Update: 4-plus months and counting! :)

[SquishyLove]

Hey everyone, me and my now husband closed the distance on March 8th, and since then he's been settling in to life here! We're still getting along fantastically and living together is amazing! It was so much worth the wait through the process of getting his visa to come here, through the long distance. Towards the end of our waiting, we were tired of the distance, but we never once took the stress out on each other and always found comfort in our love for each other. Dealing with a time-zone difference, we still managed to make each other a major part of our daily lives. Now we are living in the same apartment, sleeping in the same bed, and it's absolutely fantastic! I love living with him so much! It's the greatest gift to finally be together, and I'm so happy with him!

I was concerned about homesickness being a problem, but so far it's proven not to be as big of an issue as I thought it might be. He's adjusting quite well. I know he gets homesick from time to time, but he's told me it's not crippling for him. He finds ways to cope with it, like staying connected with friends back home via the internet, Skype calls to his dad, ordering some Russian food items online, and being a member of a few Russian forums. He's an introvert (just like me, lol), and said he doesn't feel the need to specifically seek out Russian friends in the USA to hang out with IRL, but he enjoys the correspondence on the net.

We recently took our cat to a new vet for a check-up and vaccines, and the young vet-tech working there happened to be a Russian guy who's lived most of his life in the US since he moved here with his parents at a young age, but is completely bilingual and fluent in English and Russian (a skill I've always envied, hehe). When he noticed my husband is Russian, he and my husband had a conversation in Russian. It was really cool to see him connect with someone who speaks his native language. A second time was when we needed to drive to my state's capitol from my home city to get his biometrics (fingerprints, etc.) done for immigration. Before going there, we found a Russian deli online we wanted to visit while we were in the area and went there to buy some Russian food. He got to have a short but pleasant conversation with the deli's owner as well.

Another way he stays connected to his culture and language is watching a lot of Russian movies (if there are English subtitles we watch together) and listening to Russian radio online. Also, he downloads a lot of e-books for his kindle in Russian, since he's an avid reader.

I really want to learn Russian, but it's not a language that can be spoon-fed to you. It's something you have to study with some degree of passion, and can take many years to master to a point where you can have a conversation with someone. My second language, which I'm not conversationally fluent in at all, is Spanish. I didn't know when I chose a second language to learn in high school that many years later I'd fall in love with a Russian guy. :-P My school didn't offer Russian, either. I would've had to privately seek out Russian lessons. So here I am at 29, wanting to learn my husband's language, a project which could take many years (he's been studying English since he was 10, so for about 18 years now) to even get to a point where I could think in Russian instead of just having some stock phrases and knowing a passel of vocabulary words under my belt like I do now. :-P

OK, I'm rambling, lol! Long story short, my husband is here, and he's getting along nicely so far, and we're getting along nicely so far, and living together is awesome, and we're happy living in CD! YAY!

[princessmeg1328]

It's so good to hear that you and your husband are doing so well! I hope you both continue to do well in the many years to come. Good luck!

[lucybelle]

Happy to hear things are going so well for you two!!

I do think it's important to try to learn his language. Get a basic course and then start reading. That's how I learned Spanish so quickly- reading.

Best wishes

[Lilly9886]

You sound so happy writing this!! That's great! I'm really happy for you two!!

Best wishes for your future together!

[rixue]

Glad to hear you are both doing well! Best wishes to your future!

[SquishyLove]

Hey guys, thought I'd share that my husband recently started at a new job! And he likes it! Hooray! He's awesome, and I'm so proud of him. We're also getting along very well and enjoying living together so much! We've decided to continue to rent our one-bedroom for at least a few more years because it can save us a TON of money to rent a small place...so we recently got some shelving units and cleared more clutter and organized in a big way, so our apartment looks awesome and we're making really good use of the space we have now. We recently took a day trip to go caving in one of the many caverns in our area, and it was really fun! With the summer being so hot, and us both not liking such extreme heat, it was our first chance to really get out in nature this year. It was really cool.

Re: learning Russian...In the last year I've learned Cyrillic, I can count in Russian, and I know several phrases and a lot of vocabulary. I just need structure to really learn it as a second language, to get the grammar structure and pronunciation down. I need to spend about an hour a day studying. Rosetta Stone in tandem with using some textbooks are in the plans. It's just one of those things..."Procrastinators Club Meeting: Tomorrow." :-P But my Love doesn't seem to mind. His English is amazing - he speaks it better than a lot of Americans. :-P Still, I do WANT to learn...soon.

[Seventeen]

Best wishes!

