“Oh, your boyfriend is in the Army? Have fun with that.”
I have heard this line more than my share in the past six months. Yes, I am dating a guy in the Army. He’s stationed in North Carolina and at any given time, I am over 450 miles away from him.
Ed and I met three years ago and have been great friends. Over the past summer we became closer and on the third of Aug. Ed flew home for the weekend just to ask me to be his girlfriend in person. As of this month, we’ve been together a little over six months and in those six months, I have seen him a total of 13 days; not even two weeks.
When it’s so plainly put, it sounds terrible and most people don’t understand how I can “willingly go through”. Yes, it is hard. But I don’t look at is going through some hardship and dealing with this distance. That isn’t what our relationship is. Ed is more important to me. If it means accepting the distance during his contract with the Army, then so be it.
Being in a long distance relationship makes our time together even more special. I don’t take the little things for granted. If anything, I cherish little things like being on the phone with him or talking on Skype more than I would if I were dating someone on campus.
Whining about how tough it is not seeing your significant other as often as you’d like won’t make it any easier. Not that I am the most mature person in the world, you cannot be naive and immature when in a relationship with a guy in the army.
Before we started dating, Ed overemphasized the fact that I have to be committed and patient in the relationship if I am serious about wanting it to work. He can have training for weeks or even months and not have access to his phone.
I visited Ed over Christmas break and I got butterflies in my stomach seeing him when he picked me up at the airport. That week with him was better than a whole month with anyone else. And it was then and there that I realized the distance is such a small factor compared to how happy I am being with him.
“Absence is to love as wind is to fire; it extinguishes the small and kindles the great,” Roger de Bussy-Rabutin said. I may not be able to see Ed every week, or even every month but I can handle waiting for him to come home or for when I have enough time off school to visit him because he’s worth making it work.
