We met on the teenagers subreddit over 3.5 years ago and started our long distance relationship soon after, my HUSBAND 💗 visited me first in Australia early 2024 then again late 2024, again early 2025 and then I saved up and took my whole family to texas in late 2025 and early 2026 we went again and brought him home <333 we had our beautiful wedding on the 10/10/2026 (I made the date 10/10 as Americans put the month first then the day whereas in aus we do it the opposite way so 10/10/26 was easy for both families lol!

Long distance isn’t for the weak but he made it easy, we both always put in 111% effort and time, the only days we didn’t call were the days we were travelling to each-other, ever since our first message to each other we never stopped talking. He is my everything and I am so forever blessed to have him here with me throughout our happy lives together. 💗💍

I can’t wait to propose to her. I wrote my vows before we even met in person, just because I knew she was special and I wanted to promise her things and share a life in which I can deliver on those promises. Now, we have met, and we agree on a vision for our future. I can’t wait to figure out her ring size and learn what styles she likes.

She is a brilliant and independent and capable person I admire. She has a soft side that I feel lucky to know. She rarely sings or dances, but it’s precious when she does. She’s a nerd – nerdier than me. Encyclopedic knowledge of her special interests. She loves animals and lots of different rock music and she hates it when her nail polish gets chipped. She happens to be incredibly beautiful.

I got laid off from my desk job with health insurance and ran out of money, so I’ve started washing dishes in restaurants just to save up to be ready to propose. She loves and supports me even when I don’t have anything in my bank account, and because of her, I want to get serious about figuring out that bank account. I want to manage my small debts, accrue savings and buy whatever lab-grown diamond she wants. Every plate I scrub is for her.

I’m so happy this girl wants to look at rings together. I’m so touched that she tears up when we talk about it. I’m so ready to prove to her through action that her love is safe with me.

We are looking at rings when she visits this winter so that at a later time, when it makes sense, I can ask her to marry me, and I really cannot wait. She is my heart, forever.

35F. Very recently had a breakup of a LDR. It was the first time for me in a long time feeling like I'd found a fit for me. But it turned out that it was mostly the butterflies and there was no real desire to make it work. I feel betrayed, hurt, heartbroken, everything

We were supposed to meet in a couple of months for the first time. I was excited

And that's the thing. It's a special kind of grief when you lose someone you haven't met in person so you know that from the outside "it wasn't even real" but it was to you. And there's so much more grieving for something that never was than with a normal relationship

I hate it and I'm really hurting. I'll take any words of comfort or advice

i broke up yesterday, how do i move on. i feel terrible and sad

My partner and I are going to be closing the distance in less than 2 weeks! We've been long distance for 4 years and 10 months so we are super excited for this!

I’m talking to this girl who I’ve been talking to for over a month now. Her texting and calling has always been kind of shitty but it’s gotten worse and I’ve brought up my concerns and she acknowledged them and for a week it was good. She was definitely trying more. And I appreciated the efforts. To be fair she has pretty much two full time jobs and does a lot of extracurricular activities plus friends life etc.

But this week we’re back at it. I’ll text her in the morning and I’ll hear from her maaaaybe in the afternoon. Or not even at all. And it’s typically short. Like hey so sorry. And then silence again. Calling has also become minimal maybe a ten minute call every other day or so if that. I hear her tell me how she’s gone out with friends or was having a text conversation with her group chat. It makes me second guess myself. She says she likes me a lot. But her communication is garbage. And it seems like she has time to text other people. I obviously can’t confirm that but it sure feels that way. I feel like for an LDR you’d want to communicate as much as possible to stay feeling connected? But it doesn’t feel that way. Am I too needy for an LDR? Am I overthinking it? I’m really into this girl but it’s incredibly frustrating when I get such a lack of response. I’m unsure of what to do. I don’t want to fuck this up.

Because I sure wish I could with mine after this 😩

I’m secure attached now but I used to be anxiously attached, reassurance without asking is like a little treasure chest. Before this she told me she wished I could get on a plane tonight and she was wanting to get a dog to keep her company since she was lonely. We had a little conversation about it so I think we’re both feeling a little better. But 14 months is a long time to go before meeting the girl you’re dating, just 4 more to go…whew.

