Anticipating Valentine Chocolate

With Valentine's Day approaching I think it's fitting to talk about long-distance relationships. Who in their right mind thinks, "I want one of those." the answer is this, no one. Long-distance relationships are hard. Well, actually I should probably say high maintenance as that's a better term for it really. This relationship is remarkably easy and well worth the wait and hassle of getting to the end of my Kentucky life/ the beginning of my life in Norway. I feel like I've been friends with Arild and have known him my entire life in many ways, but in others such as being with him in person is still quite new. We try to make our relationship as "normal" as possible. When we first decided we wanted a relationship out of this, it certainly wasn't how your typical relationship begins. We were friends of course and had met as pen pals, but once we decided we really liked one another and would like to meet up sometime we had to discuss the pros and cons for hours and hours. We decided benefits far outweighed anything negative.

One of the first things people warn me is, "How do you know what he's like in person? You don't really know what a person is like until you live with them." or my favorite and call me naive, but I really have to laugh at this, "Everyone changes after marriage." or "Everyone becomes a different person after marriage." I can't test that second statement just yet, but as far as the first, it turns out he is exactly the same person I knew that existed in my laptop, so meeting his personality in person was no surprise. Arild and I think very similarly when it comes to our point of view on relationships. I think our shared point of view is simple: screw romance, just be honest. We started out being completely honest; brutally honest whether what we say hurts the other person's feelings or not. So one of the very first things we discussed when we decided to actually consider ourselves a couple (I can't say "dating", you have to actually go on dates for that) was sharing any and all bad qualities we have and what could make ourselves annoying to live with. With this we have learned negotiation and we'll later put our compromising skills to work when we're married and live together for more than 2 weeks at a time. As long as he can deal with my absent-mindedness and unorganization and I can help him eat and sleep like a normal human being I think our lives living together will be fine.

Parliament, which is also shown in the movie. 

Don't mind the horrible photography, but here is Karl Johan gate!

With technology today long-distance relationships obviously have a higher success rate. We now have IM apps, Skype (tusen takk/ thousand thanks, Skype creator!), Facebook, e-mail, Twitter, cameras, text messaging, etc. The list goes on and on and on. Trying to make our relationship more "normal" takes a lot of creativity. About once a week we watch TV shows or a movie via sharing screens on Skype. This evening I got to look forward to a history lesson as well as Norwegian film since we watched Max Manus/ Man of War so I can learn about a true story on Nazi occupation in Norway during WWII while he can explain anything to me if I have questions. We're so fun. :-P Even though I can't even begin to express my dislike of war movies, he does suggest I will find it interesting with the movie being filmed in Oslo where we walked just 3 weeks ago. If possible some days on Skype we will live our lives as normal, but just observe the other person in how they live within the home (a lot of analyzing behavior goes into this), we write e-mails to each other and length depends on how busy our day has been, but nevertheless, we always send a message a day to one another, on days we see each other little to none we can expect our e-mail inboxes to be full of picture attachments via our phones. For example, we will send basically the story of our day in pictures. We will maybe take a picture of the weather, a personal musing of the day, I will take a picture of a news article I would think he'd find strange from a newspaper lying on the break room table at work, take pictures of lunch, whatever. :-)

We most certainly see a few benefits in having a long-distance relationship. One major benefit being communication. All we do is talk. This type of relationship helps a person express any type of deeper communication, especially if you're shy or closed up or a super introvert. Being able to openly talk like this helps you get to know someone extremely well than perhaps otherwise. Secondly, there's also the benefit of having your entire relationship documented. You can see how it's grown and you can look back on things with clearer memory. There is also the benefit of running on high emotions and anticipating the approach of another count down coming to an end so you can see that person again. Another benefit to this type of relationship is probably being enlightened with your own self-discovery in learning more about our own selves and how we act in relationship, evaluating our own behavior  and becoming more cultured by learning about one another's different background.

I know I started out saying how hard it is and well, it is, but it's difficult to get into that topic and not write some horribly mushy stuff no one wants to hear, but you obviously have to deal with not being around or near the person and well, I guess the rest of the negative aspects revolve around that. I think he and I can both agree that we're ready for the long-distance to be done and over with. Heads up on the count down.... 89 days! 89 more days and I can start dating my soon-to-be husband!