Alicia Bates

9 Steps to Surviving a Long Distance Relationship

Published on March 22, 2019 by Alicia Bates

Depending upon the future plans you and your partner have, you may want to do more than survive your long distance relationship. You may just want it to thrive.

Through careful attention and consideration, you can grow a strong long distance relationship that will stand the test of time and distance. A big part of that thriving relationship will be honest communication. So before investing your time, energy, efforts, and creativity into a relationship that maybe only YOU want, talk honestly with your partner about your potential future. If you are both heading in opposite directions, then pouring your emotional energy into this relationship may not be in your best interest.

Step 1: One of the secrets to any great relationship is communication. Whether you live in the same zip code or on opposite coasts, you have to learn to communicate so you both understand what the other is saying. Using text and phone conversations doesn’t allow you to see body language and can lead to some gross misunderstanding. Include video chatting and make the effort to see each other as often as possible. Most importantly, talk with each other honestly about what you want and don’t want. If you can’t do that now, you won’t be able to do it as the relationship grows further and the whole thing will be built on sand instead of a solid foundation.

Step 2: The other big secret to a great relationship is trust. There are times in the beginning of a relationship when it is easier to earn trust, but once broken, it is much more difficult to get it back. Work very hard to stay honest with your partner and not do anything behind their back. Once you lose trust, especially in a long distance relationship, you’ve most likely hit the kill switch.

Step 3: Be creative about the way you communicate across the miles. Where it would be easy to slip a love note into your partners lunch if you were living together, it isn’t so easy living apart. Money is usually an obstacle because you’re spending time and money to visit. Look for ways to surprise your partner that doesn’t cost as much. The next time you’re visiting leave a couple of letters with your partners trusted friend and ask them to deliver them for you when asked. Send tickets to a coveted game or an art exhibition if you can’t be there. Be thoughtful about what you do. Instead of sending or doing something you would appreciate, be sure you think about it from their perspective.

Step 4: Make a plan to end the distance. If one of you moved away or if you start a long distance relationship through online dating, make a plan about how this will progress. If there is no plan to unite, then the relationship probably will not work. This doesn’t mean asking for a commitment on the second date! Give it a few months before you commit just to be sure that this is a person you truly want to commit to. But, once you both determine that there is something real between you, it’s time to make some kind of plan about the distance thing.

Step 5: Make a plan to visit. When you both know the dates and times you’ll be seeing each other there is something to look forward to and something to plan around. Do not make plans with other people when your partner is in town, except when you plan to do things with your partner. Alternate the visits so one person doesn’t feel taken for granted. Sometimes you can meet somewhere in the middle and just get away from the everyday living of every day life.

Step 6: Figure out a pattern for arguing. When you live closer that can happen a bit more easily because you see each other more often. Sit down and talk about how you fight, how you feel when you fight and what you need to resolve disagreements. When you lay it out on the table early, you won’t be blindsided by the other persons need for privacy or “time out” when they get too angry to interact.

Step 7: Celebrate the fact that you DO miss each other and then remember that when you end up in the same city. Too often we take each other for granted. When you live in the same city as your partner it’s too easy to overlook their feelings or take it for granted that they will always be there for you. But, when you are experiencing a long distance relationship, you miss your partner – a LOT. Celebrate that!

Step 8: Don’t be disrespectful! Disrespect can cut as deeply as distrust, especially with men. To be able to fully love a woman, the man usually must feel like she respects him – his opinion, abilities at work, and in the relationship. Your relationship will go a long way when there is respect and the respect should be a two way street.

Step 9: Freedom of choice should be given to your partner. Do you know the expression, “If you love something, set it free. If it comes back it is yours. If it doesn’t, it wasn’t yours to begin with.” You should never force or threaten your partner into monogamy or living together or any other deeper relationship milestone. When the choice is given freely and offered freely there is a much better chance it will succeed. With that being said, if your man is unwilling to progress in the relationship with you, you might need to take a step back and honestly assess the relationship to see if you will be happy with things the way they are. If the answer is no, you might need to just move on from the stagnate relationship.

