Just Another Lonely Night...

[marde]

Hi there readers! I'm a new member to this site and thought I would give writing a go in order for me to better express my feelings about my current long distance relationship, since I'm sure my friends and other loved ones are beyond exhausted hearing me complain about my loneliness.

To give some background, I have been with my significant other for about a year and a half now (yay!). We met on a dating app, proceeded to text daily, then progressed to daily phone calls. After about two and a half months of talking for hours each night, my S.O. drove to my hometown to meet me. It was amazing. Virtually the closest thing I can attribute to being love at first site. I couldn't imagine a more perfect week or a more perfect guy. Fast forward to now, a year and a half later, and we are still so completely in love. The relationship itself isn't an issue for me, since I know that I'll never find another person who could even compare to him. My issue is the distance.

We have somewhat of an idea of when our endpoint will be. We both graduate this upcoming May (~7 months in the future). However, after graduation he will be entering into the military and I will be staying in my home state to find a job for a year or two. His training will (hopefully) take about 1 year to a year and a half, max. And after his training ends we both imagine ourselves living together. Luckily, when he begins training, we'll only be a 2-3 hour drive away from one another (also yay!).

It's wonderful thinking about how our distance is going to progressively begin to dwindle, but it's still not easy. It's hard seeing each other only once a month. And it's hard feeling as though I found my "person" but can never truly be with him.

I have a couple of close friends, but I don't see them too often. I would say that I have a solid 4 close friends who I could call at anytime and who would be happy to let me vent or just talk in order to not feel so lonely. But it still just doesn't fill the void. I'm not happy at school anymore either. I used to have an abundance of friends but since moving off-campus and starting a new job on top of school, I just haven't had the time to see anyone and in turn have lost touch with a lot of people. I don't genuinely enjoy the area I live in either; the people can be rude, materialistic, and closed off. The only thing that keeps me happy is the idea that once I graduate I'll be able to move a little closer to home in an area with people who are more similar to me. But in the mean time I just feel trapped.

I'm starting to feel like I may be emotionally dependent on my significant other but I don't want to be. I consider myself a very independent person in that I'm able to do a lot for myself and care for myself without the help of others. But the one thing I can't do is fill this void that's begun growing larger and larger in my head. I want to be strong for myself and for him but it's just getting hard.

I think a big part in my feeling of loneliness is my schedule. I'm currently a full time student during the week and also work a job in the gaps I have on weekdays. My weekends tend to be fairly open but I've either been spending them with family, with my S.O. (once-ish a month), or just sulking in my room as I catch up on homework from the past week. I don't often go out with friends but it does happen about once every two weeks.

It's just on nights like these when I'm sitting in my room feeling completely aware of my loneliness that I tend to really struggle. I'll call a friend or two to just have a conversation with someone but it still doesn't feel like it's enough. I feel like I don't have enough friends to distract me. I talk to my S.O. on the phone once a day but once the conversation ends the loneliness settles back in.

Please, if anyone has advice for how to limit having moments like these I would love to hear it. How do I stop feeling this pit in my stomach every night that I'm alone? I want to enjoy my "me time" more but lately it just feels like torture. Let me know how you've dealt with it, or just let me know that I'm definitely not alone in feeling this way over my long-distance relationship.

Thank you so much for reading.

[Harlequin]

When you say training, do you mean basic training and then AIT? Because you aren't going to see him at ALL during basic, and I don't think you'll see him during AIT, at least for a little while. You also won't hear from him during basic like, at all. He'll get a few minutes to make a phone call towards the end of his time in basic, but that's about it. He'll be able to send letters, but it won't be as many as you'd like (it's never enough tbh). He'll be close, but Uncle Sam is going to have him by the balls, and you'll only get to see him when the government says so, so probably his graduation from basic and maybe his graduation from AIT. It's an unfortunate reality of military relationships. Once he gets stationed somewhere, he's going to have to live on base in the barracks for a predetermined amount of time, and eventually he'll be allowed to move off base. You're not allowed to stay in the barracks with him. It can sometimes be as short as a few months, or as long as a year. You'll be able to see each other more often once he's stationed and out of training, but you won't be able to live together until he's allowed to move out of the barracks. If he gets stationed overseas, like in South Korea or Germany, you won't be allowed to go with him, and some overseas duty stations are off-limits even to spouses for safety reasons. Unfortunately, once he's in the military, you come second to the government, and since you're not a spouse, you might as well not exist to the military. The distance issue doesn't really go away until he gets that sweet, sweet DD-214. Depending on the branch he's going to, he can be deployed for anywhere from 3 months, to a year.

Fortunately, it can be very easy to make friends once he's in the military. He'll meet people, and you'll get to meet them and their partners and stuff, and it's really a nice little family you start to build. Take whatever opportunities you can get to make friends. I suck at socializing, so it took me about a year to warm up to people and start to socialize. I only regret it took me this long.

For now, though, loneliness happens to the best of us, and it's definitely compounded by being somewhere you're not really all that happy. Even if it doesn't completely fill the void, try to get out with your friends. Even if it's only once every few weeks or so, getting out and just being with friends can make a difference. Try to find a hobby you can work on when you have down time and just want to decompress/distract yourself from the loneliness. I decided to take up crochet, and it's done a great job of keeping me out of my head when it's not a pleasant place to be. Hobbies will also be a total life-saver during deployments and other miserable, lonely times during his military career. I don't think you're emotionally dependent on your s/o. If you were, you'd be unreasonable, like getting mad at him for really stupid reasons, and you don't seem to be mad at him at all. You also don't seem unreasonable. Wanted to make sure I clarified that as well lol. You just miss him and you're feeling lonely. That's normal and understandable.

Overall, I wish you all the best and I hope I didn't come across as too harsh with the military stuff.

[marde]

Hi Harlequin!

No need to apologize at all! You definitely weren't being harsh, all of the points you made were completely valid. Luckily, my SO gets to overpass basic (and a few other things) since he's been an ROTC member for the entirety of his college career. He'll still be having to attend BOLC (which will somewhat be as strict as basic but not quite as much and will be shorter) as well as his specialty training but with the ranking he'll having once beginning to commission, he'll be able to live off-base during the specialty training period. And lucky for me the base where his specialty training will occur is only 2-3 hours from me! He'll still be crazy busy but it's at least better than it could be otherwise. I also do come from a partial military family so I very well understand that there will most definitely be times where we will be forced to do distance again.

I LOVE that you brought up the idea of military family. I think I have difficulty forming relationships currently because I tend to favor strong bonds with people and where I currently reside, others tend to not look for those bonds (could just be a party school type of thing). I've met other military families before and I idolize their kindness and welcoming nature towards others and I really look forward to being surrounded with people who are more like that.

Thank you so much for reassuring me that what I'm feeling is normal. I think I've just been feeling extra unhappy at school for the past couple of months and it's been festering intense feelings of loneliness and being ready for change. I love your idea of starting a hobby and I think I'll definitely look more into that. I've been trying to get myself into wanting to go to the gym daily but with my schedule being so busy it's hard to find the time every day.

Thank you again for all of the kind words. They really did help and I now feel more confident that regardless of how much it sucks right now, it definitely won't last forever.

Best wishes!