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Sometimes It’s Just Not Meant to Be
Reality #5: Long-distance relationships are tough, and they don’t always work. You and your partner will have to find a balance between your individual lives at college and your relationship. You’ll both have to be willing to compromise and realize you’ll need to make a real effort in order for this to work.

“Both people need to be willing to make an effort and stay committed to each other,” said Sherry Amatenstein, author of Love Lessons from Bad Break Ups. “You can’t take your partner for granted, so you need to be willing to compromise and willing to really make an effort to see each other.”

Nearly five years ago, Stefanie Loh and her high-school sweetheart tried a long-distance relationship, but it didn’t work out. Now a recent graduate of The College of New Jersey with plans to attend graduate school in Syracuse, NY, Loh is facing another long-distance relationship with her boyfriend Pete, a senior at TCNJ, and she doesn’t know what to expect. She said, “Well, I think long-distance relationships are the ultimate tests for couples, because if you can survive that, I think you can survive anything. And that’s the way Pete and I are looking at it. If we survive this, then…” said Loh.

Although it has been five years, Loh still remembers the struggles, stress, and challenges of her last long-distance relationship. She and her boyfriend Brian started their long-distance relationship in the fall of her senior year of high school. A year older, Brian left for college, and as Loh says, things were never quite the same.

She admits that she didn’t want him to go away. She knew he was going on to college—he was going to have new experiences, new friends, and almost a new life without her. “I think it was just hard understanding that I couldn’t be a part of that aspect of his life, and that he was going to have another life without me being there,” said Loh, “and I just had to accept that.”

She recalls, “It was our year and a half anniversary that fall and I really wanted him to come home. And so I used the anniversary as an excuse for me to do something really nice for him and for him to come home.”

But things don’t always work out. Loh soon realized that Brian didn’t want to come home …at all. He thought it was dumb to celebrate a year and a half anniversary and decided that he was not coming home. Loh remembers, “You know, I just needed him to come home somehow and then when he didn’t it was just really, really devastating.”

Although she knew it was the end, she remembers her dad saying, “You know, he doesn’t want to be with you. If he won’t come home for you to do something nice for him, then he doesn’t want to be with you and you just have to accept that.”

That was incredibly tough. Yet this fall, she’ll enter her second long-distance relationship, and of course, she’s hoping for the best, for as Loh says, “If it’s going to work out, it’s going to work out. If it’s not going to work, then there’s a really good reason.”

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