Join me LIVE on Facebook every Monday through Friday as we discuss this further and get your questions answered! Also, if are a woman who would like help understand men better and you are curious about what is going on inside the Dynamic Women’s Tribe, come take a peek! Stay cool!

http://www.buzzfeed.com/amyodell/12-steps-to-surviving-a-long-distance-relationship

4 Tips for a Successful Long Distance Relationship

Published on March 21, 2019March 21, 2019 by Alicia Bates

Relationships are a challenge, and when you two live a long distance from each other it can be even more challenging. It is important to continue to stay connected and to build your trust in each other over time. The best way to do that is to communicate your thoughts, desires, and needs so there is no miscommunication. All relationships take work and long distance relationships require a bit more work and some creativity to make them successful.

Tip #1: Communication and Trust

Communication and trust is important in any relationship but when you are miles apart it can place a strain on both of you. You will have to learn to trust your partner without direct supervision, which might be an entirely new experience for you. But, trust shouldn’t need direct supervision. Anytime it is needed to keep the other person monogamous, it’s a sure sign that they will grab the first opportunity to stray when your eyes get tired of watching. Communicate your needs with your partner and use your phone conversation for more than just a recitation of what happened that day. Those small details help bond you, but so will the stories of your past and your dreams of your future.

Tip #2 Creativity

Be creative with your communication. Not everything needs to be expensive. Schedule some digital facetime conversation at least once a week. Call every day, even if it’s just for a couple of minutes and send a text or two each day letting them know you are thinking about them. Tell jokes in the text messages and finish the joke in an email or conversation. In your next visit, leave messages around their place, hide them so they won’t be found all at once. Mail a note every week or two. While digital communication is instant and free, there is nothing like holding a note in your hand, written in your partner’s handwriting and having your name plastered across the top. Sending flowers can get expensive, so think about gifts you purchase, box, and mail yourself. Box a gift in several layers of boxes with notes written across the top each one to increase the anticipation. Bake cookies in shapes or make a collage of your last visit and frame it.

Tip #3 The Plan

It is important to communicate your plan to each other and be clear about your expectations. You may be dreaming of a lifetime partnership and they might be thinking this is a good way to be commited without a real commitment. Have a plan and make it together. Understand the rules for communication – how much, how long, and what to do when things don’t go as planned. Plan your visits and time them so you both alternate the travel. In other words, you have to talk out what might naturally happen if you were living together. But, because you aren’t you’ll have to plan it – DO NOT wing it!

Tip #4 Keep Your Independence

Being in a commited relationship doesn’t mean you have to stop growing and developing as an individual. In fact, it’s best if you don’t offer to move to your partner’s town immediately and co-mingle your lives. Instead, it’s important to maintain some degree of independence. It can be very empowering to go out with friends and grow your career with the knowledge and stability of a commited relationship even when the object of your affections is miles and miles away. When your eventual plan to unite and to “close the distance” finally happens, you’ll bring with you a mature and developed woman who will continue bond well with your partner.

His Friends and Family

Published on March 20, 2019March 20, 2019 by Alicia Bates

Let’s say you’ve been dating for 2 months and he’s asked you to meet his friends and family. You have now reached level two of the relationship where you start meeting each other’s friends, relatives, and other significant people in each other’s lives.

This is a crucial junction which can make or break the next several months and can spell disaster for a long-term marriage type of relationship. Men are interested in their friends’ opinions of who they are dating just as women are. Men are not independent little souls who are adrift on a sea of despair until they meet their significant other.

Quite the contrary, usually. Often, men have friends they do ‘sports’ things with, ‘family’ type things,and just ‘hanging out’ type activities. These are the people that need to sign off on his relationship with you. As a relationship matures and moves forward you’ll do it around his friends and relatives. If the atmosphere is tense and problematic it’s likely he’ll choose them over you.

Most men don’t have a problem with conflict at work, but conflict in their personal relationships is a whole ‘nother story. To get rid of the conflict and strain, they will get rid of the thing that is causing it. And, unfortunately, you will be outnumbered – lots of friends and family against little ol’ you.

This is the time to lift your head, be yourself, enjoy his friends, and realize that any disagreements you have with them (serious ones) are bound to trickle into your own relationship.

It is important to be yourself because you can’t fake a personality for years to come. And, if the relationship with your guy has potential, then you may be looking at a commitment to these people for years to come.

Evaluate his friends and family and ask yourself if they could become your own friends and family. The reality is that if your relationship blossoms and you move in together or he slips a ring on your finger, those friends and family of his will quickly become yours!

