I Will Ignore Time: Long Distance Relationships in the Time of Corona
In the best of circumstances, long distance relationships are hard. If you’re lucky, you live within reasonable driving distance where the largest inconvenience is that you might spend most of the week apart. If you’re less lucky, you might live far enough that a flight every other month is the best way to be together. And if you’re even less lucky, you’re separated by an entire ocean on two different continents, and a mere two weeks before one of you visits the other, a pandemic hits and shuts everything down. I’m in the less lucky category, and I’m writing this post because my girlfriend wanted me to share my thoughts on long distance relationships and pandemics (hey, babe, this is for you!). I’m not a relationship expert (and never will be); I’m just a guy who happens to be in a long distance relationship and has opinions. Take them or leave them. Since summer 2019, I’ve been in a relationship with a lovely woman from Vietnam, who I had the fortune to visit in December 2019. We’re separated by a vast ocean, with my shiny butt living in northern Minnesota and her delightful self in Ho Chi Minh City. Already, that distance makes things difficult, and more so given the relationship of the United States to Vietnam, which requires far less paperwork for my travel than it does for my girlfriend. Throw in a pandemic, and you can imagine how much more difficult this all is.