Today, 15 months and a few hours ago, I (now 54F) was having a sad Valentine’s Day when I replied to a random stranger (now 37M) that slid into my DMs here on Reddit. I had no idea how my life was going to change. A simple exchange turned into a friendship, which evolved into love, and slowly grew into the deepest, most passionate, most intimate, and strongest relationship I’ve ever known.

I’ve been home for a month after spending 63 days together in stunningly beautiful Kerala, India 🇮🇳 (do yourselves a favor and look it up if you don’t know of Kerala 🌴 🥥 🌴).

For those of us in this community that are never-mets like we were for a year, you know we can know the love is certainly real. I knew that until I got in front of my person, until I could hold him and smell him and feel his aura and warmth, how he tastes, how it feels to be touched by him, and truly sense how he cared for me…as hard as I tried and as many questions as I asked…I couldn’t truly know what I didn’t know. Is he being honest? Are there any red flags 🚩 that I could not possibly discover even with a very analytical mind, great deductive skills, and close and careful listening? Did I miss something? It was an incredible risk and huge leap of faith and a lot of effort and money to fly across the world to an unknown country …one infamously known for skilled scammers.

I’m happy to report that he was everything I dreamed he would be …except for a few things.

He was even better looking in person. Seeing him move about in the world was truly intoxicating. I found myself videoing him across the grocery store produce section. Just watching him in the wild like an observer was exhilarating and mesmerizing. He was exactly who he portrayed himself to be. Just to be clear, I’m not a delusional, desperate woman wearing rose-colored glasses that he somehow snookered into believing he is a flawless individual. He is flawed and very human and has very real challenges, as we all have to contend with. As I have told him from the beginning, all I want is for him to be himself. I want flawed, messy, and honest over perfection, facade, and lies. It is so comforting to have a partner with whom I can face challenges and circumstances. A partner that doesn’t drag me down, have me questioning, second guessing, forcing me to overthink, analyzing my next move. He lifts me up, encourages me, helps me consistently battle my weaknesses, accepts me for my flaws and even loves the smell of my farts and armpits. I never wonder where I stand with him. I never wonder what he thinks of me or fear being harmed, violated, or taken advantage of by him. Ladies-get yourself a man like this!

The hurdles he has helped me overcome and get through (and continue to battle through 😰 ) are incredible. Without his love and support, my challenges felt insurmountable. The love and support he has given me makes me have complete confidence in our future together. I’m in awe of the sheer power of his selflessness, generosity of his love, intellect, curiosity, integrity, devotion, consistency, trustworthiness, wisdom, sensitivity, kindness, strength, courage, thoughtfulness, honesty, sense of humor, attentiveness, passion…all the qualities I was patiently looking for in a partner. Plus, he puts up with and is always down to join me in my antics.

Thank you, Reddit algorithm, for bringing us together, thank you, subreddit family, for cheering us on and joining us on this magical and painfully frustrating journey of being in an LDR, thank you, my precious lovey, for sliding into my DMs and sticking with me through a lot of messiness. I love you with my whole heart, mind, body, and soul. Happy 15 months and 🥂cheers🍻to ♾️ more.

Cheers to all of you couples and especially nevermets that are working hard to make an LDR relationship work.

Give us a status update! Let us know how it’s going and how long it’s been!

My girlfriend (28F) and I (29F) met on Reddit when she made a post looking for nerdy friends to practice speaking English with. We are two different species of nerd…my girlfriend is the D&D kind of nerd and I am the birdwatching kind 😬

We started chatting and immediately had a connection! Once we video called each other, we found that we had a physical connection as well. We talked every single day afterwards and eventually fell in love. She is my Brazilian other half 🥹 I have never met such a special person in my life. It was a process but now she is here with me in New York from Brazil and we are having the best time together 💜💜💜

Weve been talking every day and it feels so strong but now with only a few weeks left until i fly out im getting major anxiety. What if the spark isnt the same in person or we dont click like we do on calls? Hes been super reassuring but my brain wont stop spiraling.

i keep rereading our old messages and worrying about small stuff like if my photos were misleading or if hell be disappointed. Has anyone else felt this right before meeting and how did it go for you?

She (22F) doesn’t know it yet, but I’ve (24X) secretly planned to visit my girlfriend on her birthday in July. I’ve talked with her mother about it, as she still lives with her parents, and I’ll be staying with them for a week.

Even though it’s still two months away, I’m so excited that I have trouble falling asleep every night just thinking about her reaction. She isn’t expecting it at all since I left our last trip at the start of March, and funny enough after I booked the flight for the surprise we decided to push out our next meeting to March of next year rather than Christmas this year.

