The Distance Between Us Is Not What You Think

A lipstick stain on a coffee mug in Manila, a missed FaceTime ring in Vancouver, and somewhere in between—love tries to stretch itself across 8,000 miles of timezone and translation. The distance isn’t the problem. It’s the echo that follows every “I miss you.”

When couples say they’re “making it work,” we imagine flight itineraries, candlelit Zoom dinners, maybe a shared Spotify playlist. But that’s just the press release. The reality of a long-distance marriage is quieter. More haunting. It’s being married to a memory, waking up next to the ghost of a promise made in person but now kept through pixels and static. And no one warns you that even the strongest vows feel different when whispered across a cracked phone line.

The Myth of Closeness in a Digital Age

They say we’ve never been more connected. That apps and Wi-Fi and emojis with hearts for eyes have solved distance forever. But connection is not contact. And love, for all its digital cheerleading, still needs skin. “Sometimes I feel like I’m dating my screen,” confesses Ava, a 34-year-old expat whose husband works two continents away. “It’s like we’re curating our best selves for each other—carefully, artificially. I miss being boring together.”

The performances in long-distance marriages are Oscar-worthy. You learn to look radiant during a 3 AM video call. You plan conversations like they’re job interviews—polished, purposeful, never messy. But love thrives in the mess, doesn’t it? In bad moods, in shared silence, in the rhythm of folding laundry side by side. Without the mundane, even passion feels performative.

Can You Build a Life Without a Present Tense?

Long-distance marriages often become time machines. You live in the past of shared memories and the future of reunion fantasies. But the present? It’s elusive. How do you make a life with someone who doesn’t inhabit your mornings or your moods? What does “home” mean when it’s always pending, always postponed?

There’s a weight to that uncertainty. A waiting room kind of ache. No one tells you how the time between visits becomes the third party in your marriage. Or how resentment doesn’t arrive with a slam, but creeps in like fog—slow, silent, obscuring.

Still, people stay. Not because it’s easy, but because sometimes love isn’t about comfort. It’s about endurance. And yes, distance can sharpen things—make every gesture sacred. A mailed letter becomes a love poem. A shared movie, an act of devotion. But even devotion needs daylight.

So maybe the real question isn’t Can long-distance marriages work? Maybe it’s: What do they cost to keep working? What parts of ourselves do we trade for the illusion of togetherness?

Because one day, someone may finally come home. And find that love, so carefully preserved across time zones, has evolved into something else entirely—still familiar, but no longer the same.

And that lipstick stain on the mug? It’s still there. But the coffee’s gone cold.