether...

SW: Well, that's the thing. If you do spend that much time with someone, it's not a huge surprise when you move in with them. Then you know what someone's like by that stage.

LA: And hopefully your apartment bathroom has a door.

SW: Very solid door.

MC: Lale, how about you?

LA: What have I learned? Well, now actually at this point we have been in the same place together longer than we were apart. So this feels very much our normal now. And when we were first living together in the same city, we were sharing a tiny, tiny, tiny studio. And I think a lot of people would have driven each other mad and we didn't. And I think, what did I learn from it? I think it made us stronger as a couple.

I think both of us have jobs that require us to travel a lot. He's been away all this week for work. I'll be going away soon for my job. We feel very secure in that and it's never been a point of contention that both of us have to travel and we're both pretty ambitious and love our jobs a lot, and we have an understanding that that's fine. And obviously I miss him and we're apart but I'm never stressed by it. And I think sometimes when couples haven't had to deal with time apart before that it's this whole minefield that you have to navigate and rightly so. So I think that's really strengthened us.

And again, I think what you were saying about that love of travel staying, I think being in a long-distance relationship lets you know that the person you're with has a similar set of priorities and wants a similar lifestyle. And so there's never been a question of the fact that both of us want to see new places and experience new things and fly halfway—or the whole way—around the world for something crazy because we've done it before and now we get to do it together.

MC: That feels like a really beautiful place to end just so that everyone knows listening, we're going to put up a post in our Women Who Travel Facebook group and on Instagram for you to share your own long-distance survival tips and ask our experts questions. We'll link both of those in the show notes so that you can join the conversation. We would love to hear from you, Sarah, if people want to follow your life in New York now on social media, where can they find you?

SW: At @sarahwaltonnews, both on Twitter and Instagram.

MC: Megan, how about you?

MS: @spurrelly on Instagram.

LA: @lalehannah.

MC: I'm @ohheytheremere. You can also follow Women Who Travel at @womenwhotravel on Instagram. Be sure to subscribe to our Women Who Travel newsletter for stories and info on our meetups and trips as well. We will talk to you next week.

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2020-02-04 10:47:45Z
https://www.cntraveler.com/story/how-to-balance-traveling-for-a-long-distance-relationship-women-who-travel-podcast
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