So how long has everyone been gone from a partner? How long did it take to meet the first time? If you want to share a story about your meeting, or even the second one, I love reading haha!

i don’t know what to do anymore about this guy i’m in love with. we dated for a year when we were 15, i have never loved anyone like him and i don’t feel in my soul i could ever love anyone the way i love him. i’ve tried since we were 15 to be with other people and forget him but it’s impossible. he is an incredible guy and we connect so well, there are no issues-except that we currently live 5,000 miles apart. that’s not even the worst part, because i go visit him and he came to visit me in august. he wants to move to america and make a lot of money and be with me so that we can travel, then the plan is for me to move to his country with him permanently. we have talked about being together again and wanting to spend our lives together, but he said he can’t commit right now because of the distance and that he isn’t 100% sure about us yet. he said he has only ever been with me, so he can’t be sure that it’s true love if he hasn’t experienced other people (broke my heart to hear but i know he genuinely means the best). he is so kind and thoughtful and my dream man in every way. i’m planning to go visit him in january and we have talked about it, he’s so excited to see me.

the thing is i hardly hear from him. he has always been hard to reach. when he does text me, it’s very sweet, asking about me, the conversation is great. it just happens so rarely. i haven’t heard from him since september 25th. i know we aren’t in a relationship but it’s hard to do everything you could possibly do with someone and then go to not hearing from them for weeks at a time. i know he’s busy, also no he doesn’t have a girlfriend (i know his friends and life well). i just don’t know how to handle not hearing from the man i love so much. everything else in his attitude and actions shows he loves me but we hardly talk. at this rate how will i see him in january? plane tickets have to be bought.

i’m sorry about the rambling- i’m just 20 years old, busy, and i’d kill for some physical touch and affection. i see my friends in love and it feels like i’m in the backseat. i have no desire to date anyone else, but touch would be nice. how do i trust someone enough for that? where do i find someone? what if i hate how that goes if i do it?

people will say he doesn’t care about me and i would think that too. but you have no idea the way we are together and how incredible of a person he is. i see our whole lives and future all the time. i grasp at any crumbs he gives me and it’s just sad

how do i wait for him? i deserve to be happy and get communication, but how do i know what decision is right?

i’m only 20 but i feel like i’m wasting my life away. before i’m old i want a husband and kids and a life. i don’t want to live in limbo for him for 10 years.

tl;dr- how do you feel satisfied not hearing from the love of your life but rarely?

My boyfriend and I started dating a year ago. From the very beginning, I told him that I didn’t want to be in a long-distance relationship because my previous long-distance relationship was a really painful experience. I had only met that person once, and the whole experience left me emotionally hurt. I never wanted to go through something like that again.
When my current boyfriend and I started dating, he said, “We’ll see.” And now, a year later, he has a job in another city, about four hours away by plane, and somehow, I find myself in the exact situation I was so afraid of.
The hardest part is that I don’t really have friends here. I’ve always struggled to make female friends, and my boyfriend has told me that I can make girlfriends, but not guy friends. So, in a way, my social world feels even smaller, and now that he’s far away, I feel incredibly alone.
Sometimes, I feel like ending the relationship, not necessarily because I don’t love him, but because I’m tired of feeling this way. I told him from day one that long distance wasn’t something I wanted, and now I feel like I’m stuck in a situation I never wanted to be in again.
I don’t know what to do anymore. I love him, but I also want to feel happy, independent, and at peace with my life. I don’t want my entire happiness to depend on someone who lives so far away. I want to have my own lifeand things to look forward to. But right now, I just feel lonely, confused, and scared of repeating the same painful experience all over again.

I haven't seen him in person since July, and he's coming to visit me again on Valentine's Day. I know I only have about 4 months left but it hurts being away from him. I especially miss him right now because I have been having dreams about him. How do I stop missing him so much?

me and my gf met about 5 days ago and we only have 4 more days of her being here and i want to have sex before she leaves. i have another friend who was long distance and they had sex on the first night together. me and her are both virgins and we were each others first kiss so we don’t really know how things go. we have sexted a lot over text and did video calls before but that doesn’t translate well irl. we did talk about it before the trip and it’s something she wants too but idk how to initiate anything because kissing is still awkward.

i’m kinda just looking for general advice on how to make being intimate and even just kissing less awkward and how i can initiate or even if it’s too early and we should wait. any advice is very welcome

Hey everyone,

I’m posting because I’ve been struggling a lot with relationship anxiety lately, and I’m trying to figure out how to untangle my past from my current life.

To give some background, I was in a long-term relationship in the past where my ex cheated on me. I forgave her and stayed, but the trust was completely broken, and the last year of that relationship became awful—she became entirely avoidant, we went without physical intimacy for a long time, and the stress and anxiety from it were so bad I was literally having panic attacks at work. After that ended, I made the mistake of jumping into another relationship too quickly before finally getting into a healthy, genuinely great relationship a couple of months later.

My current partner is amazing. But I’ve realized that my nervous system is still wired for the worst-case scenario. Even though I have no logical reason not to trust her, my brain treats every little trigger like a warning sign because of what I went through before.

