How Do You Stop the Person You Love From Becoming a Stranger?

Have you ever been in a long-distance relationship before?

Maybe your partner is deployed.

Maybe you’re dating a pilot or a flight attendant.

Maybe one of you accepted a job in another state because it was the right career move, even though it meant putting your relationship to the test.

Maybe you met someone while traveling and neither of you expected to fall for someone who lived thousands of miles away.

Or maybe this isn’t even about a romantic relationship.

Maybe you’ve watched a friendship slowly change because life pulled the two of you in different directions. One of you got married. One of you had kids. One of you moved away. Before you knew it, you were wishing each other happy birthday on Instagram instead of calling each other the way you used to.

I’m asking because I’ve never really done long distance before.

Not in a romantic relationship.

And if I’m being completely honest, I don’t even think I’m very good at long-distance friendships either.

I don’t think I realized that until recently.

In a few weeks, I’ll be living in Vietnam for six months, and the guy I’m dating lives in California.

Even typing that sentence feels strange because just as we’re rebuilding our relationship, we’re about to make it even more complicated.

Sometimes life has a really interesting sense of humor.

Josh and I have known each other for almost a year and a half.

When I was living in Los Angeles, we dated for a little while. Life took us in different directions, and eventually I found myself in another relationship. That relationship ended, but somehow Josh and I never completely disappeared from each other’s lives.

We stayed friends.

He kept reading my writing.

He’d text me after I published something and tell me how proud he was of me.

Whenever I came up with another crazy idea, he never made me feel ridiculous for dreaming so big. If anything, he encouraged me to dream even bigger.

Looking back now, I think he has always been one of my biggest cheerleaders, even during the seasons when we weren’t together.

I’ve been thinking a lot about timing lately.

I used to believe that if two people were meant to be together, everything would naturally fall into place.

I don’t know if I believe that anymore.

I think it’s possible to meet someone wonderful and still not be in the right season of your life for that relationship.

Sometimes you’re still healing from something else.

Sometimes you’re chasing a dream that doesn’t leave much room for another person.

Sometimes you’re still trying to figure out who you are.

That doesn’t make the connection any less real.

It just means the timing wasn’t.

When Josh and I found our way back to each other, it didn’t feel like we were starting over.

It felt like we had been given another chance to meet each other as the people we’ve become instead of the people we were a year ago. We already knew each other’s stories. We had already seen each other through different seasons of life. The only thing that had really changed was us.

And maybe that’s why writing this feels so vulnerable.

Because this isn’t someone I casually dated for a few weeks.

This is someone who has quietly been part of my life for a long time.

He’s seen different versions of me.

The ER nurse who was exhausted all the time.

The woman trying to figure out what came after nursing.

The writer who took a chance on herself.

He’s watched me change, and somehow he never stopped believing in me.

I think that’s part of the reason I care so much about getting this right.

The last couple of nights have been a little different.

Josh and I usually FaceTime before we go to bed.

It’s never been something we had to put on the calendar or remind each other to do. It just became part of our routine. We’d tell each other about our day, complain about work, laugh about something completely random, and then we’d say goodnight.

It became one of those little rituals that you don’t really think about until it’s missing.

The last two nights, we haven’t talked.

As I’m writing this, I keep telling myself that it’s only been two days.

He’s already told me that work has been overwhelming. He’s in the middle of a really big project, and I know it’s been taking a lot out of him mentally.

I believe him.

That’s not the part I’m questioning.

The part I’m trying to understand is my own reaction.

Almost immediately, I noticed myself doing something I’ve done for years.

I started answering questions he hadn’t even been asked yet.

I told myself he was probably exhausted.

I told myself he probably fell asleep.

I told myself he’d been staring at a computer screen all day and simply didn’t have anything left to give.

Maybe every single one of those things is true.

But I also caught myself wondering why I was so quick to explain away something that had already started bothering me.

That realization stopped me.

Because I’ve worked really hard over the last few years to stop talking myself out of my own feelings.

There was a version of me that would convince herself that everything was fine simply because she didn’t want to be seen as difficult.

If something hurt, I’d tell myself I was overreacting.

If something felt off, I’d tell myself I was reading too much into it.

If someone disappointed me, I’d immediately start building a case for why they probably had a good reason.

I became really good at extending grace to everyone except myself.

I don’t want to be that person anymore.

