We won’t be together on Valentine’s Day and that’s just fine
In defense of the long-distance relationship
I’ve got a partner. We don’t live together. It’s perfect.
The relationship isn’t without faults, no relationship is. But the long distance part is flawless. We live not-together perfectly. I was delighted when the New York Times wrote about Living Apart Together in 2013. I finally had something to show other people and say “See? Like those people in the newspaper.” Even though it’s not quite like that, since rent control does not figure into our lifestyle calculations and I do not live in terror of being forced to move to Jersey City just in case we cohabitated and the relationship failed. Jersey City.
Similar to when Grunge became popular and my parents got to say “Oh the way you are is hip now.” I was always a little odd. It was slightly easier for my folks to have a kid who was hip than a kid who was merely a slob. But I didn’t do it because it was hip, I did it because it was comfortable.
If you’re one of the many people in a non-traditional relationship, including one with just yourself, this week may be a particularly difficult time for you vis-à-vis conventional expectations (and conversations) surrounding romantic love and partnerships. Or maybe you’re already solidly in the “Fuck what other people think” camp.
I’ve taken a while to get there.
I used to be painfully aware and anxious about the ways in which my life felt out of step from some sort of platonic ideal of how to be a kid, how to be in a relationship, how to be happy. Guessing what normal is. Getting older, I’ve gotten better at understanding the difference between normal, normative and average. There are a lot of different ways to be normal, a lot of ways to be happy.
People like to talk about their relationships and at some point they ask about mine. They know I’m partnered with someone but… where is he most of the time? This is what I tell them.
We live in different states, about three hours apart. He has the perfect job for him at Harvard and I need to live in a state where I don’t despise my elected officials and I can do digital divide and library work. We see each other usually on alternate weekends and on holidays and vacations. I spend summers in Massachusetts and we see more of each other then. It works.
It’s about sixty more words than I’d like to spend talking about my relationship—“I am married” rolls off the tongue so easily—but I feel that if I leave parts out I am being squirrely. Since I live alone and mostly work at home I can pretty much write my own personal narrative. I like to have an answer that makes people not feel sorry for asking. Or feel compelled to offer me advice. I chose this, we chose this. It’s not something that just happened to us.
The important parts of this Statement of My Relationship are
- Reasons—Harvard and libraries and politics sound like reasons even though they are just explanations.
- Holidays—I am not alone, you don’t have to invite me over. In fact if you are alone and don’t want to be, please come over.
- Functional—My relationship description is not full of red flags that imply that it is not one of my choosing.
My friends accept me for who I am, mostly. I think it’s easier to socialize sometimes with intact couples, especially in small rural communities. I often get invited to things paired up with my married friend whose husband lives in another town. She’s my town-partner, my dinner party wife. Acceptance is great, I am lucky, but that doesn’t mean I see my relationship reflected in popular media too often. Normal but not normative. Around holidaytimes, popular media’s obsession with traditional narrative can get overwhelming.
I was married once. I got married to a colleague in a bit of an art project proof-of-concept thing when I was in my twenties. I was proposed to over email, on a big screen in the exhibit hall at a library conference. This was well before marriage equality. We felt it was ludicrous that gay people couldn’t get married for any reason but two jerks with a pencil and $50 could unite our entire families together for the rest of our lives just by visiting Las Vegas. Talking about my marriage allowed me to talk to people about my politics, about me. Our marriage had a manifesto.
My now-ex was busy getting a PhD in political science. His thesis was about the necessity of the state. He had strong opinions about not wanting to live a “predigested life” where you just follow the path that society has set up for you whether it lines up with your hopes and dreams or not. I could get behind his ideas; I shared many of them. Yet I found it challenging to try to talk about how my own unusual relationship suited me without appearing to disparage someone else’s choices. The implication is always that the way you are doing it is the right way, in a system that doesn’t always acknowledge multiple acceptable paths.
We were a couple for a while, and then we were not a couple. The plan was to stay married forever even if we weren’t going to be together forever. At some point he met a person he wanted to marry “for real” and we did the paperwork to be unmarried. It worked. And I never needed a Statement of My Relationship for any of that.
It was so easy to be married. People felt like they knew what a marriage was, what our marriage was, even though there are many kinds of marriages. They felt that they understood us: our marriage; our motivations; our relationship. They would just map their own marriage on to ours and we were all part of a club. Welcome to the club! Even when we’d explain “No really this is not what you think…” they said we’d change our minds. That the marriage transcended the relationship.
The divorced club is a little different. People aren’t sure what to make of you. They just know that somehow you’re not quite with the program; maybe in a good way, maybe not. When I’m asked, on forms, what my marital status is, I say single. There’s also an option for divorced. You can’t check multiple boxes. You can’t include a Statement of My Relationship. Normative carries the day. Why do I care what forms think?
The best part about being in the state of having already been married is that I tell people I’ve crossed it off my “bucket list” and I’m on to other things. I’ve gotten older, busier, more particular. My aspirations don’t include changes to my relationship status. My relationship is not a statement on other peoples’ relationships. The guy I am in love with lives somewhere else and is staying there. It happens. We’re together because we want to be together. It’s work but all relationships are work. I’ve always enjoyed logistical challenges and “My place, your place, or somewhere in the middle?” is a fun one.
This year’s New Years card had both of us on it for the first time. They got some predictable “Ooh, you guys are getting serious now!” teasing, even though we’ve been together for nearly seven years. It’s a sort of gentle, caring friction. And then I feel the need to bring out the Statement of My Relationship, again. To renew my commitment and let people know that things are still the same in every good way.
My father—who was always on a quest to untangle the mysteries of human relationships from a nearly-outsider perspective—used to say that you needed other people in your life as companions and witnesses. People who can be your date for the thing and people who can share in your experiences at a deep level.
Just being with a person doesn’t mean you understand them, not being with them doesn’t mean you don’t. Even the best relationships have periods of togetherness and distance. The fact that technology can help bridge the gap of physical distance gives us more opportunities, not fewer, to be normal and happy.
Happy Valentines Day.
