can love trump all things??

[mant12]

hello all. Im relatively new to this forum and i find myself in desperate need of some advice or reassurance. (sorry if this is in the wrong section please feel free to move it)

Just a quick background. i found what i thought was the love of my life on the 25th of sept this year. she was an exchange student from south carolina studying in my hometown melbourne. she went back to the states on the 23rd oct and we have conducted a LDR. On the 22nd Dec i visited her in south carolina and i am leaving tomorrow to go back to melbourne.

My dilemma is as such.... Before i went to the states i thought that i could live in america permanently if required. However after 2 weeks spent here i realise that i probably wouldn't be able to do that. i miss my family, my home, my country. I know also that my girl wouldn't be able to move to australia. tomorrow when we leave each other at the airport we have decided to break up our relationship. is there a point continuing on this relationship if we each can not move? However i feel that this girl is the love of my life. she makes me so indescribably happy and i don't want to lose her. at the moment I'm struggling to think of life without her and the thought continuously makes me cry.

deep down i think we are making the right call. however how can a relationship end when two people are so madly in love? how can i move on from her, knowing that we are perfect for each other yet not being able to be together? How can the love between us trump the very strong love and affinity we both have towards our respective families and countries? and if it wasn't meant to be will i ever find love like this ever again?

I am in a very unstable frame of mind right now and i don't know what is right and what is not... the only thing i know is that when we part tomorrow never knowing if we will see each other again, i will feel heartbroken.

i always felt that love could trump all things. Yet is 10,000 miles just to much???

if anybody out there can even give me a little piece of advice i would very much appreciate it. Thanks

[Alemap]

If it's meant to happen again, it will. If you're meant to be life partners, then a solution to the distance dilemma will present itself someday.
In the meantime, lean heavily on your friends, don't talk to her until you're feeling more stable or it'll only make you miss her worse, keep as busy as possible - take up new hobbies! Read new books! Ask your boss for extra work! - and be kind to yourself.
Have faith that there is a plan for your life (not necessarily religious; all it requires is a belief in order - but if you are religious, then maybe take this time to deepen your relationship with whatever power you believe in).
I wish you strength.

[Rugger]

Unfortunately, love cannot conquer all things. It takes a lot of hard hard work and sometimes that work gets in the way. I agree with Alemap, if it's meant to be, it will be.

I'm sorry about your breakup. Getting new hobbies or keeping yourself busy wil def. help you keep your mind off of her until you can take control of your feelings.

[snow_girl]

I agree with the others. Love can only conquer all if both parties are willing to compromise certain things. In your case neither of you are willing to move to the other, perhaps if you find that being without her is too hard you will reconsider moving to her. Until then you are probably doing the right thing.

[squirrelz15]

I have to agree, the commitment has to be there for both parties, and love can't always conquer everything. If neither of you are willing to move, you're most likely doing the right thing by breaking things off now. It will be hard at first, but if it's meant to be it will be, if not, you'll find a way to move on. Sorry to hear about your situation, it isn't an easy one.

[Mara]

No, unfortunately, love doesn't trump all things. Relationships need more than love and good intentions to work. A lot more. At the end of the day in a LDR, one or both people have to be willing to move. If neither of you can move then even though this hurts now this is the best decision for you both.

[lucybelle]

Love does not trump all, but determination can.

Your story sounds very similar to mine. My SO moved to the USA to be with me. Our plan all along was for us to eventually settle down in the USA. Well, one month after being in the USA, he told me he never wanted to leave his country again. He missed his family, he missed the culture, he missed his friends, he missed the country. He just couldn't handle being in the USA. This tore me to pieces. We are both extremely close with our families and our home countries. I didn't want to live out my life in Costa Rica, but I would do it for him.

After his 6 month tourist visa expired, we moved to Costa Rica together, with the intent of staying permanently. I wasn't wild about living here, but I would rather be away from my country and with him, than be without him in my home country. Two months in he started mentioning he might be okay with going back to the states. And after about four months he straight up told me he wants to go back to the USA with me. He decided that not only would we be better off financially (you make nothing here and living expenses are higher than the States sometimes), but that he actually could be very happy living in the States.

So I guess I told you this long story to tell you that you both should give it more time. You only spent two weeks in the States, you can't possibly know whether or not you could live there. I think you (or her) should take a few months to try out each other's country, living together. This would help you get a better grasp on the country as well as more time in your relationship which is still relatively new.

If you two really want to stay together, make a plan, save up money, and be determined to be together. Best of luck.