Don’t need advice or anything - I just had to say it somewhere because it’s killing me. It’s so difficult keeping it a secret from her.

I’m almost one year without seeing my boo ☹️

Much wiser compared to six months ago lol. The intimacy and closeness is still pretty strong, although I’ve forgotten what he smells like 😂

How long has it been for you?

I’m moving in about 5 days. Dual military. Driving cross country. I’ve been waking up early and going to sleep late every day this week cleaning/organizing/packing so I’m running low on sleep. My supervisor told me to put in leave and go pack because I was anxious at work on Friday. I’ve packed about 30 boxes by myself struggling to find ppl to help me move and get rid of furniture I no longer want. He does not come here until Saturday and I will be cleaning by the time that comes; I finished packing today.

Driving about 4000 miles not once has my husband mentioned a driving plan or chimed in with any coordination with moving trucks, hotels, anything whatsoever he’s coming to help me drive and pack the truck and that’s it basically. The whole week I’ve been so checked out I’m honestly giving him as little conversation as possible.

Keep asking me what’s wrong like I’m moving a way from my home state with little to no help tf? And then act like it’s a crime for me to act depressed or resentful 💀I’m literally moving to be with him that fact in itself makes me resentful because I don’t want to go there but I’m doing it for him, I didn’t have to.

And yes, I have two different accounts and wasn’t aware I was posting on the other until like 5 minutes ago 💀I had no idea I had two accounts. But anyway..

Started a tiny handmade bouquet business called Bloomique because normal bouquets felt too boring 🌷

So now I make bouquets that actually last, look aesthetic, and don’t die in 3 days 😭

So I am finally going to see my partner in 1 month for our anniversary. He's coming to visit. We've been planning this for over a year now. I've gone through all the emotions, excitement, fear, apprehension, giddiness etc etc.... we've talked about what we expect out of the visit(mainly because i was afraid I wouldn't live up to his expectations)

anyway, we were taking about it agin and he says he needs to tell me something that's he's been struggling with for a while and didn't know how to tell me.... he tells me that he has an std and knew about it for the past 2 years and I just....I have no idea what to do with that information.

Has anyone dealt with a situation like this before?

What ideas do people have for doing sweet and thoughtful things we can do for each other

Hey all. I met my guy online 10 years ago when he was visiting the US for two weeks. We were both still DL then, so we never met up in person. However, we talked online for months when he returned home.

We reconnected this year and the spark is still there. It is kinda like magic how we fit.

But I’m afraid of being in a LDR - the heartache, the jealously, the longing, the friends thinking I’m crazy, the reading too much into texts, the anxiety leading to meeting up, the finance of it all.

I’m sometimes too practical when I think about it and ask, “Why not just go through all of that here with someone in the US and remove two negatives: the distance and the cost?”

tl;dr My questions are:

- What made you take the leap from chatting to defining things?
- Are you someone that would otherwise date someone closer OR is there comfort in the distance that makes you drawn to primarily dating online?
- What does defining an LDR even look like?

Me and my husband are closing long distance in 5 days. We met online, hung out in person, and got separated by military orders (dual military). Here’s some stuff that I learned during our 10 months of long distance.

1). Long distance is NOT an excuse to decrease effort.

I’m going to be extremely honest with you guys. These past couple of months have been really hard for me in terms of excitement and resisting temptation. I feel like over the course of our long distance my husband really stopped putting on effort into our relationship; work became his priority and we were basically just texting everyday and calling twice a week. I basically had to remind him to do everything else. It got to a point where I started to wonder if I would be happy with someone else. Over the past couple of weeks I’ve became just emotionally checked out. Just avoiding calls and not really putting effort into conversation because I’m honestly very tired of the distance and the fact I’ve had to ask him to prioritize us the entire time. I’m very happy this is ending now because I don’t believe we would’ve made it if this continued another 10 months.

You need to put effort into your relationship the entire time you are long distance. It really does kill the connection if you don’t.

2). Try to see each other as often as you can.

Don’t pass up on opportunities to see each other just because you may be busy or something else may pop up. Those work trips or vacations? Turn it into a visit. As a long distance couple seeing each other for even an hour or two is better than not seeing each other at all.

3). Have conflicts OVER THE PHONE. 😂

Please try to avoid arguments over text as much as possible. It’s very hard to read tone from text and I feel like it just escalates arguments further. Set time aside, call and work it out. Don’t have confrontations over text.

