Monday, November 28, 2011

What November 24th-28th Means To Me: Romance and the Long Distance Relationship

Thanksgiving is now officially behind us, catapulting American society into the surreality otherwise known as December.  Christmas decorations are up, people be shoppin', and everyone has their eye towards some sort of vacation.  (on a side note: I heard on NPR this morning that today is the busiest travel day of the year.  I always figured people traveled the Monday after Thanksgiving to beat the Sunday return rush.  Could it be that everyone has tried this tactic and, therefore, Monday is now a busier travel day?)

Anyway, speaking of romance, I finally saw the movie "Like Crazy" this weekend (hardly a shock to those who know me) which is essentially an indie movie about a long distance relationship featuring a young couple fighting as hard as they can to 1) make it work and 2) end the "long distance" part of it (if you're dying to see this movie, STOP READING NOW...MINOR SPOILERS!).  Of course, I enjoyed the movie (though my friend hated it), but I loved it because 1) I always wanted to be in a long distance relationship and 2) it touched on the exact thing I'm scared of.

The idea of the long distance relationship seems appealing to me because of the built-in "ticking clock" mechanism.  When your time spent together always has a limit, my guess is you're not wasting it on the mundane, simply because time actually spent together consistently feels limited and, therefore, fresh. You can consistently have that "OMG, I can't believe we only have 2 days left" conversation and, therefore, are forced to always make the best of it because you never actually see beyond that limited time. The characters in the movie were engaged in a relationship that spanned years, and the common theme behind all their encounters was the fight to permenantly be in the same place.  It was an all encompassing battle that gave the two a common goal, an us-against-them mentality.  And, lets face it, sometimes humans just want to win, to acheive their goals, and often lose sight of the overall benefit. 

Once the characters finally did reach this collective goal, it immediately removed the main romantic thread that was holding it together in the first place.  Now that the clock stopped ticking, they entered an "OK, now what?" kind of moment.   And this is, more or less, what I know will probably happen should I ever find myself in one.  It's easy to live in a fantasy, after all, since long distance couples generally just see each other during vacations (and who ever hates vacation!).  But once hard reality sets in and there's actually a future on the horizon, the game changes and, with it, everything you knew about said relationship.

Not saying this is true for all long distance relationships, clearly many work, I just figure it would be an issue for my hypothetical one. 

No comments:

Post a Comment