So I held a little voting poll on my Instagram about what my next blog post should be about. I got feedback on three topics and they were: Auditioning, Different types of theatre jobs, and Long distance relationships.
And the winner for this week was...(DRUMROLL PLEASE....) LONG DISTANCE RELATIONSHIPS!!! This topic is near and dear to my heart because almost every relationship that I have been in has been long distance at some point and I am about to be long distance with my boo thang again in a couple of weeks. *DISCLAIMER* All of these posts about specific topics are solely my opinion and if you don't agree or you have had different experiences that's alright and amazing and being different and thinking differently is what makes us all great. =) When I was in college I dabbled in this a bit with all of my relationships. When I left Paducah do to The Glee Project I was in a relationship and it was a difficult situation. I was nineteen years old, dating a woman, and going on national television. Neither of us were out to our families yet and that made it even more complicated. I was on this reality TV show and we weren't allowed to have our phones or computers at all while we were filming. I was limited to one 15 minute phone call (that was filmed) a week and because we were not out to our families I could only call her and talk to her like she was my best friend. Not being able to tell someone that you love them and not being able to hear that from someone when you are literally three time zones away is so painful and difficult. I let it sabotage me. I got to the point where all I wanted to do was go home. I stopped trying. I made my relationship more important than everything else in my life. I was young and I wasn't focused on my goals enough to step aside and look at my situation and know that I wasn't doing myself any favors. I didn't know that it was possible to be in love and be happy and successful. I stopped trying and I came home. I resented her for that. I resented her for the way she made me feel while I was on that show. I resented the fact that she made me feel like I had to choose. And I was so wrong to do that. It wasn't her fault that I gave up. That was my own insecurity and lack of confidence. I blamed her and that destroyed us. This was the first time I had ever been in love and it deteriorated because of distance. Thus I became terrified of any type of long distance relationship. I was ruined. From that moment on, any relationship that ran into any distance had a cloud of negativity and distrust looming above it. Every relationship I had after that had to endure SOME sort of distance. Whether it be a month or the whole summer. It always happened because of the type of work that I was going into. It would get to the point where even if I I thought there was some other reason the relationship wasn't working once I looked deeper into things I would realize that distance came into play. Sometimes just the idea of the unknown would cause irreparable damage. Then my senior year of college came and I swore that I wasn't going to get involved with anyone. I was going to focus on school and auditions and not on a relationship. After all, I was going to be graduating and moving and that would mean whatever relationship that I would start would have to be long distance and that actually scared the shit out of me. Second semester of college I fell in love with Wes Carman. Ya know, just a boy who had been in my life all 4 years. Right in front of my nose the whole time. I didn't want it. I was terrified. I called my mom. Haha. When I talked to my mom she told me, "At this point in your life, every relationship is going to be long distance because of the career you chose and that is okay. I did it with your dad and you can make it work if you really believe in the person you're with." Thank god for moms, right? I started this relationship and the first thing I asked was, "What's going to happen when we graduate? Are we going to stay together? What's going to happen? What are people going to say?" And the whole time all he said to me was, "we will see what happens. let's not make promises." And at first that really made me mad. Like, really really mad. I didn't like that. I wanted someone to promise to be with me forever and tell me that we were going to work out no matter what came our way. Because that's what I always saw in things that showed me the way love was supposed to be. I wanted to be with someone who saw an immediate future with me. And that was unrealistic. So so so unrealistic. We started taking it day by day and loving each other more and more without thinking about how we were going to handle the distance that was looming over us. After dating for 3 months we became long distance and went to jobs 800 miles away from each other. It was really hard at first but we continued to take every day as it came and continued to love each other. Next thing we knew we were about a year and a half in and we had made it work. Now, things didn't really get easy after that. We went through a lot of stuff that distance complicated and we are still learning. When I went to work on the cruise we almost didn't make it. I haven't been crazy open about that to anyone, but we really struggled. A lot. We always said that our relationship could withstand anything. But then life punched us in the face and all of a sudden we were grasping at the strands of a relationship that was unraveling. We had forgotten how to communicate and we didn't know who we were as a couple anymore. We lost "us". After a lot of long fights and a lot of tears. We started to get "us" back again. We had to reinstate things that were important to us years ago that we had lost touch of and the main thing we stopped doing was making promises. I had fallen back into my comfort zone of wanting to be promised a life regardless of what happened. That just doesn't work for us and we forgot that for a while. There are a few things that have really worked for me and my relationship and I think they could help anyone trying to get through this crazy long distance thing. I know when I lost touch of these things it made our day to day really difficult, so here's what they are:
I have spent the last two months with Wes here in Chicago and it has been amazing. But we are about to be apart and not know when we are going to see each other again and that is going to be really hard. Sometimes I need to remind myself of the things that I have talked about in this post because I forget and I get sad when I don't know what is coming next. If you trust your partner and they trust you then before you know it living day by day will turn into years together and it will be amazing. I promise you this. I am so happy that we have fought for our relationship and I am so happy that we have been able to grow from everything we have been through. The most important thing is to look at your relationship and search within it to see if there are things that make you happy that don't involve having to be around each other all the time. Find the things about each other that can fulfill, thrive, and survive distance. I'm no expert and I still get sad and lonely in random Airbnb's across the country. I'm still learning and I am thankful that you all chose for me to write about this because I can go back and read this when I am feeling doubtful. Thanks for listening, guys.
1 Comment
mom
1/11/2018 09:30:48 pm
we long for the places we have not been because we feel God's destiny calling to us when we have His Spirit inside. Everything we go through, the adversary meant for bad, but God means for good, so that we are fully prepared for the task He allowed us to be created and live for. We love you Mckynleigh.
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AuthorMiki. 26. NYC. Beautiful: The Carole King Musical National Tour. Archives
January 2018
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