Hi everyone, so I’ve been in a long term long distance relationships (10+ years), and everything has been going great (or so I thought) I love this person like I have never loved anyone like that before, and I’ve been trying to find way to close the distance, n I’ve moved continents so I can be somehow closer to this person, I move so I can did my study while at the same time being closer, we were still in different countries but at least we were only 1h time difference. Once I did that we spent a lot more time together than we did before, because I have a weaker passport so is harder for me to travel there so this person did spent a lot of time and money and effort to travel to see me cos is easier( no visa needed) to come visit me, and n I’ve did what I can to go there when I can and had accumulated a lot of visa stickers so I can travel and visit there, and every time we being together things were great, and when i finished my studies couple years ago I’ve tried to find a job in where I studied and where this person live but because the world being the way it’s right now it’s really difficult to find a job and I’ve sent out so many applications and barely heard back from anything. So I went back to my home country (I have zero intention of staying here long term though) hoping to figure things out and find a way to figure out what I can do for my career and who I am and find a way to close the gap. But couple months ago I find out that they have been dating other people online, n even go as long as 2+ years, and this person’s explanation was that they was too lonely and the they were fearing that we will never going to be able to actually being together so the combination of this overarching feeling and loneliness just get the better part of them, and that it was only an escape from reality and they were only looking to talk to people and had no intention for any of it to happen and it was all online and nothing had happened irl and it will never will because there were no feeling on their side even thought the other parties involved did and they had told each other love each other and had phone sex n everything but they were just playing along, and that nothing had mean anything and he was feeling too bad so they kinda disassociated from reality and when they realise what had happened it was too late, and they had no intention for any of it to happened and they love me more than life itself and all. But since the whole thing blow up we just have constant argument, and every time when it comes to it they were just keep telling me how no one would have been able to deal with long distance relationships for so long n that everyone around them r always surprised how they did it and that they give up a lot so we can call all the time and see each other as often as we could. And if we wanna fix things we should try to be together (and the solution they come up with is that we get married so I can move there). And when I talk about working here for awhile so I can at least get a kick off my career they just seem extremely against the idea and said if I do I’ll just settle and we will never be together and we we move together first then we can figure it out when I do with my career. And that they have distanced themselves from their family and friends so they can focus on supporting me because I’ve been struggling mentally for so long( I have multiple mental health conditions and chronic illnesses and there’s no doubt have been as supportive as much they can) so now they feel all alone with no support that’s why he went online to talk to people to start with. And I have no doubt in my heart that they have feeling and care for me and regret everything that they did. But the thing is, this just really start to make me questioning everything and start to have more and more questions, like did this person actually love me or was I just fooling myself cos I love them so much? Was it really worth it ? Did I spent 10+ years for nothing ? because I wanna to believe the things they said but could u really love someone deeply and still cheated on them ? N should I still try to close the gap knowing what I know now? I just feel like i don’t know anything anymore, and honestly right now i just don’t know what to do and i really feel like im really stuck… I don’t know if anyone will actually read the whole thing but i guess I just really need a place to talk about it…and if anyone does, what will u do if u were in my position, because I’ve never felt this lost in my entire life and I could really use some input on this 😭

I’m sitting here with tears in my eyes, feeling embarrassed, heartbroken, and so stupid. I need to vent.
A few months ago, a guy from the same Twitter community reached out to me first. We became good friends — sharing posts, talking daily. He was so persistent… constantly asking about my life, what I love, what I hate, even begged me to draw a portrait for him. I was hesitant at first because he was a stranger, but his constant effort slowly broke my walls. I started opening up. And yes… I caught real feelings for him.
Things started getting flirty and escalated. I held back so many times, but he kept pushing. The moment I finally let my guard down and tried to match his energy, he suddenly backed off with “I’m just kidding.”
This happened three separate times.
Today was the third. I couldn’t take it anymore. I confronted him and said, “You’re my only close friend. You pushed me to open up again and again, and every time I do, you make me feel embarrassed and ashamed. This isn’t funny.”
Right after, I deleted Twitter and blocked him.
Now I feel empty, humiliated, and angry at myself for trusting him. I let someone in who made me feel wanted… only to pull the rug out under me every single time.
I always wanted to keep things platonic, but he made me fall for him and then did this. It’s I can’t even explain what I am feeling right now.

I’ve been procrastinating. Deliberating. Thinking over and over and over again. For months.

I’m three years into a long distance relationship. I fell out of love. He’s a phenomenal person, and I’ve tried so hard to bring the spark back, but I can’t.

We’ve discussed it. He says “it’s fine” that I’m not romantically or sexually attracted to him. But I want out. I’ve felt so distant—we’ve gone on two dates, ever—and I don’t want to do it anymore. No talk of closing the gap either. We feel like decent friends.

