The Challenges of College LDRs

[floridaellen]

I wanted to be the first one to post here....

What challenges does your college LDR face?

[Yaaamiii]

Schedule differences. And social life. Probably the biggest two. My SO and I are in two different colleges, and that can be a challenge as well. Sometimes my friends want to hang out when he's free, or vice versa. I've had to tell my friends that I couldn't hang out with them sometimes, or that I had to leave early because I wanted to talk to my SO before going to bed, and he's done the same for me. Or our classes won't be at the same time. We're both only an hour apart, but even that one hour can make things slightly more difficult. Not usually, because its only an hour, but it has at times made it to where our schedules didn't match up very well at all. People tend to change in college as well. That's very normal of course, but sometimes it's scary not knowing in what way they will change.

Not being in the same college also means having different college schedules. By that I mean when our schools have scheduled breaks/vacation/exams, etc. Last year I had tons of breaks and went to see him twice both semesters. Next year will be slightly different as I'll be interning in the fall semester and won't get to visit him at all.

College LDR's are difficult because its a time for growing and learning new things, and I think the scariest thing, at least for me, is the fear of growing apart. If it happens, it happens and was meant to happen, but if not, then great!! lol. Of course I'm hoping it doesn't lol. Our entire relationship, minus the first three and a half months, have been in college, and we've only grown stronger, not weakened, because of it. To me, it can suck knowing that we've lived different lives and have grown as individuals apart from each other, but I know its a good thing.

EDIT: Oh my gosh, I TOTALLY just realized what you meant by "the first to post" lol!! That's so cool! :P!! So much more organized!!!

[Deleted]

Visits during semesters are hard.

In my case, I study to become an industrial designer and he'll major in arts. Both of us have LOADS of time-consuming homeworks and we get huuuuge projects for partials! So it becomes really hard. He visited in october last year; I was not only in partials but I also had presentations of a book I had illustrated and was getting published. This semester I went to visit him in March and he had a reasearch to do plus etching projects that had to be ready to be exposed at some museum. You get the idea... we get no social life other than between us during those visits and we get very few sleep too. Although there is an advantage...we can help each other in certain projects :P and it can sound boring but it can get pretty romantic.

Oh there is something more here...we also have different schedules for vacations and stuff. Usually I am the one to go first on vacation and to go back. The days I wait until he's out of vacation so we can chat normally or get a visit are stressy.

...oh and we don't get time to work and get out own money :/ that's kind of frustrating too.

[Yaaamiii]

Visits during semesters are hard.

In my case, I study to become an industrial designer and he'll major in arts.

Just had to reply, my SO is studying to be an industrial engineer too! =D jeje To be honest, I had no idea what that was until he told me that's the kind of engineering he wanted to do. xD That's awesome! What year are you in?

[sewbama]

So we're both post-graduate students, which is a bit different than your average undergrad. But we have trouble with class schedules, school breaks, and just being incredibly busy. Being a grad student means pretty much doing whatever the professors ask, which can be a lot. So we're really busy. That means that even though we don't live very far apart, it's hard to find time to see each other. That can be really hard. And he doesn't have a car (should be solved soon).

I also have a fear that when he graduates (not sure when -- phds are unpredictable, but likely at least one year before me, at least two years from now), he'll get a job somewhere I'm not. And then when I graduate, I'll get a job somewhere else. It's just scary that this distance thing could be extended for another reason.

[DemonxOisin]

Hmm. Our main challenges are because he is in University right now to be an Engineer, and I am taking a couple of years off of school. Because of this, I have all the time in the world to think about him, make him presents and surprises and stuff... Basically, my whole attention is focused on him. He literally can´t spend all his time thinking about me though, and it used to cause a lot of fights between us, because it always felt like "he cared less for me." Also, when he is sleep deprived or hungry, he is a monster. He´s like a five year old throwing a temper tantrum, except with power over my emotions. It´s insane trying to be nice to him when he says mean things unintentionally.

But most importantly, the worst part is when he has exams. Some nights, honestly, a hug would be all it would take to make him feel better with his crazy work load. Just knowing I was there to fall asleep with at night, and that I was there supporting him, maybe bringing him some food... It would make his life so much easier.