[efish1042]

Okay, so I believe love CAN conquer all things.... but that doesn't necessarily mean that it will. I always say that you can do anything as long as you both want to. However, in a situation like this, sometimes it just doesn't work out. LDRs are effing hard. It doesn't matter if it's 500mi or 50,000 mi. It Is Hard. I mean, we have a site dedicated to helping people in LDR's. You don't exactly have that for CD.
We can't tell you what to do. You two have to work it out. Maybe there is a compromise? If you both move to Hawaii, for example, then you are both leaving your families and in the middle of them so maybe you could split up when you visit each one. Maybe, in the end, on of you will decide that the other is worth all the heartache of leaving home. We can't know. If you truly feel like she is "THE ONE" then, try to work on it, at least for a bit. However, if you are having such serious doubts this early, you might be in for a world of trouble ahead of you.
It CAN work... but that doesn't mean it WILL. If you are willing to put up with the heartache (of not being with her or not being at home or her missing her home) then I promise it is doable. Hard as Heck, but doable. If you think it's too much (and no one would think any less of you, if so. This is really really hard), then you should probably cut it off now. If you do that, who knows, maybe you will end up together in the end anyway? Maybe not, but there is a chance. Just enjoy what you have/had and work on moving on together/alone. It is up to the both of you.
Best wishes!

[SDPersona]

So I guess I told you this long story to tell you that you both should give it more time. You only spent two weeks in the States, you can't possibly know whether or not you could live there. I think you (or her) should take a few months to try out each other's country, living together. This would help you get a better grasp on the country as well as more time in your relationship which is still relatively new.

If you two really want to stay together, make a plan, save up money, and be determined to be together. Best of luck.

This.

Personally, I fell in love while interning in his country where I lived and worked for almost five weeks. Back home again, the questions and the talks about closing the distance started. He asked me if I would move to South Africa. I said I don't know, couldn't say if I want to move purely because of him and at this point I didn't really want to think about it just yet. The thought of leaving behind my country, my support net and build a completely new life in a country I don't really know terrified me. And I remembered that one day during internship where I was homesick. That scared me, too. He doesn't feel the same way about my home country since he has never been there, but is excited to get to know it. We'll see how he feels about moving here by then.

Meanwhile we decided to stop talking about closing the distance, because it was causing tension in our much too young relationship and make plans for when we BOTH are ready to talk about it at a later date. Until then we can enjoy our relationship and I have time to mull it over, get comfortable with the idea that one of us (maybe me, maybe him) have to pack up and move to another country. We will most likely have a few years until it'd be time. So, we're just going to visit each other and his/her country until then.

[Haley53]

I agree with lucybelle, frankly.

Currently my SO and I are in a position where we don't know what's going to happen. We don't know how we're going to work things out. He faced a complete upheaval, and our plans have been asdfghjkl since. But we haven't given up on us, because we know that we'll figure it out. That being said, we're both willing to make sacrifices and compromises in order to be together, so while yes, I think "love conquers all" in a more general sense, when it comes down to it, there also needs to be a certain level of commitment, dedication, and determination. In your case, I'd go so far as maybe to suggest openness.

I visited my SO in Dublin for a month, this summer will be going for two, and hopefully in the year 2013, I'll be going for a year on a working holiday visa. I'm doing this despite the fact that being from California, Dublin weather is not my ideal. They had a day of 70 F and everyone was complaining about how hot it was. Anywhere in the 60s (again, in Fahrenheit) seems to be a "good" day. The weather turned completely on a dime and a lot of the time, it was wet, rainy, or at the very least, overcast. I'm doing this despite the fact that I am extremely close and bonded to my family and am very family oriented. I'm doing this despite the fact I'll have to go back due to grad school. I'm doing this because he currently can't under his circumstances, and so it's been up to me to figure things out. There's also the fact that even a month in Dublin was not what I would say enough to get accustomed to it, same as I would say two weeks is nothing for getting accustomed to the U.S.

And who knows? You may really hate America. You could spend a year working here and still hate it, but you don't know until you go for it. While I will admit that a part of my flexibility comes from desires and wants I had prior to meeting/getting together with my SO, I also think that openness and flexibility are a necessary part of LDRs in general. You say you feel she's "the one," the "love of your life," so why give up on her? Is there no chance at all of pursuing a relationship, seeing where it goes, and figuring things out down the line? I think it can be hard for some people who aren't even in a fully established relationship to think about the future, especially when that future involves moving from one country to another, but really what I think you both need is openness to the idea that things happen and plans change. While I also think that if both of you are stubborn and completely unwilling to change your lives at all, then this relationship is not going to work and love is not going to "trump all" (though in this case, I'd doubt she's the one either), I think that if you both go into it with openness and determination to make it work, you're going to figure something out.