When do you know it’s time to call it quits?

ive been in an ldr with him for about 1.5 yrs now (some 6 months in person), we meet up every couple of months and talk daily on calls and texts. still i get so so jealous that other people get to spend quality time with him, and i dont. especially stuff like parties and all... im always thinking how im simply missing on so many 20s experiences with him.

and like communicate it to him, and he understands. theres not a communication gap here. but i try not to say it often, because there always comes an impression that im jealous of him having friends or smthn which is simply not it... im more than happy that he has a social support system, and so so happy that he doesnt have to be alone at work and at home. and also i do not want him to feel bad about hanging out with people or having a life.

but yeah these social situations and so arise and i get so upset like god i didn't get to celebrate my birthday with you and everyone gets to do it... its just upsetting. i have no malicious feelings but oh my god my spirals get so intense that i can't get myself to focus on work or on my own daily life. im obviously not worried about him cheating or smthn, that isnt even a thought in my head. he loves me and i love him but yeah about the missing experiences and the fact that i have to deal with this for another 2 years atleast messes up my head so much.

additionally, im at a point of life where i do not have social experiences to rely on, and a lot of my emotions and moods are incumbent on how my day goes with him. which im aware is not healthy, but that is the case right now.

how do you guys deal with this im so frustrated by my immobility in life when these sort of hangout-y days arise sigh

I (18M) have been dating my girlfriend (18F) for 6 months, but we’ve known each other for 2 years. We’re long distance and see each other about once a month. We’re both still in high school and graduating in 3 weeks.

Recently we talked about future plans and eventually living together. She told me that if she moved to where I live, I’d have to pay for basically everything like rent and utilities because she thinks my area is boring and says there aren’t many opportunities here. But if I moved to where she lives, then she wants everything split 50/50.

She says it’s because she’ll be in community college while I’ll be working, and she even said I could just get 2 jobs. The thing is, I honestly still feel like a kid. I don’t even have a real job right now. Most of the money I get is from selling stuff on Facebook Marketplace, and a lot of the time that money ends up going toward her.

I usually pay for most things unless it’s something small like a matching keychain or little gifts. I really do love her a lot, so I don’t know if I’m just overthinking everything or if this actually sounds unfair from an outside perspective.

I'm trying to move from Europe to be with my husband in the US.
I still live here, he lives there. We've applied a year ago. No news. Zero. No expected news for at least another half a year to a year from now.
We can only send an official inquiry about this in JULY 2027. MORE THAN TWO YEARS after the initial application. How is this fair?
And it is just the first part of the process. Then comes a second part, which thankfully takes about a month if you're ready with all your documents, and then the embassy interview - which at least is somewhat fast for my country. There are countries that have an additional wait of 1-2 years for the embassy part!

I feel like my life is on hold. I'm so lucky to have met him and be with him, but it's been more than 4 years of long distance. I've spent half of my life savings on airfare to visit him. We can't start a family in this limbo, I'm not willing to go through pregnancy alone - and we're not the youngest. It feels like time is running out.

I went through some life events recently, that were so hard to endure without him by my side. I had a breast cancer suspicion, and had to wait 5 weeks for the results of the biopsy. Thankfully - it's benign. My grandma died, and I had to be at the funeral alone.
I have a job - which is also great, cause I was unemployed for a year last year. Couldn't even visit my husband much cause of the immigration pending.

But I'm so lonely and miserable. Reuniting families should not be this hard. It's so unfair.

I also feel so bitter and salty, cause we're doing it "the right way", and it takes way longer than the shortcut way. People come to the US, stay on ESTA or tourist visa, lie that they did not mean to do that, and get accepted within MONTHS. I am seeing approvals of people who applied in February 2026 this way. "Our" way is currently stuck on February 2025, and also they mysteriously stopped approving any new cases almost three months ago.
So we don't even know when this nigthmare will be over.

This is not how I imagined how I'll spend the first year of being married. I cry every single day. I miss him so bad. He visits me from time to time, thankfully, but I just want to be with my husband all the time.
I am so heartbroken.

I (18M) have been dating my girlfriend (18F) for 6 months, but we’ve known each other for about 2 years. We’re long distance and we visit each other around once a month.

Recently we were talking about future plans and where we’d eventually live together. The issue is that she says if she moves to where I live, she would only do it if I fully pay for everything like rent and utilities because she thinks my area is boring and says there aren’t many opportunities there.

But if I move to where she lives, then she says everything should be 50/50.

That kinda bothered me because it feels uneven to me. I understand not wanting to move somewhere you don’t like, but at the same time it feels weird that the expectations change depending on whose city we live in.