It manifests in really exhausting ways:

• The micro-triggers: When she takes longer than usual to text back, or her energy feels a little low, my brain immediately flashes back to old patterns. Even though I know she isn't my ex, my anxiety starts whispering that she's pulling away or losing interest.
• The distance amplifier: Being long-distance makes it so much harder. When I can't physically see her face or read her body language, that empty space gets filled with doubt, and everyday habits or slow communication trigger my insecurities.
• The emotional whiplash: We can have an amazing conversation or call, but the second we hang up, my overthinking kicks in, and I hate feeling like my emotional state is tied to how fast my phone buzzes.

It makes me feel so frustrated with myself because my current partner doesn't deserve to carry the baggage of what someone else did to me. I want to be fully present and secure for her, but my brain's defense mechanisms are stuck on high alert.

If you’ve ever dealt with relationship anxiety rooted in past cheating or trauma—especially while managing the hurdles of distance—how did you heal that part of yourself? What do you tell yourself when the old fears try to convince you history is repeating itself? Any advice or perspective would mean a lot.

I've never posted in a subreddit like this and I may take this down, idk, but I've been thinking of posting for days here so I'm giving it a shot. I'm open to DMs too, I tried to keep some details vague to help protect identity. Sorry in advance, this is kind of rambly.

For context on distance, I live about a 7 hour drive away from my hometown. It's not crazy, I know a lot of long distance couples make it work over much larger distances. It's definitely a distance to plan for though and flying is in no way (both monetarily or convenience wise) more efficient.

So the story goes, last thanksgiving I was staying at my mom's house for thanksgiving and bored after she went to bed, so I jumped on Tinder. I've been on dating apps on and off where I live and not really gotten anywhere, the city I live in is just not a great city for younger singles to find love. I ended up matching with this guy and really hit it off when we met for drinks. Even the bartender remarked at how strong the chemistry was (I should note, this is a bar where he is at regularly enough to know the bartender - it didn't just seem like he was trying to fish for tips or anything).

Months went by, his car broke down, we texted pretty sparsely (neither of us, turns out, are much of texters). But in the summer, I went down for a family member's birthday and he took a whole day off work to see me. Just a couple weeks ago, I came down again after a death in the family, and he again took the day off work to see me. Now, I'm going to be back in town in November. He's recently gotten a new car, so there's talk of him coming up to see me or us meeting in the middle, but like over the span of 10 months here we've effectively gone on 3 dates.

On a side note, I am considering moving out of the city I do live in and have considered moving to a city that's only a couple hours away from my hometown, but I'm really at minimum about 6 months out from making that happen, if not longer. I don't know if I want to bank on this just yet as I'm also considering moving further away, but I have little to no interest in moving back to my hometown if I can help it and I eventually would like to leave this area of the country (SW USA).

I've met a handful of his friends, and he's met one of mine. His friends seem to like me, and my friend even remarked that they thought he was a really good fit for me off a first impression. Not that this stuff matters too much in the long run, but I just feel like it's a good sign.

I feel like when I'm in town in November there may need to be a conversation of where we see this going, but I'm really curious to know if anyone here may have some advice here or made something work in a similar situation, and what you may have done. I feel like if we lived in the same city, we may have already had this conversation months ago of where we see this going, but as of right now we're just at the early stages of dating over a very long time span. Again, I've just never really done this distance thing and want to do what I can to set it up for success.

I have a 5 hour difference with my partner, they live in the UK and I’m in the US. So they are quite far in another continent :/

My boyfriend and I have been together for 4 years, but he moved abroad last year for his master’s. I love him so much, and he feels like family to me, but I’m constantly scared our relationship might not work out.

He has the opportunity to meet someone there, live with them, and experience his twenties, which isn’t possible with me right now. Meanwhile, I’m at home preparing for exams and can’t even call him properly sometimes.

He puts in efforts to keep me whenever I try to break up, and I know he wants to be with me, but I can’t stop fearing that one day he might leave me for someone who can be physically present in his life. How do I deal with this insecurity?

Long post sorry but please bare with me

Me (30F) and my (33M) “bf” don’t even know if we still have a relationship left. Start of September he asked for a “pause” not a break, not a breakup (I directly asked what it was and gave him those options, didn’t chose either but that exact word “just a pause).

Context to why is very long but it was personal to him, coming from months of stress, mental health battles that turn into physical health issues. And lead him to not being so communicative on our daily talks or not giving me the “attention” he would want to give me, so the relationship was causing him added stress to his current situation.

He explained all his reasons and said it’s not because of me, he still loved me and believed in us. And he put the boundary that he rather be the one reaching out, he would update me from time to time. We didn’t put a timeline to check in because it isn’t a relationship issue, but personal so how to do put a deadline to healing?

Anyway, he reached out randomly close to a week mark of every last contact, a couple of times, even two days consecutive twice. But this time feels different.

