Anniversary from abroad, snooping and more...

[LizH]

I wasn't sure where to put this. Right now I'm abroad and my boyfriend is at home. I've been abroad for almost 4 months and our 4th anniversary is next week, they day before I get home (bad luck, right??) I've been so busy that I still don't know what I should send home and I need some ideas. If I get/write a card, what should I do? Any ideas? I am studying abroad in Spain and he doesn't know any Spanish, so I could possibly write him a love letter in Spanish and have him translate it/make him wait for me to get back to translate it. It takes about a week to get home though, so he wouldn't have long to wait.

The other part of this is that I've really been feeling the distance lately. While we're at school we LDR too, but there's a 6 hour time difference between Spain and home. It's been so difficult to keep up with him, especially because when I leave the country I usually don't have a way to talk to him. So, without meaning to, I pick a fight every time I get back after not being able to talk to him. It just gets to me, but at least he pointed it out to me and I've been able to stop it from happening again. The other thing is that I was worried he would cheat on me while I was gone...I have no reason to think that, but I got too anxious and went into his G-mail. I didn't find anything, but I feel pretty bad about it. Also, that was after I tried to log into his Facebook and couldn't. I don't usually do that kind of thing.

I'm his first girlfriend and sometimes I feel like I should let him go so he can experience life. I've been with him for 4 years and we're almost 20- it's almost like we've gotten all we can out of each other and it's time to move on while there's still time. But I can't be sure about the situation until I go home next week. Maybe everything will go back to normal when I'm back, when I can finally see him again.

[Lunar Snow]

I think the Spanish love letter is a lovely idea to make him feel like a part of your life abroad. I think it would be cool for him to give a shot at translating it, but it depends on his personality and interests (e.g., my SO loves languages and would be all over wanting to translate something like that himself, but I could see that for other people it would be more romantic to wait until you return home and translate it with him). Perhaps, you could use special stationary or dress the letter up in a way (e.g., something like making the paper look aged with tea and burning and then rolling up the paper and putting it inside of a bottle would make it something decorative beyond the content of the letter).

As for feeling the distance, I think that so many of us can empathize with you. It surely must be frustrating to not be able to communicate with each other often or reliably. You will be seeing him soon and could try to figure out a way to communicate more (when you are apart) during this visit. Perhaps, in some cases, fighting is a natural (albeit unwanted) feature of being apart so long and suddenly being back in each other's daily reality, in the flesh. Maybe start off with shorter dates to begin with, so you don't feel so pressured to immediately pick up where you left off.

As for snooping, I definitely have been there recently. Still haven't told my SO about it, because we had bigger fish to fry. I do feel guilty and do think I need to tell him about it at some point. There are different strokes for different folks and I think that past experiences, personality, etc. make some of us more likely to worry about cheating being exacerbated by distance (myself included), even if the likelihood of cheating at a distance is no greater than in a close distance relationship. Some of it, too, comes from a fear of the unknown; at least for myself, I wouldn't want to be deceived and know it could be done very easily at a distance. So, while your worries may feel unusual to you, they aren't abnormal in the grand scheme of things. I do think you should tell him about your snooping, if you feel you need to discuss it--there is some sort of bigger picture behind it, in terms of your feelings, and I think it could help a lot towards you working through those feelings if you are able to discuss it with him.

Your last paragraph has me quite confused, as you went from talking about anniversary gifts to saying that it's "like [you've] gotten all [you] can out of each other and it's time to move on while there's still time." That statement makes it seem as though you, yourself, don't want to have a relationship with him anymore (but I could be wrong, so maybe you can explain the paragraph a little more). If you don't feel the same about him as you used to, then celebrating an anniversary and giving him gifts would be leading him on. I am trying to understand if this last paragraph is all motivated by feeling like you should let him experience other things, but really you still love him, or if you are also unsure about how you feel. I see your dilemma about the gift now as you need to return home to resolve how you feel, but the gift will need to be there first if you find that you do still care about him romantically when you return home. As for worrying that you should let him experience other options in life, what's the rush? I think that if he didn't want to be with you, he would be giving indications that he didn't. He has a choice in this, too, and if he wants to stay with you and still loves you and you still love him, I don't see why you would need to "let him experience life"--he's choosing to experience life with you, still.