Last weekend I visited Johnny in NYC after not seeing him for 25 days. I posted about it briefly on my Insta stories and was surprised to receive such a response from so many of you! It turns that that a lot of us are in long distance relationships and lots of you wanted to know if Johnny and I had any tips for making it work when we don’t live in the same city. Turns out, we do.

Johnny and I are in the car driving to the shore now (to attend a very exciting wedding of some of our best friends!) and took the time to compile a few things that have helped us with our long distance relationship (mostly I told him what I was writing, ha 😉 ). Though we are not even close to mastering a long distance relationship, and are learning new ways to figure it out literally every day, we have spent quite a bit of time a part in the last 3 and a half years together and have learned a few things along the way.

He’s been in Chicago and me in New Jersey, he’s been in Barcelona and me in Prague, and now he’s in NYC and I’m in Philly. It’s definitely not as convenient as when we lived across the quad from each other in college… but it has taught us how to deal with long distance and make the most of it. Below are a few personal tips that I hope can help or encourage you in some way if you’re in a long distance relationship now or in the future.

Communicate all the time–

I’ve found that the easiest way to always feel connected to someone, even when you’re miles away, is to talk to them as often as you can. Johnny and I speak on the phone 3+ times a day and text in between that, DMing (okay I mostly DM him and he doesn’t answer), and emailing ha. He is my #1 priority to communicate with (besides my family) and it really helps us get through periods of missing each other when we’re constantly touching base about our days. He’s the first person I talk to in the morning and the last I talk to at night, which kind of sort of makes it feel like we’re spending the day together. 🙂

Plan ahead–

This past weekend we sat down for lunch with our calendars (and a drink ha) and mapped out our weekends and holiday breaks for the rest of 2018. That way we knew what each of us were doing on a given weekend and could figure out which of those weekends we could spend together. We pick weekends that we want to be together (we aim for at least every other weekend), and then decide where we want to be (NYC, Philly, LBI, Vero Beach, Chicago, etc.) and coordinate the travel logistics accordingly. We will also will plan out most of the weekend that we’re together– from brunch/dinner reservations to drinks with friends and any other activities we want to do. By planning ahead of time we don’t end up sitting around like, “where should we go to dinner tonight” and in turn don’t waste any time that we could be spending together. We treat every weekend we get to be together like a mini vacation and that makes them so much fun to look forward to. 🙂

Know each other’s love languages–

I’ve talked about this before, but knowing each other’s love languages is a game changer. Everyone feels love best in different ways, and knowing how your significant other feels love best (whether it be through words or quality time or something else) can guide you in how you show them that you love them. Johnny’s love language is quality time, whereas mine is words of affirmation/acts of service. Therefore, I try to spend uninterrupted time with him (by going out to dinner, spending the day together, etc.) and he says words of affirmation to me and does small acts to help me out (by writing sweet notes to me, helping me out with whatever I’m doing, etc.). Take the quiz asap if you haven’t already (even if you’re single!!) and let me know what love language you are! It’s a fun and helpful quiz to take no matter where you are in life.

Be creative–

We are always thinking of how we can do fun, out-of-the-box things when we’re together. We get *really* into our birthday/Christmas presents (think: surprise helicopter rides, Broadway shows, staycations, etc.) and that keeps everything new and fun. I love surprising him, and he knows that I hate surprises (always need to plan my outfits ahead of time, come on) so we stay creative without making each other mad, ha. This year we’re already brainstorming how we are going to do our Christmas/birthday/anniversary gifts and are thinking about combining them into one and doing something a little different… I’ll be sure to share it on here when it comes closer to the holiday season!

Trust above everything else–

All of these tips are no use at all if you don’t trust your boyfriend or girlfriend. If you have trust issues from something that happened in your relationship in the past, whether with the person you’re with now or someone else, talk it out. There’s no harm in saying that you had something happen to you in the past where trust was broken and therefore have a harder time trusting now. Trust comes with time and truly knowing someone, and then relying on God to have a great plan for you, in which everything works out for a reason.

I need to wrap up this post because Johnny just put on the Beauty and the Beast soundtrack (not kidding) and we’re about to have a karaoke session part 3 (we’ve been to two karaoke bars in the past two weeks…). I hope these tidbits bring a little happiness and extra love to your long distance relationship! xx