[TwoThree]

Great to hear things are going so well for you

[artgrl808]

Simply amazing! I'm so happy for you! You sure showed that LDR how it's done.
Best wishes~

[Zephii]

Great to hear an update Congrats to him for finding a job

[SquishyLove]

Resurrecting my old thread to say that we're still married, and even though the "new relationship energy" phase of the relationship has passed and we're still a happy, healthy functioning couple of adults (kinda, lol). I lost 66 pounds, got a promotion at my job, he's still at the same job and very content, we've moved into a bigger apartment with a pool at the apartment complex in a nice, residential neighborhood. Some bad stuff also happened. I'm not sure if I posted about this back when I was really active here and we were LDR, but his mom passed away in 2011. Back in 2013 his dad was diagnosed with throat cancer. In 2014 he was in remission, or so his doctors thought, but after he was having some more problems they found more cancer which had spread, and he was diagnosed as being terminal and it was only a matter of a year or so before he was gone. His condition worsened quite a bit and he was still going through chemo and radiation, and he kept insisting that Victor not go visit him, I think because he just really didn't want his son to see him so sick. They were Skype chatting a lot, and some friends of Victor's who he's known since childhood (his parents were friends with their parents all his life) were able to get him into a nice hospice care situation. Victor booked an emergency flight home in early February, not telling his dad he was coming because he wanted to just show up and say goodbye (and he knew his dad would tell him he didn't want him to come) and the DAY his plane landed, his friends were waiting for him at the airport to let him know his dad had passed away that very morning. It was beyond horrible - he'd known his dad was going to die soon, but he was hoping he wouldn't be too late to say goodbye to him. He was there for 10 days for the funeral, burial, and getting the ball rolling on the legal process of settling his dad's estate.

Fast forward to now, we are sort of back to long distance until early January because all the legal inheritance stuff has gone through and he's going through the process of settling his dad's estate and selling his parents' home. It's sad but we've been going through the grief together (him in different ways than myself because of course it's his dad, but I did very much love his dad, he was a really sweet and good person and we bonded). He seems to have been grieving really healthily, and taking care of himself well, and I've been being a supportive partner as well. So now I'm temporarily living alone until January. He left on October 3rd, so I've been living the temporary "bachelorette" life for 20 days.

I've not been doing too badly. We've been together long enough now that when we're Skyping it's a lot of having Skype on in the background with our webcams rolling while we're both doing stuff around the house, me cleaning our apartment or doing my weekly meal-prep on the weekends, him going through photos and other items at his parents' apartment and figuring out what needs to go where, cleaning out just random junk that doesn't need to be there anymore before the official sale of the apartment takes place, etc. We do talk a bit, but it's a little different from the beginning of our relationship where we'd just talk and talk, lol. But since we've been together almost 6 years now, we know almost everything about each other so we feel secure in not talking, but it's nice to, on the weekends with our 6 hour (and soon to be 7 hours with Daylight Savings time coming up) time difference to just have Skype on and be able to look over at my laptop and see him doing stuff around his parents' apartment. :P On weekday mornings before I go to the gym we chat for about an hour on Skype and then at the gym we bounce a few Viber messages back and forth before I head to work.

I had planned on spending about 2 weeks there with him, but I was denied a visa for this trip. I think it has something to do with tense relations between the US and Russia at the present time. I was hoping to be able to provide some fun and a break from the heavier parts of his trip there, but unfortunately that wasn't meant to be.

More than likely this will be the last significant amount of time we'll have to spend apart ever again. We have discussed, since we're both really independent by nature, the idea of in the future having an occasional separate vacation, but for a shorter amount of time, like one or two weeks. After 3 weeks I'm already jonesing for him to be at home and I know I have to wait a couple more months and some change. I am keeping myself busy and enjoying some aspects of having the place to myself. For instance, since I'm trying to get the last bit of weight off to reach my goal weight, I can keep the house free of things that tempt me in the food department, where with him around I have to tell him to hide his treats from me and not share them, otherwise he lets me eat his treats at my leisure when I'm trying to avoid eating them. :P But yeah, having a little bit of time apart is a nice thing because it forces you to miss them and you really appreciate them when they get back. We're both independent enough that we need our alone time, and separate vacations can also be a healthy thing for a relationship I think.

I asked him how he felt about letting his parents' home go, as the sale gets closed this coming week and he moves out into a temporary apartment at the end of the week to let the buyers move in. He said at first, when he got back, it was super sad, but as he broke everything down, moved everything out, and picked through the items that were most important, and now that it looks so empty, it's easier to let it go because now it just looks like an empty apartment. I'm glad he's able to let it go. I can't even imagine what it's going to be like when that happens with my parents and I have to, with my sister, comb through their place and sort it all out. It's a part of life, for sure, and I'm glad he's able to handle it so well.

After he gets back, it will be Winter time and we'll have missed the holidays so I plan to actually not put up our tree until right before he gets home, and we can have a little belated fancy dinner/celebration for ourselves when he gets back.