big time difference- how do you cope/communicate?

[Kiyama]

Is anyone else bothered by this stupid time difference? We have a 9 hour difference.
I know other people in ldrs like my work mate whose husband still lives in England. They only have 1 hour difference but have trouble matching their schedules sometimes. I'm honestly surprised how me and my SO survive.
We have phases we get to talk quite a bit, even during the week but then weeks, we only get a few minutes a day. It bothers me because if if gets frequent, I'm scared we'll loose our connection.

So I'm curious about other people who share the same issue. What is your communication pattern like? How does it work out for you?

[Rueben]

Tangoman and I have a 5 hour time difference. It's not tooooooo bad but our calls are very scheduled. We talk first thing in the morning when I walk my dog, then on my way to work, then on lunch hour, on my way home....and that's it....i say "that's it", but our records indicate over 4000 hours of talk time a month! lol When I get home at 5, it's 10 in Scotland and he is off to bed for an early morning. It's hard from 5pm until the next morning without him, but we manage quite well. The ideal situation would be us being together!!

We also email throughout the day so we are in constant touch....

[leonsfangirl]

My SO and I have a 7 hour time difference and we manage ok at the moment.

We use Blackberry Messenger during the week while he's at work and he calls me on his lunch break everyday. Weekends we talk for aslong as possible, longer if it's the weekend I don't have the children. We'll have some issues when i finally get back into work as i won't be around as much but it's something we're used to.

[princessmeg1328]

My fiance and I have a 6 hour time difference. We have set days that we talk for about 2 and a half hours. We also email all morning while he's at work. On the weekends, we spend hours talking late into the night (for him). It does suck once he goes to bed though because I know I can't talk to him again. We also text occasionally. We try not to text too much though because international texts are expensive. Getting to talk to your SO is all about scheduling.

[TwoThree]

Luckily my SO and I don't have a real problem when it comes to time difference. He's one hour ahead of me half of the year, and two for the other half (we don't do daylight saving in my country). It's a bit inconvenient when he has to go to bed and it's just 8:30 pm here, but I don't really complain because obviously other people don't have it so easy. Not sure at all how I would have managed with an Aussie or American boyfriend, so kudos to you people with 7 hours time difference for making it work!

[dglynn77]

We have a 12 hour time difference. On one hand, it makes things easier as we always know exactly what time it is where the other is - same time, just opposite time of the day. It stinks though because it feels like with everything that we do, one is always asleep when the other is awake, and vice versa. Although it isn't true, with work and everything, it tends to be hard... It's pretty cool though. 12 whole hours...

[Jazi]

right now we have a 9 hour time difference, but when the daylight savings changes it goes to 11 hour difference, so half the year we are 9 and the other half 11.


its so much easier when we are 9 hours apart - he will get home from work at 2am my time and I will fall asleep talking to him, which gives us a good hour or so to talk. yeah, i do stay up really late to talk but if i didnt we wouldnt manage to talk very much at all. He also goes to bed quite early and gets up at 5am to talk to me, sometimes it doesnt work to talk in his morning because i'm at work but usually we get at least half an hour or so.

on the 11 hour time difference.. well, we try to do a similar thing, just makes it a lot harder for me because its 2 hours later. I sometimes will fall asleep for a little bit and then wake up when he gets home to talk for a little while.

we do try to sleep on some-what similar times, it makes it feel like we are a lot closer in terms of time difference and such. we usually go to bed/wake up within a few hours of each other which i think is a good effort considing that If we both slept on normal times for our timezones we would be completely opposite lol.

we both have blackberrys too so we do use bbm throughout the day when he is at work, definitely not as good as skyping though

if we didn't change our sleeping patterns to be able to talk to each other we simply would only be able to talk on the weekends

[C.M.]

My SO and I are also nine hours. He has a very erratic sleep schedule so (unfortunately for him!) it works out for us, we usually have a few hours each day. Sometimes my body just wakes itself up at 5 after going to sleep at midnight talking to him, just to see if he's around. This is not the best situation obviously, as sometimes I am sleep deprived.

[Zephii]

For us it was 7 hours in my winter, 5 hours in my summer, as both countries have daylight savings. I lived for the summer! Haha.

Generally I got up stupidly early, and he stayed up really late. We also used quite a bit of not-real-time communication to fill in the gaps, like detailed letters and emails.

I found a lot of the time we wouldn't have managed without the time difference. I couldn't have stayed up past 11pm every night to talk to him - never mind pulling all-nighter which he frequently did for me. And he likely wouldn't have gotten up before 7am just to catch me before school or work. We'd never have "seen" each other if we didn't have the time difference.

[yachica]

Me and my SO have a 6 hour time difference for half of the year and a 5 hour difference for the other half (clocks don't go back and forth in Colombia!) I would say the time difference is harder for me, but we work it quite well. We are together in the morning because we sleep with our laptops on :~s and I get up at 6 which is midnight for her and so when I get up to go to work she goes to sleep.
I have msn on my phone and she connects when she gets to the office and we kind of accompany each other even if we don't speak. I log on when I get home to say hi and then if I am working on my laptop we will be connected and as I go to bed, she is just getting home and will stay with me while I sleep.

One thing for sure, I have got used to surviving on much less sleep than I used to! It works well tho, and we both understand that if we can be online then it's okay because we do actually spend a lot of time together.

[Dezface]

Right now we are 7 hours apart, the other half of the year we are 5.

For us it's just a small annoyance for us really. He gets up very early for work and I'm up late for work so it works for us. We chat on his way to work, and on my way home from work and again before I go to bed. Sometimes when we're both off we can talk for hours. And we text all day. So not too bad

[Adora]

We have a six hour time difference. we text prob from about lunchtime to well into the evening, but we only speak maybe once or twice a week. I always try and refrain from texting him before 1pm (my time) as dont want to wake him in the morning.
I'm always counting backwards 6 hours haha, does anyone else do that x

[lala]

we have 8 hours time difference.. and I'm glad to hear that others don't talk that much as well.. For us it's just not possible.when I wake up he goes to bed..when I come home he goes to work.. and when he comes home I'm sleeping.. we send eachother messaged when we're on our break or have some free time..and if it happens that we both have off the we are chatting some hours.. And you know what: we went one year without skyping or talking on phone yes that's possible^^

I also have a clock in my computer which shows me what time it is where my love is..

[Amy:x]

At the moment 9hrs, on the other half of the year 11hrs!! Basically we just find a way haha! But having bbm and email helps as one of us will always wake up to a lovely message

[Sora1101]

Even though our time difference is only 3 hours sometimes it can be difficult to work around, he usually has to stay up late for me and I wake up early for him the only time we really constantly talk are in the 3 hours that he says up for me and the 3 hours I wake up early to talk to him before work with a couple of minutes during the day when he calls me on his work break thrown in.