[lademoiselle]

Both my SO and I will be going back to our studies after the summer; I'll be an undergrad student and he'll be doing another postgrad degree. I'm pretty new to the higher education system so I'm not sure what to expect in terms of a workload, social life etc. whereas he's a veteran! I know we'll have a lot less free time when the term starts, I can't yet say how it will affect our LDR but I'm positive we'll work around it somehow

[kittyo9]

Fitting in time for me in his wicked busy schedule, figuring out how to coordinate our lives after graduation... I think those are the major troubles. The latter has be really worried. Since he's from Peru and hasn't been able to get visas to come visit me in the states, we might have some trouble. We want to end up in the same place and finally close the distance, but I don't know how to do that, especially if it means closing the distance in another country all together. He also wants to go to grad school, while I just want to work once I've finished my masters.

[efish1042]

Scheduling and our families. I rarely know for sure that anything is going to happen with him until the day or two before and our families... *sigh* My dad has an irrational hatred of my SO. My SO's family, although they have recently accepted me (finally), they moved and that has made visiting this past year harder than it already was.
However, we're finally about to close the distance! I'm going to be going to the same university!

[lucybelle]

I don't know if this is cheating or not since I'm not really in a college LDR right now. But when I was in college I had a boyfriend back home. It sucked because he wasn't in college and I was and he never understood me. I was also on my university swim team and we had practices every morning at 5am. He couldn't understand why I wouldn't pick up the phone after 9pm. I was too freaking tired! He would say things like "yeah I've been awake since 6 am, and I'm not tired" Well did you work out for 2.5 hours in the morning, go to class all day, do weightlifting before lunch, then work out again in the afternoon for another 2 hours? Didn't think so... He also didn't like that I would drink or go out to parties. Anyways, obviously that relationship didn't work out and a lot of the reasons were because he didn't understand what college was like for me. Big lack of communication.

And right now my SO is going to night classes. It sucks because a few nights a week he doesn't get home until 9 or 10pm. We usually try to make the most of it. I'll cook dinner, then go to sleep while I wait for him to come home. When he gets home, I wake up and we eat a late dinner together. It's nice, but it's exhausting too.

[dukes2011]

The biggest challenge for us is that I'm in grad school and he's working. He's at school all day because he's an elementary school teacher and then my classes are at night, so by the time he gets home I'm in class. There's no time difference, so we do have that going for us but schedule differences are still tough sometimes.

[Spriteling]

I think for us it's the mutual stress of being in university. We're both perfectionists and high achievers, and we push ourselves hard. As a result, we feel a lot of pressure to do well in school, which stresses us both out, so we have to deal with our own stress plus each other's. We're good at calming each other down, but sometimes it is a drag, because it seems like one or the other of us is always stressed about /something/.

Additionally, being on different continents we have an 8 hour time difference, as well as differences in term schedules. So that can suck. However, next year I'll be starting my PhD while she'll still be an undergrad, so I'm sure that will ease some things, and bring about other new challenges.

[ushiwakafox]

Right now I'm going to a university down the highway from my SO. It's maybe like 20 minutes away, not far at all. I'm really not sure if I consider it a LDR (even if not, we were in a LDR for a year, I'm legit I swear! X] ) but it really does feel like it sometimes. It's definitely not as hard as it was when I lived overseas though. I guess for me the hardest thing about it is making myself study instead of driving down to see him. Because it's so hard to focus and be responsible when he's just right there!! It drives me crazy sometimes. We always spend the weekend together though, which helps a lot. But yea that's the hardest part for me.

[11MikesGirl21]

I'm the only one in school right now. He's taking some classes online now, but it's different because it doesn't take him away. During the school year, it's a juggling act between class, work, homework, clubs, and him. I feel guilty that it feels like he always gets the short end of the stick. When I'm home for a break, it takes us a bit to get back into being us together again and just when we do I go back to school. I'm home for the summer now, but I'll be going back to school for a the last week of June and a week in July to work Freshman Summer Orientation. It's a lot of guilt and frustration mostly. It used to be be worse before he moved in with my family. I had to split breaks between him or my family, and he had to split holidays with me or his family. That only happened once before he moved, but it was tough.

[Courtney:)]

My boyfriend is in college, while I'm still in high school. One challenge would be our differences in schedules. My schedule is high school, structured the exact same way every single day. While his is college, it differs every day. And besides school, we both have other after school/volunteering activities we are a part of. The best times for us to talk is late at night, and it's worse for me since my time zone is 2 hours ahead of him half the year, and 1 hour ahead of him the other half :/
People always question our relationship, also. I get a lot of crap for dating someone in college because he is "probably cheating on me" or "he is partying because he is in college" (even though I know he doesn't party). He gets a lot of crap also because I'm still in high school and "not mature" enough for him. Sigh. We get through it though. I plan to apply to his college! Not just for him, I can promise that. But it'll get better soon