It’s been a month and a week since it started. Last “reach” was Sunday 4 of October. And it wasn’t even a conversation it was a one-time view video of something I commented on the day before when he reached out shortly, to which I reacted. Then on Wednesday I got the courage to send a funny pic of me on one time view too, it was a screenshot of a video someone else took, he didn’t do anything until the next day he reacted with a laughing face.

That’s been it for now. 11 days since he sent that video, not even an actual conversation, and his reaction to my message i wouldn’t count it. Or it does?

It’s scary and hard to believe someone you spend 7 months talking to every day can go so much without a conversation. I understand he asked for the space to heal and think.

But the last serious conversation was at the end of September, he told me he was in a bad place because of something that happened in his family. In the same conversation he tried to reassure me by saying he “never forgets me” and “still cares about me” at the moment it did reassured me, but now i wonder the choice of words, i would’ve said “i still love you” why does it feel like an ex talking to me?

How do i keep believing he loves me and is getting better, and we still have a chance? I’m trying to stay positive because it’s been hell. I have anxious attachment and have been working on it, even if i do better now it still hurts me a lot.

I’m a very empathetic person and I was there for him when all this started, supporting him and giving all the grace in the world because he is a very honest and good caring man, I do not doubt his intentions with this pause or very hard situation.

But how do I put boundaries in how long this would take or to ask for an update to protect myself, while also knowing his situation and not wanting to break his boundaries or put pressure on him to get better or give answers?

I’m so lost, I love him so much. And more than anything, I just miss him like hell.

So I 39m have been seeing 45f for a little over a year, we’ve met several times. We’ve had really tough communication issues and conflict resolution is almost non existent. She generally is heavily avoidant and will go do tasks instead of communicate with me in any timely manner, sometimes multiple days and attempts.

I was going to fly out for our 1 year for the weekend. We had talked about it, a little over a week after talking about it, she made plans with her ex husband (share a child) and didn’t tell me til last minute, so I was forced to cancel. She knew for 3 weeks her plans that day, and didn’t tell me.

We had talked about her moving and I would fly out to help her with it all. Hence the weekend visit plan since I was coming back shortly to help for a longer time. The following day after snubbing our plans she asked if her ex husband could stand in my place instead, devaluing and disregarding my efforts I offered many times.

I got upset. I told her to download a dating app or get with her ex husband if I’m going to be pushed aside constantly. She’s weaponized him against me many times and brought our relationship issues to him. But won’t sit with me and resolve anything.

She also randomly goes over to his house and says nothing before hand or really anything, acts sneaky and distant.

Issue: she downloaded hinge to upset me, but deleted it and told me. We laughed since I egged it on but I was still upset at the events of being set aside especially in place of him. I finally hooked my flight to help her move 2.5 weeks out. Upon showing up. A few days in, she slips up about having a dating app. Pictures dated a few weeks out from when she said she made the first one. Exclusive pics only meant for me as her main pics. Fully filled out looking for a long term partner. Folder full of likes. Despite the profile being on “pause”.

I was bothered, she made it sound like a joke but I saw it all and it made no sense to have all those likes in a few weeks if it was “paused”. The way it came out sounded like a slip. She said she wanted to delete it in front of me and waited to show me. She deleted it by deleting the app and pretending she didn’t know to remove the profile itself, after “deleting” it once before.

She apologized and tried to say everything to make it right but I don’t even know what to feel, she said she did it out anger but this is a second round, hidden, for weeks, knowing I was on my way up... Considering our communication is horrendous, she won’t open up to me anymore, hides from our issues, weaponized dating apps and him, disregarded our plans in favor of him several times. I don’t think I can trust her. How would you feel?

I am a few months away from moving 1200 miles starting a whole new life with her. I met her son (5) and her family. I just don’t understand all this.

Me (18F) and my boyfriend (19M) have been together for almost a year now and we used to sleep on the phone together often, we are long distance and can’t see each other as much so I really like sleeping otp because I miss him a lot at night and it’s like his presence is next to me, but lately he hasn’t been wanting to and he’s told me he doesn’t want to at all anymore. He said it’s because if something is happening in the morning (like an argument, etc.) or he needs to call his mom, it annoys him that we are still otp in the morning and that it’s just kinda like another thing to take care of. And also in the past he has said he didn’t want to because of his phone dying and alarms not working but nothing ended up changing. Am I valid for feeling really sad about this? I love sleeping otp it makes me feel a lot closer to him when Im not able to be but now he doesn’t want to at all, he said he doesn’t see a point in it other than it being for me except I remember when he used to like it too and that hurts my feelings even more. Anyways let me know please, if this is weird/not normal or if I’m valid, if he’s valid and maybe if I can see his point of view more. (I do and absolutely understand but it’s still hard to not be sad about it)

Also in the texts he did apologize soon after. It was because he got in a big argument while we were still otp from the night before and he was upset