And, it’s totally ok for you to not like all of them, but you shouldn’t allow your dislike to hinder his friendship with that person. Just as you wouldn’t want him to get in the way of your friendship with one of your girlfriends. This is assuming his friendship is with another man whom you are not fond of. Opposite sex friendships are a different ballgame to sort through.

It’s a Journey and Not a Race

Published on March 19, 2019 by Alicia Bates

Sometimes, in your desire to have a settled life like the rest of your friends, you try to move the relationship you’re in too fast to a committed relationship. The absolute rule to remember is that any relationship is a journey and not a race to the altar.

As women, we often think of life in terms of events and not in terms of emotions. We move through a relationship under a specific timeline that exists only in our heads. He may not have the same timeline, and in fact, probably does not. Most men don’t have a time line. He doesn’t have a concrete sense of time. If it feels right, he’ll move toward commitment – if it doesn’t he may never get there.

Men have a tendency to place their emotions, relationships, and activities into boxes. Sometimes the things in those boxes don’t get addressed for months at a time. Two men may not have seen each other in 2 years but can take up their friendship from where it left off like nothing happened. It’s the blessing and curse of the male mind.

If you work against this and try to force your time frame, it will result in him leaving or becoming sluggish. When you work with it, then you become an intrigue and someone worth pursuing. When you repeatedly ask for or demand the commitment then you may as well hang it up. The minute you start talking constantly ABOUT the relationship instead of LIVING it, he’ll turn tail and run.

This gets us to what I call “Pacing the Relationship.” It’s important to work on yourself and be your own person. Do your own thing. Becoming the best person you can be, whether you are with him or not, you’ll become desirable. In other words, he’ll be doing the hunting, pursuing, and planning to keep you, while you just focus on being the best you that you can be. This is because you are inspiring him and not reading a laundry list of wants, complaints, and questions.

The word ‘commitment’ can strike fear into the heart of many men. But, when the idea comes from his own heart and he desires the actuality of a commitment without actually using the word ‘commitment’, he’s well on his way to slipping a ring on your finger or moving your relationship to the next level that you both desire.

This doesn’t mean that he won’t use the word commitment, but it will mean that it comes from him and not from you. Knowing how to get a man to have the idea himself is an art form. Perfecting that art form only means making yourself desirable and he’ll pursuing you without you doing anything else to encourage him.

Think about things this way, wouldn’t you prefer to be with a man who, of his own volition WANTS to be with you, is PROUD to be with you, and is INTERESTED in building a life with you? If you have to force it, then things will ultimately not work out. He will grow to resent you.

It’s a Family Affair, or Is It?

Published on March 16, 2019March 14, 2019 by Alicia Bates

Each of us has had a different family experience. When you are developing an intimate emotional relationship with your guy you are also developing your new family. Your new guy isn’t trying to take you away from your family (or he shouldn’t be!) but he does want you to consider him as a part of your new family.

If you are close to your mother, brother, sister, or father you wouldn’t dream of leaving them out of important decisions. The same is true for your significant other. When you have become closer as a couple and have intentions of staying in the relationship long-term, it’s important to include your partner in your decision-making.

When it comes to sharing personal things between you, it’s best if you don’t share your relationship details with your sister, mother, brother, or father. Think about it flipped. Would you want him going to his family to discuss the problems you two are having?

Just because you don’t share every last detail with your family doesn’t mean that you don’t love them as much or that you should avoid them all together. It does mean that there are boundaries to what you share with them and how involved they are in your decisions and your life. Some of the details of your relationship should stay private. Anything you wouldn’t want public about your guy should remain between you two alone.

One detail that should never remain private is times when your significant other is abusive. If he is emotionally, physically, or psychologically abusive you must share that with your family or a trusted friend for advice. Never stay in a relationship where you are demoralized or abused. It has lifelong effects and will take quite a bit of time and professional help to get over it.

Don’t let family members or friends get in the middle of disagreements or fights between you. Take advice about HOW you should fight but not about what you are fighting about. The disagreements and problems you have should be worked out between you or with the help of a professional therapist. It is possible to seek help without explaining exactly what is happening. Also, that’s what the Dynamic Women’s Tribe group is for, so feel free to join us! The link is below.

Your family can be a big support in your relationship, but they can also get in the way and cause him to run for cover. After all, if they are intrusive before you even have a commitment, how much more will he endure after the marriage?

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