Blogging again

I´m not sure if anyone noticed, probably not, but I closed the blog for a few days.
Since I started it, it´s been a secret blog. I have not told anyone that I have it, not even my husband. I feel bad that I have this where I discuss our relationship and he doesn´t know about it, but at the same time, it has become a bit like a journal, a tool to understand myself and the relationship. I realized that have not discussed anything in the blog that I haven´t talk to him about. I reopened it, because it has helped me think about our relationship out loud, and I think doing that helps me be better in the relationship.
I plan on keeping the blog to myself for a while. At some point, perhaps as we approach the end of the long distance part of our relationship, I will share it with him. I think it will make a great record of this part of our lives.

Walk by myself

This weekend I also had my masters commencement.
I got to wear a gown and cap, which was fun considering that in my home country we use regular clothes for our graduation and my school colors here make me look like I´m from the house of Gryffindor :P
I didn´t have anyone visiting in town so I went to the ceremony by myself. My school does live streaming of the ceremony so some of my family and friends from home were able to see me walk. It was a bit ackward in the beginning, walking around by myself when everyone else was taking pictures with their family. But I managed, and in the end, it was kinda nice: I walked by myself, but I wasn´t alone.

Tulips!

This was a pretty exciting weekend: I had both my birthday and my masters commencement.

This is my second birthday far away from home, I was a bit sad, but my husband sent me a beautiful flower arrangement! I love tulips!

My husband had told me to stay home, but instead I went out for lunch with my roommate and left a note on the door telling the delivery person to leave the flowers on our porch. The delivery guy instead left a message on our machine asking us to call back to arrange a new delivery time... We ended up having to go and pick them up at the store.

It wasn´t that big of a deal for me up to this point, but by husband was pretty disappointed about me not getting the flowers at home.

Later that night we talked about it and at first it was not a pleasant conversation. He was all serious and disappointed, which made me upset and a bit mad because he was making me feel upset about the flowers I loved and worst of all, on my birthday! We were not yelling or anything like that, we were just not talking in the same way that we usually do and that made me sad. At some point in our conversation there was a pretty long pause where neither of us said anything. After that pause, the tone of our conversation changed. It started to become more and more like our usual conversations and we ended up laughing at the whole incident.

Now, I´m not saying that I´m completely ok about his behaviour. It was still my birthday and he made me feel bad about something that was supposed to make me happy. But after we talked, I understood much better what the gift meant to him.

This was a pretty special weekend for me. One that I would have liked to spend with him. The tulips were his way of telling me that he felt the same.

When he was looking for the flowers, he had this whole picture in his head of me getting the flowers and how exciting that would be for me. That was a big part of the present, and me not being there to get them was a bit like saying I didn´t care.

Reasons to be(and not to be) in a long distance relationship

I think that entering into a long distance relationship may be one of the most important decision one can make. It may not seem like it, but I think there is a higher level of commitment involved than in your usual same-town relationship.

The whole ¨I love him/her SO much!" thing is not going to do the trick by itself!

Here are some of the things I have seen make for a good long distance relationship, and seem to be good reasons to stay in one:

The relationship should not be a "placeholder¨ for a better relationship you may encounter.
Don´t keep a bad relationship hoping distance will kill it, and do not keep it just because nothing ¨better¨ has come along. It is not worth the pain and let´s face it, moving away makes for a pretty clean break up if you´re less than happy with your current relationship. Again... hoping distance will kill your bad relationship is not worth the pain and hassle of a long distance relationship!!

If you truly enjoy talking for hours with this person, your long distance relationship (or any type of relationship!) has a pretty high chance of succeeding. Remember that this may be the only thing you both may be doing with each other for months! No matter how great the sex may be, if it´s the only thing (or the biggest reason) why you´re in the relationship, a long distance one is going to be harder, and in my opinion not worthy at all...

If this is a relationship that has long term potential, long distance may not be a bad idea. Now, I´m not saying that you must be ready to marry your long distance partner right away! But I do think that a long distance relationship makes you think of more serious topics perhaps earlier in the relationship than in an more common same-town relationship. You don´t need to have things completely figured out, of course, but at least talking about it, and even knowing that you both have no idea what you think on topics like money, children, in-laws and all that ¨grown-up stuff" is a good start for your relationship. Entering a long distance relationship without having a clue on where you and your partner stand on topics like these may not be worth the pain and all the work a long distance demands.

There is a common goal to be together at some point in the future. It doesn´t have to be in the near future, but there must be some light at the end of the tunnel, and there must be some real moving towards the light. This is a bit of the part where it gets a bit realistic. In some cases, one of the partners may be moving away for a know amount of time and then will be back, this is a pretty easy and perhaps ideal scenario... In other cases, job offerings, promotions, etc, may take one or both of the partners away from the original path. I´m not saying that anyone should give up their career or anything like that here, but if this relationship is worthy enough for you both to be turned into a long distance one, then some hard decisions may need to be made.

In the end, it´s a decision only you and your partner can make, but if you both think this relationship is worth it, care for it and treat it as such!

Blizzard

Are you worried about having completely different experiences in everyday life and how this may affect your relationship?

We´re having the first storm this winter... we´re getting like 14 inches of snow and pretty much everything is supposed to be closed tomorrow :S Nothing ever closes during winter in the Midwest! It´s that bad!!

I come from a tropical country. We have no snow, and the closest we ever get to it is some frost at the top of the mountains at night so it´s not something anyone would see on a regular basis...

My husband thinks winter is lots of fun with the snow and the cold, and sometimes snow is fun, but winter storms are definitely not!!

I´d like for him to come and visit me sometime when the snow is fresh and the temperature is just below freezing (Celsius!). Winter is beautiful then :)

I feel bad... but I think that for him to understand what I deal with during the winter, he would have to come in the middle of January, when the high for the day is -25ºC !! I know... I´m a bad wife!
(This was from one of last year´s storms )