At the same time, I also don’t want to become someone who assumes the worst because one small thing changed.

So I’ve been sitting with it instead.

I’ve been asking myself a different question.

What is this actually bringing up in me?

Because if I’m honest…

I don’t think two missed FaceTime calls are what’s bothering me.

I think they’re reminding me of something much older that I haven’t fully made peace with yet.

I think that’s why this has been sitting so heavily on my heart.

Because this feeling didn’t start with Josh.

If I’m really honest with myself, I think it started years ago.

When I packed up my life and moved from Dallas to Los Angeles, I never once thought I was also packing up the relationships I had here.

I knew I was leaving Texas.

I knew I was leaving my apartment.

I knew I was leaving the hospital I worked at.

I knew I was saying goodbye to everything that felt familiar.

What I didn’t realize was that I was also leaving behind the version of my friendships that only existed because we all lived close to each other.

I just assumed we’d figure it out.

I really believed we would.

I’d come home every few months.

We’d grab dinner.

We’d text throughout the week.

We’d FaceTime whenever we missed each other.

I don’t know why I believed that so confidently.

Maybe because when you really love someone, you don’t think distance is going to change anything.

You just assume you’ll always find your way back to each other.

At first, that’s exactly what happened.

Everyone checked in on me.

People wanted pictures of California.

They wanted to know if I liked working in the emergency room out there.

They wanted to know if I had made friends yet.

If I missed Texas.

If the beaches were actually as beautiful as they looked in the movies.

I remember feeling so loved during that time.

I remember thinking, We’re going to be okay.

I really believed that.

Then everybody just kept living their lives.

Some of my friends got married.

Some had babies.

Some bought houses.

Some changed careers.

I was working twelve-hour shifts in the emergency room, trying to survive, trying to adjust to a completely different city, and trying to figure out who I was becoming.

Nobody did anything wrong.

That’s the part that makes it so difficult to explain.

There wasn’t a fight.

Nobody decided they didn’t care anymore.

Nobody intentionally walked away.

Life just kept asking all of us to keep moving forward.

Looking back now, I honestly couldn’t tell you when everything changed.

I couldn’t tell you the last time we all talked every day.

I couldn’t tell you when the group chats became quieter.

I couldn’t tell you when seeing each other turned into, “We should get together soon.”

It happened so slowly that I don’t think any of us noticed it while we were living through it.

Now I’ll be scrolling through Instagram and realize someone had another baby.

Or their daughter started kindergarten.

Or they bought a house.

Or they celebrated another anniversary.

And I just sit there thinking… How did I miss all of this?

Then I remind myself that nobody forgot to tell me.

I just wasn’t there anymore.

I wasn’t part of their everyday life.

Social media makes that feeling really confusing sometimes.

You know what’s happening in someone’s life because you saw the pictures.

You know they went on vacation.

You know they got promoted.

You know their kid lost another tooth.

You know all these little details about their life, so your brain almost convinces you that you’re still close.

But you’re not.

You’re watching their life.

You’re not actually living it with them anymore.

I think that’s been one of the hardest parts of getting older for me.

Realizing that you can still love someone and slowly stop being part of each other’s everyday lives.

I don’t think love disappeared.

I think proximity did.

And maybe that’s what I’ve been afraid of this whole time.

Maybe that’s why two missed FaceTime calls affected me more than they probably should have.

It wasn’t really about those two nights.

Those two nights just reminded me of how quietly distance can change a relationship if nobody is paying attention.

Maybe I’m connecting things that aren’t connected.

Maybe I am overthinking.

I honestly don’t know.

But that’s where my mind went.

Writing all of this also made me realize something about myself that I don’t think I’ve ever admitted before.

I think this is one of the reasons I love traveling so much.

Every time I travel, I meet incredible people.

We’ll spend three or four days together exploring a city, trying different restaurants, talking about our lives until two in the morning, and by the end of the trip it feels like we’ve known each other forever.

Then it’s time to go home.

We hug goodbye.

Sometimes we exchange Instagram handles.

Sometimes we actually stay in touch.

Most of the time, life keeps moving for both of us.

And I’ve always been okay with that.

I think it’s because there was never an expectation that we were supposed to build a life together.

Our paths crossed.

We shared a few really beautiful days together.

Then we kept walking.

That felt natural.

Josh doesn’t feel like that.

I don’t want him to become another person I once shared a beautiful chapter with.

I want to know how his day was.

