Our long distance relationship was great for us. It is the hardest but “best” thing! You really learn to communicate well and enjoy every single moment together.
We would facetime a couple times a week, between facetimes we focused on our career goals, worked on ourselves and had experiences of our own, developed independence and identity. we looked forward to seeing each other in person. In 2 weeks we’ll be living together again and in less than a year I’ll graduating as a doctor and he’ll be done with his second Engineering degree!!
Here are some quick tips for long distance relationships while in med school:
tip #1: knowing when you’re going to see each other again in person gives you something to look forward to! Things start to add up and time can get away from you, so we would actually book our next plane tickets when we were still together n person so something was in the books. I enjoyed this reserved time to see each other in person, where it’s actual quality time and I’m not thinking about school (which was harder for me to navigate when we lived together).
tip #2. knowing each other's schedules and communicate if you're going to be studying, or if you will have a busier rotation schedule for a particular month.
tip #3: schedule time to talk but it doesn’t have to be for hours each day. at first we thought we would need to compensate for the distance by talking more, but over the first few weeks we realized that less was actually more. we text in the morning and evening but we don’t excessively communicate. instead we use our time to get to know ourselves and use this as a learning experience to enjoy our alone time, which i think is making our relationship stronger. we are also open when things aren’t working (ie talk more or less frequently).
tip #4: do nice things to help your partner feel special like sending snail mail.
some things I’ve enjoyed are surprising each other w gifts (so many cookies) or receiving a random sweet text during the day.
tip #35 stay chill with bad reception lol (easier said than done)
tip #6: gotta leave you with the cheese -- stay positive and grateful. it is possible and you can make your relationship work if you mutually put in the effort to grow together even when you’re apart :)
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