I had a failed long-distance relationship. While it lasted, it was amazing...so much hope and so much to look forward to! But when it ended, it was really really tough to swallow for me.


The short of it is that I met this Aussie girl while studying abroad in Leeds, England in '05. I never had the cajones to ask her out, and shortly thereafter she started dating some local guy. We just remained friends, though I really wanted to have something more w/her.

So I move back to the States, and the day after I get back, we are talking on MSN and she tells me that all this time she really liked me but was afraid to let me know. For a year and a half we kept talking every day (texts were a life savior, and the fact that Sprint didn't charge extra for international texting back then was key!). I was all ready to go see her, had my visa ready for Australia, and then things fell apart. She freaked out about the whole thing a bit. We stopped talking until about 4 months (April 2006 at this point) when she came around, said that she made a huge mistake, and that she will never make it again. I told her that I wouldn't go to Oz again and that she'd have to make the effort.

Things really heated up again, we talked a lot, many times a day. Finally she said she was buying a ticket to come and stay with me for two months! I was beside myself, I couldn't believe it was going to actually happen. All that time we just talked about being near each other and how we'll make it last. Right before she came over, she went to the UK and I flew there on Thanksgiving of last year (thanks to all the FTers btw who gave me hints about how to score a business class seat) and spent a wonderful 4 days with her in Leeds, where we first met. We both had food poisoning, but it was an amazing time still.

Then she came to New York and stayed for two months. Went to Nashville with me, met my parents...I really felt that I was in love, for the first time in my life. I made up my mind right then that I would want to be with her for a long time. I remember still the day she had to fly home. It was Australia Day (Jan. 26) and we were sitting in JFK, and neither one of us could stop tearing up. I promised up and down that I would come soon, as soon as I could (I just started a new job, that, I thought, would allow me to also move to be with her anywhere in the world). She promised me that she loved me forever, etc etc.

A month went by and I splurged and bought a ticket to Oz. Maxed out all my vacation days at my new job, as well as all of my savings for that trip. But as she started her masters in Canberra, she started getting very flaky. She wouldn't get on MSN any more, would say mean things to me, when I brought it up, called me controlling and said that she needed space (which was hard for me to understand, both in terms of the distance that was already between us, and the relationship that I thought we had). I began to fear that this relationship was going to end...and end it did. She called me about 3 weeks before my trip to Oz and told me in so many words that she wanted to break up for good, that she fell out of love. Mind you, at that time, I was still planning on moving there, was still preparing myself mentally for it. I guess I was both naive and blind...but that's what love is, I guess, blinding.

She told me that she still wanted me to come, but to have a clear idea of what to expect...which wasn't very much. I decided that I wasn't going to let this breakup defeat my long-planned, once-cancelled trip. So I still went. And it was horrible. Horrible and unfair to me and to everything that I felt we ever stood for. She was a different person. I cut my trip short by about 4 days and came home after only slightly more than a week there. It was heartbreaking, to say the absolute least. A few weeks later she cut off all communication with me, saying that she was over it. I felt (and still feel) gutted, cheated, betrayed...I felt like I put so much effort, care and love into making this long-distance thing work, only to have her say that it was the distance that killed it. If only she would've put in a third of the effort that I did...

Anyway, moral of the story: I didn't want to become another statistic in the realm of failed long-distance relationships. But I truly feel that I did everything the right way, save moving there earlier. But if it was meant to end, it was going to end sooner or later. I just didn't think that it would. I think about it every day, and about how much I was looking forward to the exciting changes that moving closer to her would bring. I even became a Qantas Frequent Flyer, thinking that I would be taking many trips to/from Oz...but alas.