This semi-long distance relationship

'Why do you love me?' I asked Jacob on a Monday night last term on a day where I was finding it hard to feel the love despite knowing it exists. A hard thing about living a semi-long distance relationship is not having all the ways of expressing love you used to have, and then having to trust that love exists (oh hello Wales villanelle) without those signs so unconsciously littered in every day life spent together. It's a lot like faith in God when you have 'valley moments' and God seems far away - you know he loves you, you know he exists, you know and yet you can't see or touch or speak.

The day after that I came back from a morning in the library to find a postcard for me on the stairs. 'This postcard is a sign' it said, with big words 'I LOVE YOU' on the front and a poem mixing semiotics and assurance on the back (I find semiotics fascinating if you didn't already know). He must have sent it before I asked him on Monday night, and yet it was like the question I asked had conjured that physical reminder of an answer.

All this to say, semi-long distance isn't easy, and it takes work and writing post cards and articulating why you love the other even when it seems the most obvious thing - and yet the love endures and grows all the better for it. Here are 5 important things I've learnt after a term and a bit of this semi-long distance relationship:

1. Say what you want/how you feel. 

Early on in our relationship Jacob sent me the song 'Honesty' by Billy Joel (just because he likes Billy Joel) but I took it very seriously and vowed that I wouldn't play games -  when I felt something I'd say it and when I needed something I'd ask it. That has been incredibly helpful with semi-long distance - when you aren't there to read body language or see someone's change of mood from day to day, when so much of their life is obscured it's impossible to be able to know what they need or want so instinctively. And what they need and want changes because of distance, but the adapting to that isn't easy unless they articulate their new needs.

Last term I had to tell Jacob that I needed to feel desired/wanted despite the distance between us. The change from seeing each other almost every day to seeing each other once every couple of weeks (if that) meant that articulating love in the every day together ways of time and touch and certain acts of service weren't an option any more, so I needed him to say he loved me more, or describe his day to me more or ask about mine. Telling him I felt that way instead of letting it make me hurt or frustrated inside was so good - it showed him that I trusted him to be able to adapt, and showed me how earnestly he does want to make sure I feel loved when he made conscious efforts after that conversation to do so.

`2. Stick to your rules.

Quite early on in our relationship Jacob and I came up with clear boundaries regarding intimacy. One important one was not spending a night in the same room together. This has meant that each time I visit him in Cambridge I've asked people if I can stay with them. It might be an added 'inconvenience' but it has been really useful in helping us respect each other and obey God even when I've not seen him for a while, and am tired from travelling, and his bed is so warm and the outside so cold...

But I do it because I love and respect him, and I love and respect God, and I know keeping my side of this promise shows him that I am someone who can keep faith, and it also upholds the purity that God asks of us to have in our relationships. So though because I love him keeping the rules are hard, because I love Him/him keeping the rules are worth it.

3. Comfort each other with truth

On a crummy day I was telling Jacob over the phone how I was feeling frustrated, and finding it particularly hard to pray. 'Jesus is right by you,' he said, 'he's holding you in his arms and smiling down at you.'

I laughed. 'I was with you until you said smiling,' I said, 'In my head he was frowning and disappointed.'

'No! He's smiling - he loves you and you're his child.'

It's particularly hard not being able to 'be there for each other' in the immediate sense when either one of us is going through a hard time, but the most loving thing either of us can do is speak the truths that both of us believe in. Jacob reminds me that God made me, loves me, and that He has a plan and his plan is good. Those three truths are good no matter what the situation, because they remind me that I have a purpose, a comforter, and a guide. The reminding is loving and comforting in itself, but it is also a humble recognition of a greater and more constant comforter than either of us can ever be.

4. Have a shared ritual

Jacob and I have prayed together almost every night since we started this year. We begun this in Singapore, continued in Wales and so we had that ritual pretty much rooted when we parted for the term. Nightly calls have been such a source of joy - we've seen so many prayer come true which is incredible, but it also is a way of caring for each other actively since we know that prayer works, and if we pray for the other person's peace or productivity or courage or... we know that God will take that prayer and use it according to his plan and purpose.

Particularly in the early weeks of London, prayer was such a familiarity in an unfamiliar environment and routine, and it really grounded me to know I could keep praying no matter what, and that Jacob was praying too. When Jacob was in Rome, he stood in the stairwell of a noisy hostel and called despite the shaky wifi. If I'm out late, I often call him on my cycle home, keeping one earphone out to listen for traffic and the other in to hear about his life. It's a ritual that has become so interwoven in each of our lives and which weaves our lives together.

(Other rituals include having porridge while sitting on the bed whenever I visit him in Cambridge, or going for a run together whenever he comes here/I go there)

5. Make time together more than ordinary

In a conversation with Lucy (who is so wise, and so easy to confide in) about how she and her boyfriend work with distance in their relationship, she mentioned how one of the beautiful aspects of a long distance relationship was the specialness of the time together. Since they wouldn't see each other often, when they did see each other they'd make it a point to make the time extraordinary.

When Jacob is coming over, I try to get as much work done as possible before he arrives, so that time is free for doing joyful, special things with him. The last time I went to Cambridge we went to a play and a burns night party, and the last time he was in London we went to Pierre Bonnard's exhibition and the orchestra - things we wouldn't do usually, and things we probably wouldn't do alone. Sharing them with him makes them extra special, though they are already special in themselves. It's a way for each of us to show the other that we value them coming over and that we save the best of our time for them.