How far does your love go?
Our survey results and more
On the 5th of March, we opened our survey up for respondents to tell us about their long distance relationships. In two minutes and eight questions, we wanted to know who they were, how they met their partners, how long they had been together, the distance between them, and the most difficult thing about being long distance.
Since then we have gathered 102 responses and today shut down the survey. We have also learnt a lot from the results which we are sharing today. In addition to that, we had more in depth interviews with 10 other couples, learning about what makes their relationship tick and how they have managed to stay in a relationship with their significant other.
Guide to interpreting the results
We opened the survey up to people who are or have been in a long distance relationship, if they did not explicitly state it in the survey, we have no way of telling if they are still together or have separated.
The distance between couples is based on three things:
- If the couple told us the cities they live(d) in, the distance is the km distance between both cities, or
- if the couple did not tell us the cities they live(d) in and they live in different countries, the distance is the km distance between the largest airports (by volume) in both countries, or
- if the couple did not tell us the cities they live(d) in and they live in the same country, the distance is the km distance between the two largest airports (by volume, in different cities) in that country.
Using airports in lieu of distance help us account for how far a member of the couple would have to travel to visit the other member, and thus a good proxy. Resources like Prokerala and Air Miles Calculator gave us the distances.
Distribution
We put out the survey, first on Twitter and Instagram, but we initially got responses from people who were like us — of African origin, living abroad. So we knew we had to switch things up and decided to post the survey on Reddit.
On r/SampleSize, we heard of surveytandem.com where people can post descriptions to their survey and have other people fill it in exchange for points depending on how long the survey takes to complete. This worked really well to our advantage and we got some really diverse respondents from all the continents! In turn, some of these respondents elected to be part of our smaller focus group, more on that later.
Now, for the good stuff…
Where are the respondents from?
We had respondents who live (or lived) in 36 countries with at least one country from every continent, Europe had the most respondent countries with 17. These countries represent where the respondent currently lives or where they lived for a significant period of their long distance relationship.
How long have they been together?
The average relationship duration in years was 3.21, but the range is pretty wide with some people having dated for up to 14 years. Couples who have dated for that long tend to have moved around and had short phases of living together and then being apart for more.
How far away from their partner?
Long distance is relative, so this was an important question for us. Some people are far apart in distance but in the same time zone, whereas others are not so far apart but because of the different time zones can not sync their day.
Distance is also a funny thing when it comes to travel: two cities with a 2 hour connecting flight might be farther by distance, but two cities with no flights and only a 6 hour train ride or drive is more difficult for a couple to travel.
We thought to ourselves that the distance apart might increase with the duration of the relationship, and since we had told the respondents to put in the cities where they had been farthest from each other, we analyzed for this.
There is almost no correlation between the duration of the relationship and the distance the couple lives apart. Quite interesting, a reason for this is that where couples live and when (also, where) they find a partner are typically outside of their control.
On timezones, more than 65% of the respondents lived in the same time zone or an hour apart. This correlates really highly with the distance apart (for obvious reasons) and shows that the ability of the couple to be available at the same time could help relationships. We’ll share more on this insight from our in depth interviews with long-distance partners in the coming weeks.
How did they meet?
We thought about presenting this data in two ways:
First, using the basic text that the respondents filled in.
School/class/university/college appear to be the most common place these couples met, other words that stand out here are: friends, Tinder, website.
To make this more representative, we grouped each response into a category.
School (33.3%) had the highest respondents, followed by Social media — which ranges from Twitter and YouTube to Xbox playing Overwatch. Dating sites are also quite popular, but these meets tend to happen when one of the partners is travelling. Rounding off the top four is Exchange Study, which is a nice mix of travel and school at the same time.
Note: the Random category classifies couples that met by pure serendipity: at a bar or from watching a video one of the partners did on TV or while buying groceries at the local store.
What’s the hardest thing about being in a long distance relationship?
This question was put in so respondents would be free to tell us as much as possible about their relationship. Some people wrote in long epistles while others only wrote one word. The word cloud is shown below.
Some replies stood out to me, and instead of defining them in terms of categories it made more sense to share them verbatim.
On the sadness…
The feeling of being helpless because I can’t be physically there for him when he’s having a bad day, and vice versa. Also, (especially in the beginning), there is a potential for raw emotion to be lost in translation when we disagree over the phone and can’t physically look into each other’s eyes and read body language. Finally, we both go solo to a lot of formal/corporate events where people are there with their +1’s and we both wish we could have gone together
On being at the airport…
The hardest thing is the depression you feel at the airport after you’ve visited them and had an amazing time and realize you have to go back to your regular life
On the uncertainty…
Not having an end date for the distance. The most difficult part is not knowing when the long-distance would end and having trouble making plans for the future, balancing each other’s priorities, especially with our respective careers. It also takes a lot more effort to make time for each other, while the pay-off for that effort is much less (facetime dates are much less fun than being the in the same place at the same time)
On wondering if it’s only happening in your head…
The time difference, I was always free when he was busy. The feeling of there never being enough time. The fear that you aren’t in a real relationship
And finally, sometimes it’s the simplest things
can’t hug him
What’s happening next?
We are concluding our research phase this week with one more interview, and then would do some deeper analysis and identify themes from our conversations as well as the survey results. From these themes, we will begin to develop solution concepts on what the final product could look like and how best to design it.
The group of respondents we are interviewing come from different parts of the world — with at least person from each continent — , have been in relationships ranging from 14 years to just one year, some have broken up with their partners, and some have gone from continents apart to finally living together. They have given us their full consent to share their stories.
We can’t wait to tell them to you.
