My long distance relationship is making me depressed (5+Tips)

From the article below, you will get an idea about what to do when your long distance relationship is making you depressed.

“My long distance relationship is making me depressed”

To maintain a long distance relationship it needs a whole lot of determination, effort and discipline. 

One of the laws of attraction states that proximity increases intimacy and strengthens the factor of mutual affection. With increasing distance, lack of physical presence a relationship may become very difficult to handle.

You may suffer from trust issues, anxiety to lose your partner, hopelessness and loneliness if you don’t make yourself mentally prepared to be in a long distance relationship.

This may lead to excessive misunderstanding, fights, unwanted quarrels even a breach leading to depression and despair. 

6 different ways you can keep yourself mentally stable while being in a long distance relationship:

Your partner is not your enemy 

When you have any misunderstanding or fight, please remind yourself your partner is not your enemy. Remind yourself you have to solve the problem with love, kindness and understanding rather than being rude and angry. With anger comes hatred; hatred can bring a breach in your relationship. Always remember you have to understand and not rebuttal. 

During fights we often become extremely impulsive and ferocious. Our actions move out of our control and we end up feeling betrayed, anxious and lonely. We reach rock bottom and take impulsive decisions. 

The solution to feeling depressed after a fight is to learn the art of communication.

Learn the art of communication

Being in a relationship and maintaining it with utmost love and happiness is an art itself. What is communication? Communication is a two-way medium of exchanging thoughts between two or more individuals. 

There are three steps for proper communication :

Introspect: 

Before you communicate your problem or issue to your partner, please introspect. Ask yourself what dragged you to this situation; What exactly are you feeling; what were your faults; what were your partner’s faults. Answer them from a neutral point of view. Place yourself in your partner’s position and ask yourself, “ what would you have done if you were in his/her shoes?” Be honest to yourself when you are going through this introspection process. 

This introspection will help you be transparent about what you have to communicate. It will give a neutral perspective to look at the situation. 

Polite explanation

The next step is to take a deep breath and communicate your point of view with utmost politeness and calmness. 

A polite explanation will nurture positivity in you. This will also create a positive impact on the mind of the partner and not make him or her become agitated. Rather than saying, “ I hated the way you talked to me”, say it like, “ I felt bad when you talked to me in that tone, maybe you could have done it in a better way”. 

Politeness comes with empathy. Empathize when you communicate your partner’s bad behavior in this way, “ Probably you had a bad day, which made you so rude and angry.”

Always try to summon your partner with a sweet name that you usually use when you both are in a happy mood, something like, “ Honey, you could have been a bit polite the other day, I am sure you have had a bad day?”

Quiet listening

Be a good listener. Let your partner speak their point of view too. Try to be silent and patient when they are trying to make you understand their perspective. 

Understand and adjust 

Give yourself some time to understand what your partner thought about a particular issue. Compatibility grows with understanding and adjustment. Try to understand what they made out of the situation and adjust likewise. If you think you need more clarity, talk ( with politeness and patience). 

At times due to differences in opinion you may not find congruence between you and your partners’ thoughts. Here comes adjustment. Adjustment is not compromise, it is about mental flexibility. Adjustment will help us look at the same situation with a different or a modified perspective. 

Different people perceive the same thing in  different ways. There is no right or wrong in how a person interprets a situation. We have different experiences in life. Based on those, we solve problems, perceive new things, make choices and behave a certain way. Likewise, with adjustment we form a different outlook about the same situation. It enriches the bond and does not end us up with negativity and despair. 

Avoid texts

When in a long distance relationship, it is always not possible to get on a video call every now and then. But communication through text messages is the worst way of resolving misunderstanding. Texts do not express the true meaning of your problem nor any emotion. Eventually there is a possibility that the misunderstanding may go up thus making both feel depressed and disheartened. 

Virtual dates are so important

Plan a virtual date every weekend. There you can facetime your partner, watch movies together, have dinner and also play games together.

Engage yourself in a hobby

Getting yourself involved in various activities all throughout the day will help you maintain a balanced mental health when you are away from your partner. Any kind of engagement serves as a productive medium to enhance your cognitive abilities. Give yourself atleast a timespan of 1 hour where you will be totally off from social media and engage in some productive activity be it playing guitar, cookin, reading etc. 

Enjoy space

Having your own space and not clinging all the time to your partner is a healthy way to keep a relationship for a long time. Every person has a different perception about space. For me, space is about being able to be yourself and not lose the inner “you” even when you are so close to someone else. With a little bit of mental space you both will be able to concentrate more on your lives, work harder, not get depressed easily and be happy. 

Be practical and realistic

Both the partners in a long distance relationship have to understand that they cannot be with each other all the time either through texts or video calls. Likewise they have to form realistic and practical ways of maintaining the relationship. If your partner cannot text you for once in a day, do not blame him or her for it. Try to understand it is not realistic to expect someone’s presence over a virtual medium everyday. 

Develop such an understanding and trust between the two of you, that you don’t fall into being doubtful or suspicious about each other’s lack of attention. Understand that even if you are in an association, you are an independent and free human being. 

Don’t expect your partner will treat you exactly the same way in which he or she treated you when you were in close proximity.

Another very important point is, do not get used to or develop a habit of giving each other a specified time every day. Keep the timing flexible. Our mind always seeks to settle for a pattern. For example, you call your partner every night before going to sleep. This habit of yours, if continued for long, may get ingrained within you so much that if one night you find your partner’s phone switched off, you will suffer from anxiety or extreme irritability.  Have matured conversation amongst each other about how to not react if someone is not being able to respond instantly. 

Another important aspect is to realistically communicate about the “end goal” of the relationship. Do you want to be long distance forever? Probably not. You’ll have to discuss what you want your future to look like together, and if it’s possible to achieve the goal of living in the same place. If you aren’t on the same page with your expectations and hopes for the future, it might be time to reevaluate the relationship.

BetterHelp: A Better Alternative

Those who are seeking therapy online may also be interested in BetterHelp. BetterHelp offers plenty of formats of therapy, ranging from live chats, live audio sessions and live video sessions. In addition, unlimited messaging through texting, audio messages and even video messages are available here.

BetterHelp also offers couples therapy and therapy for teenagers in its platform. Furthermore, group sessions can also be found in this platform, covering more than twenty different topics related to mental health and mental illness. The pricing of BetterHelp is also pretty cost-effective, especially considering the fact that the platform offers financial aid to most users.

Conclusion

From the article above, we got an idea about what to do when your long distance relationship is making you depressed.

FAQs: “My long distance relationship is making me depressed”

References:

www.talkspace.com