So Kristina of FiveAwesomeGirls, started a whole conversation about Long Distance Relationships (or LDR for short). I started to comment and tell my story but realised that it was getting longer and longer and when I copied it to a word document to carry on writing it – it was over an A4 page long! I decided that adding a comment with my blog link might be better rather than a stupidly long comment!
Chris and I started as friends when I was in Year 10 at school. I went to a bible camp with my brother, my parents and my grandparents. We became good friends and lived in each other’s pockets for the week. About two days from the end we decided to try it as girlfriend and boyfriend as we only lived about 30 miles apart (I was in Bedford and he was just outside Huntingdon). It worked for about 2-3 months but Chris got fed up with catching the bus to Bedford – I hadn’t been out of Bedford on my own before then and I didn’t really want to get lost somewhere. In the end, we just ended up as friends. Over the next two years, we kinda drifted apart for one or another reason we stopped talking.
When I was in Year 12 (17yo-ish – I was doing my AS Levels at school) we got in contact again. We were email penpals and when I had a party for my 18th birthday, Chris was invited and he came. I think he made an impression on my friends as he was wearing a ridiculously bright Hawaiian shirt! (Two of my lad friends remembered my Cousin K because in their opinion she looked like Kylie Minogue!) We stayed in contact this time and emailed on and off for the next year or so.
In 2004 we both started university, I was here in Bedford and he was about 200 miles away in Hull. While we both settled into our new courses we both stopped talking to each other for one or another reason. When we got back in to contact, it turned out that Chris had a girlfriend – I didn’t mind, however, we’d chat over the internet nearly every evening and chatted via email the rest of the time (his course involved a lot of work outside of lectures so email was easier to do). We chatted so much that at one point his girlfriend thought something was going on between us two. One evening he asked me for some advice, he wanted to split up with his girlfriend. I told him to be honest etc and that I would leave him alone for a few days/weeks for him to get himself sorted.
Fast forward about a month to the 13 March, I spent most of the afternoon chatting on MSN to Chris’s friend from Huntingdon and one of my uni friends both who knew Chris from school or church. (Small world!) I explained that I liked Chris as more than friends but couldn’t really say anything given the distance and the fact that he’d asked me about how to break up with his girlfriend. We were best friends if we went out and it didn’t work was I going to lose my best friend.
Both Kat and LB said that if I didn’t at least ask then I wouldn’t know how he felt about me. Kat and LB both collared Chris and they found out that he did like me and part of the reason he’d split up with his girlfriend in Hull was that he didn’t want to be with her if he was thinking about me (It’s puke inducing isn’t it?!). Then with a bit of assistance from Kat and LB I managed to spit out that I liked Chris as more than friends and wanted to go out with him but I was concerned about the distance and if it would reck our friendship. (Also the fact that I’m a geek and I was convinced that I was so uncool that no-one would ever want me)
We got together and six months later we got engaged. I was about to start the second year of my degree and Chris was about to go back to Hull for university. For a year he was in Hull and I was in Bedford. It was quite hard but in the end, it worked out. We got married on the 12th May 2007 (Yep our two year anniversary is while Chris is away in India).
Kristina, I’ve just been on your blog and you have 84 comments so I’m not sure if you will actually get as far as reading this but if you do I wish you the best on your LDR and a lot of people will be negative about them but i can guarantte most of them will probably have never had a LDR.