Or, you could do what I did with my ex, which was appreciate the fact that though a move was not in either of our immediate (or distant) futures, we still enjoyed each other's company. We still had deep feelings of love and care for one another. We still rode out our relationship. There was the possibility of the future unfolding, and it didn't, and we both knew when it was time to let go. There's always the possibility of something not working out, but my opinion is you shouldn't let circumstances rule out what you'd normally go for. Any one of us on this site could end up breaking up with our SOs tomorrow, and some of us would never have expected it, but what keeps us going is the blind faith and determination that we have for our relationships and the love that we have for one another. Love is all about risks, so if you feel this strongly for this girl, isn't she worth taking one?

[13000km]

That is the downside to LDRs, that eventually one, or both parties in the relationship will have to move away from their families and friends, leave the comfort and safety of a support system and establish themselves in a new country. Is it supposed to be an easy "let's go!" kind of decision? No. It takes so much discussion and planning, sacrifice, compromise, patience, and independence. All this on top of Love. Does love trump all? I don't think so. But a strong will, make that two, does. It takes more than love to make a relationship work. "If it's meant to be, it will happen"? I don't believe that for a second. Nothing's going to happen if you don't put blood, sweat and tears into it, if you don't work towards it.

In our situation, I'm very close to my family. Like, see my aunts and uncles and cousins every week kind of close. He is close to his immediate family, but not like I am. But, the cost of living and school expenses is a lot lower in the US than it is in Singapore. We couldn't afford to have both of us live in Singapore at this moment, so the decision was made that I'd move here. Has it been easy since? Not at all. I have spent many nights crying, wishing I was with my family. I miss the big and bright city I came from. Where I live now, is not city-like at all. But being CD, for us, is an important step in our relationship, an important decision we had to make as a first step to planning our future together. Has being CD made our relationship a bed of roses? No, there are so many obstacles we had to work together to overcome, and there will be more. Eventually, we'll probably not go back to Singapore, but may not end up in the States either.

It is important that both parties in a relationship is willing to make sacrifices for the other. It's definitely going to be a long and hard road, and you're not magically going to grow less close to your family. Your relationship isn't going to succeed because Love trumped all things, or because it was meant to be. Your relationship will succeed if YOU trumped all the bumps in the road together with her.

Leaving your family, and closing the distance is definitely possible for any couple with a lot of determination and hard work. Good luck!

Edit:
I just read the rest of the responses. My response=basically what lucybelle said.

[HollzHeartsChris]

I'm sorry to hear about your breakup =(

I'd just like to add my own opinion: I think with determination, it isn't impossible to conquer the odds to be with the one you love. You both have to be pretty determined to make things work, but if it's meant to be then you'll both find a way to make things work, or the opportunity will present itself to you eventually in one form or another. It takes a lot of commitment and hard work to overcome an LDR, but it isn't impossible because you just have to look at all those on here who've conquered the odds to realise that. I wish you the best of luck, hopefully things will work out for you both!

[elizabethjp2010]

If neither of you will EVER move, than i wouldnt think it was worth it, I wouldnt be LDR if i didnt think i could close the distance one day.


however have you asked her how she would feel about one day moving to Australia? her answer might surprise you. If you are going to break up with her, i would do it at the airport, because its nicer to do it in person i think...


good luck

[Sora1101]

Sure you say you couldn't stand living in the US but you haven't even tried it yet, are you seriously willing to throw away the love of your life without even honestly giving it your very best effort? You couldn't know you'll hate living in the US by such a short visit, besides the US is a big place, if you didn't like it there both of you could try moving to a state that fits closer to your needs. I'd also like to ask have you even discussed her living with you if you truly detest the states that much, I mean how do you know she'd be unwilling to move for you? Not to sound harsh or anything but you talk about her being the love of your life but to me it seems like you're ready to give up as soon as the going gets tough. long distance isn't easy by any means, you both will need to work hard and you might need to sacrifice a lot but if you truly think she's worth it then fight for her.

[Engel]

Unfortunately, love cannot conquer all things. It takes a lot of hard hard work and sometimes that work gets in the way. I agree with Alemap, if it's meant to be, it will be.

I'm sorry about your breakup. Getting new hobbies or keeping yourself busy wil def. help you keep your mind off of her until you can take control of your feelings.

agreee. love is giving as well. one of you would have to give up your own country for this to work. of noone is willing to give up, i think you made the right choice in breaking up.

Im sorry...