I want to hear him complain about traffic.

I want to argue over where we’re going to eat dinner.

I want all of those little ordinary moments that nobody posts online because those are the moments that actually build a life with someone.

Maybe that’s what I’ve been grieving these last few days.

Not something that’s happened.

Just the possibility that distance could quietly take those moments away if we’re not intentional about protecting them.

There’s something else I’ve been carrying around that I haven’t really known how to put into words.

Josh has been talking about buying a house in Dallas for a while now because he wants to be closer to me.

This isn’t something he mentioned once and forgot about.

He’s actually been looking.

Every now and then he’ll call me after touring a house, and we’ll talk about it. Sometimes he’ll tell me the layout was nice but something felt off. Other times he’ll say, “I could see myself living there, but I couldn’t picture us there.”

I don’t know why that sentence stayed with me, but it did.

Every time we have one of those conversations, I walk away feeling grateful and guilty at the exact same time.

I’m grateful because I know exactly where his heart is.

He’s not looking at houses because he loves Dallas.

He’s looking because he wants to be closer to me.

When I really stop and think about that, it makes me emotional.

I don’t think anyone has ever wanted to rearrange their life just to make loving me a little easier.

That’s not something I take lightly.

But almost immediately after feeling grateful, I start feeling guilty.

Not because he’s doing anything wrong.

Because I don’t even know if Dallas is where I want to build my own life anymore.

That’s such a strange sentence for me to write.

If you had asked me that question a few years ago, I would’ve answered without even thinking.

Dallas.

Of course Dallas.

My family is here.

I grew up here.

Some of the best memories of my life happened here.

It’s the place I’ve always called home.

At least I thought it was.

The more I’ve traveled over the last few years, the more complicated that answer has become.

Every place I’ve visited has left a little piece of itself with me.

Some cities made me feel more creative.

Some made me slow down.

Some made me wonder what life would’ve looked like if I had stayed a little longer.

Now I’m about to spend six months living in Vietnam, and I have no idea what’s waiting for me there.

Maybe I’ll come home realizing Dallas is exactly where I’m supposed to be.

Maybe I’ll come home realizing that I’ve been holding onto an idea of home that no longer fits the person I’ve become.

Maybe I’ll discover a version of myself that I’ve never had the chance to meet before.

I honestly don’t know.

That’s not a sentence that comes naturally to me.

I’ve always been someone with a plan.

Go to nursing school.

Become an ER nurse.

Move to California.

Leave nursing.

Take a chance on writing.

Even when my decisions looked risky to everyone else, they still felt clear to me.

This doesn’t feel clear.

It just feels important.

Something inside me keeps telling me to go.

Not because I’m running away from anything.

I think I’m running toward something.

I just don’t know what it is yet.

And maybe that’s why it’s been so hard for me to respond whenever Josh talks about buying a house here.

I don’t want him making such a big decision because of me while I’m still asking myself where I want to build my own life.

That doesn’t feel fair to him.

It’s not because I don’t see a future with him.

I do.

I just don’t know what city that future exists in yet.

Maybe that’s the conversation we’re really going to have to figure out together.

Not today.

Maybe not even this year.

But eventually.

Because I know who I want beside me while I’m figuring life out.

I’m just still trying to figure out where life is actually taking me.

I think that’s why I’ve been writing so much lately.

Writing has always been how I make sense of my life.

Sometimes I don’t even know what I think until I see the words staring back at me.

I’m sitting here thinking I’m writing about a long-distance relationship.

Now I’m not so sure.

I think I was writing about distance.

The way it changes people.

The way it changes friendships.

The way it changes families.

The way it quietly asks you to trust someone you’ve chosen, even when you can’t physically be beside them.

In a couple of weeks, I’ll be on a plane to Vietnam.

That sentence still doesn’t feel real.

I’ve wanted to do this for so long, and now that it’s finally here, I catch myself thinking about all the things I’m excited for.

I’m excited to wake up in a different country and build a routine that doesn’t exist yet.

I’m excited to discover little coffee shops I’ll probably end up visiting every morning.

I’m excited to get lost, meet new people, make mistakes, learn the language a little better, and collect stories that I don’t even know are waiting for me yet.

I think this next chapter is going to change me.

I just don’t know how.

The timing is funny because Josh is also going to be in Vietnam for a wedding.

For a little while, we’ll actually get to be in the same city.