Lucas Gebhart
Editor-in-Chief
My girlfriend graduated last May and, obviously, I’m still here. As a result, we have been long-distance dating since early May, something many college students and young adults deal with on a daily basis.
Long distance is something that tests relationships, but what has helped our scenario is we have an end goal: we plan to move in with each other when I graduate in December – the crowning moment that will cap off the endless trips between Pocatello and Boise. We haven’t made it yet, but it’s looking good at this point and I don’t see anything that could possibly change that between now and then. This end goal is what drives our relationship and fuels the crawling months between now and then.
Studies have shown that we are not alone. A 2013 study showed that 75 percent of college students have been in a long-distance relationship at some point in their lives. Some failed and some didn’t.
College and relationships are both hard. They both have challenges and circumstances that make you ask various questions about yourself that directly dictate your future happiness: “Is this who I want to be?” “Is this person or school the best option for me?” “Am I actually happy at this school or with this person?” We are young and independent but have not yet taken on the full responsibility that independency requires. Answering these tough questions helps us meet those requirements.
For us, the answers were the same, which is why we still stay together. Our end goal is the same. We both want to be with the other and are both willing to take on the challenges of long distance dating.
Through my experience, I have found that what kills long distance dating is one person has a different end goal than the other. I think this is why we see such a high fatality rate of long distance relationships that hail from high school. They don’t last because the end goal is too far away or neither partner has an end goal. There is no light at the end of the tunnel.
I’ve personally seen friends I know back home as well as at ISU see their strong high school relationships deteriorate over time because of distance and none of them had an end goal. There have probably been many such examples that have happened at ISU this semester.
This end goal gives you something to work towards and ensures that you both know this current state won’t be a mainstay. My girlfriend has a countdown set on her phone that currently reads “two months, 14 days, 22 hours and 42 minutes.” That number represents different things.
It represents how much time I have left at ISU, it represents how much time I have left in my schooling career and it also represents how long we have until we complete our goal of long distance dating. That countdown is what fuels this period of our relationship.
