Dhara’s Decade of Dating: My Second Love — Indian Matchmaking

| Single to Shaadi

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“I went to visit him one early Spring and everything was perfect. His friends and family liked me, and I liked them (which is equally important). He was a gentleman, he planned fun activities for us, and we got along just as well in person as we did over the phone. It felt like we had known each other for a lifetime. We continued our relationship long distance after that successful visit, making it a point to include one another in our daily lives.

I had a full course schedule, worked at the library on campus, and balanced multiple extra curricular activities; while he was studying, interning, and had law school social events all the time. Although we both led very separate and busy lives, we made it a point to make the other feel as if we were walking through our life motions together.

All was well in love-ville until a few months later, when he came to visit me.

Don’t get me wrong, my family LOVED him — what was not to love? He was an incredible guy. But, when he entered MY world, I realized how different our priorities were. Even though I wanted to find the right partner, I was nowhere near mature enough to get married. It was in my final week of undergrad and all I wanted to do was party with my friends one last time before college was over forever. I would be going on to get my Masters and then start a demanding full time job- this was my time to live. He was entering his last year of law school, and wanted to settle down and merge our paths — clearly way more mature than me.

What I learned in this relationship is that timing is everything. We ultimately ended things when I realized the timing was not right and that doing long distance was not something I wanted to sign up for again. Little did I know, this was not the last time I would be doing distance in a relationship.”

Advice for Starting to Date Someone Over Long Distance

1. If you are starting out your relationship with long distance off the bat, accept that this will be much more difficult than if you had built a foundation with your partner before embarking on the challenge of distance together.
2. Trust is like a car: it takes a long time to build and only a second to wreck — give yourself grace and time and make giving and receiving trust a priority
3. Try to plan your calendars to see each other as often as commitments will allow, and for the times you cannot see each other, prioritize involving each other in your lives. Facetime with friends/family and introduce your significant other to the world you live in so it is not a foreign place when they visit.
4. Learn the names and faces of the spots and people important to your significant other and write them down if you have to — but remember them, because this will show you care and bring you closer.
5. Something I would highly recommend was to make the first in-person visits fairly quickly. We had already met as I mentioned years prior, but once we took our relationship to the next level, we made it a point to visit each other again fairly soon. I would advise not to prolong this part because speaking for hours and getting to know someone with words, is very different than spending time together and learning their actions.
6. People can share the best version of themselves behind technology — phone, text, email, social media, video calls. Only when you are face to face, can you truly decipher if your true colors and their true colors can create the perfect rainbow (I know that’s a super corny line, but this is an article about love, so go with it).

Originally published at https://www.singletoshaadi.com on April 8, 2021.