Challenging the concept of distance in love… 

Distance. In love, what is distance? Sometimes it is a chair across from us where our partner wipes the corner of their mouth during Valentine’s Day dinner. It features our feet swinging back and forth underneath the table until we playfully meet each other’s shoes. Distance is the space between a chest and back when spooning in the dented mattress, the space closed by rolling on our side to give a soft good morning kiss. 

Distance is the space between beating hearts when having sex or slow dancing. The space between each other’s skin when soaking under the shower together with shampoo in our eyes. It becomes larger when we live blocks away from each other, when we live neighborhoods away, sometimes even cities. 

In Chicago, distance can be conquered by taking the L train or a bus for only $2.25 despite long waiting times. Bikes can take us from the North to South Side in a few hours, less if our muscles work hard enough. In Chicago love, distance is closed when we decide to stay the night in an apartment because why not? 

I am a woman who has never feared loving loudly, professing how full my heart becomes from the sheer presence and voice of someone who has my soul. I love to love loudly, until that loudness becomes a quiet echo 200 miles away from the person I love loudly. A notorious long – distance kind of love. 

 For those who love far away, distance can be maddening and hopeless. It is that daunting doubt and constant opponent which challenges the validity and strength of our relationships, romantic or not. It is a cruel joke plastered on our backs asking our friends and family to remind us of how delusional we are for choosing the largest distances. 

For me, distance is represented by grainy pixels on an overheated laptop screen, the state of Indiana wedged between two slices of bread like a fat ribeye steak. I hate steak. Distances are the echoes of missed late night calls and what could have been. Distance is waiting six months to meet your partner whom you’ve pledged yourself to before even shaking their hand. It is spending less than nine days together skin to skin out of the 365 days of a year. 

Admitting my partner and I have only closed distance for nine days is sometimes shameful and sometimes motivating to add more days. My tiger parents believe I am delusional for meeting him online in a world where meet-cutes are the expected root of relationships. Distance makes me believe that I am delusional for taking a risk in it, for promising myself the ambiguity of an unsure future marked with spontaneous visits between the skyscrapers of Chicago and a cornfield in Ohio. 

I love my partner more than I have loved anyone else, more than doubt and distrust could love one another. It is the kind of love that nourishes itself with creativity, communication and bridging gaps. It is the kind of love that is also challenged by distance and the prescription that without physical touch, relationships are destined for disaster. 

The author and their partner on the rare days they have been able to close the physical distance. Photo courtesy of Emily Diaz

It is difficult to stay hopeful during times where everyone else is spending the holidays with their partners in real life, the way it should be. It is difficult to stay hopeful when people scoff and say long-distance love is failure and ignorance. 

If there is anything I can give to those who are in long-distance relationships and facing these thoughts, it is this line my partner gave me:

Robert Hass writes this line in the poem “Meditation and Lagunitas” and ever since my partner shared this with me, I’ve known it would stay with me when my heart would ache. It consoled me when departing at Amtrak train stations with a farewell embrace tinged with a desperate yearning for the infinite. It was the perfect affirmation as I looked out the car window until my partner became a blurry figure, then a speck and then gone. 

For this coming Valentine’s Day, it will be with my heart again while I watch a film with my partner screen shared via Google Meets. It will be with us when we laugh on opposite sides of the screen, when just stare at one another in silence and drowsy eyes. 

I challenge couples in long-distance relationships to reconsider what distance means. Distance is more than the geographic mileage between two people; it is greater than the highways and sidewalks we trek to fulfill our desires and longing. It is not endless in an arduous or distressing sense unless you confine yourself to believe it. 

For example, the distance between my partner and I has made desire swell more than ever in my heart; this desire is so poignant that we close the distance with our intimate vacations. This desire also opens up new distances while closing others and re-opening the same ones. 

Time is distance traveled in intervals of seconds, minutes and hours. It passes slowly at the worst moments and too quickly at the best. 

Fights are timed distances of challenging communication; watching a movie is a pleasant, timed distance journeyed with relaxation. Sex is a passionate and warm distance of two bodies becoming one and sleep is a seven hour distance of stealing the covers from one another and waking up butt to butt. For each distance that we cross, cherish and overcome, a new one arises with unexpected twists, hardships and jubilation. For each distance we close between each other through visits, we reopen the gap, then close it again; we will do so until that distance is closed permanently, so that we may move on to others that give us endless time to grow emotionally and mentally. 

Longing and desire are lovers whose kindling affinity for one another fosters endless possibilities of both good and bad distances. For every bad distance, there are bountiful good ones. For every time we depart at the airport or train station and re-open the distance between us, both physically and through the long months, we fill that gap in distance with the knowledge that endless distance doesn’t mean permanent distance. 

Distance. In love, what is distance? Sometimes it is listening to a soft voice on the other end of the telephone before sleep. It is the miles closed when we open mailed packages for our birthdays with love letters. It is the time spent brainstorming resourceful ways to have sex online (yes, and that is not shameful!). It is the time spent listening to my partner play his guitar with twisted strings while I watch like a bubbly child. It is the length of a good morning video and a goodnight text. Long distances do not define relationships spent physically apart, either. 

Most importantly, distance reminds me that desire is not a permanent road of waiting to be next to one another, but the strongest kind of love that travels many tender paths and waves. 

Header by Samarah Nasir