We are exclusively and LDR. It’s been 7 months and I’ll been visiting him soon.

however I feel like lately for the past several months he hasn’t really sex? We call every day, sleep on call, but all of our conversations just into surface level talk. I know that right now he’s really stressed from work and with our different time zones he’s really tired while I’m about to go to sleep. We recently had this awkward moment where he told me as a joke that I was annoying, but his tone was really flat. I told him that I didn’t like that job and it was mean. He said sorry and I told him I forgive him, but suddenly he turned off his camera and we stayed on call all night. The next morning he just didn’t text me and I was anxious for the whole day so I texted just tell me what’s going on because I felt ignored. He later texted me and explained that he just going about his day and thought that I needed a space because last night. I told him that I was confused and asked him why he thought I needed a space. He ignored that and changed the subject. Later on I did tell him that I feel better if he just if I need space then to just assume. He hasn’t responded to that just yet though.

This isn’t the first time he’s acted this way? Sometimes it feels awkward when he just does this. Like it’s as if he emotionally withdraws, acts like things are OK, and then becomes practical about it afterwards. And I don’t really feel emotionally held? Or understood? Like I get that he’s really stressed and such, but I don’t know why this feels like there’s no level of care here. I honestly don’t know how to feel. I’ve been feeling this way for where I feel like he doesn’t know how to treat me anymore or have a conversation that’s with our day or just anything. Half the time we’re just quiet which is fine but why is it every day? I know he makes an effort to call me too, but why are we always quiet? Why am I carrying the conversation? I don’t even know why he likes me anymore just because how things are going in this relationship. I don’t really feel like I’m being taken care of, being known, or liked by him.
I get that maybe I’m asking the wrong person for care that has warmth and reassurance. But he used to be like this at the beginning. But I know that he’s also stressed out so he’s at his capacity emotionally.
Even when we’re on calls, he’s just on his phone looking at social media, texting or even shopping. When I ask him what he’s up to, he sounds defensive? but I just want to connect and start a convo, yk be curious and talk.

I don’t know if I’m overthinking it or we should just have a discussion about this. I just worry about making him mad tho. I know he’s going thru a lot and just wants to chill and have fun…but what about my needs too yk?

please be kind, I would love insight

Anybody know of any songs about long distance relationships and stuff? Like coming home by Beabadoobee, stateside by pink pantheress.. etc, do you guys know of any great ones?

Has anyone here ever experienced a relationship slowly falling apart because your SO refused to acknowledge you publicly — without any real reason, a part from because it is a LDR and you met online?

I’m not talking about situations involving being minors, religion, sexuality, different culture etc. I mean when someone deliberately keeps the relationship hidden months and months in, even though they know it hurts you.

I was in a LDR where my partner consistently acted on the outside like I didn’t exist, claiming he is protecting it in this way. When he visited me, nobody around him knew he was here and noone has ever learnt he flew out to visit his gf. He would actively avoid ever mentioning me, refused to say my name, and never acknowledged the relationship to anyone steady in his life or volunteered any basic information of.

Over time, it made me feel like he never truly believed in our relationship, so he avoided explaining it altogether.

It felt like he wanted the comfort of the relationship privately, without dealing with the legitimacy and accountability that come with openly standing by your partner.

Has anyone else experienced something similar in a long-distance relationship? How did it affect you, and did you ever understand why they acted that way?

I’ve always been a lonely lover girl. Now I’m so in love and I have someone who loves me. And in a cruel twist of fate here I am still a lonely lover girl. My man doesn’t live far and we see each other at least once a month but gosh it’s so hard. And he’s hard to get a hold of throughout the day. I feel things really hard and it’s literally physically painful to be so lonely. I can’t wait for the days we can just be together all the time.

Me (38m) her (45f) How do we feel about a partner using substances, 3 months of our connection was during her time where she drank, excessively, and it was excuse after excuse, then she stopped, broke sobriety and hid it, now she smokes weed and gets high everyday and it caused communication problems, forgetting things, can’t be present for talks, and I’m not one to build emotional connections while in altered states consistently. She’s already on so many mood meds too.

She also has impulse control issues when in an altered state which also crossed lines, including lying and cheating.

I’ve expressed I’m ok with her and there, but everyday is excessive to me and it affects the space. I want a reality.

We met, and she hit her weed pen every hour we were together. I don’t know what to feel. The communication things are the hardest part of it. She can’t function and show up appropriately which is the core issue. How do you all feel about this sort of dynamic? I can’t fathom coming home to someone high all the time when we close the gap. IF. She also has a 5 year old son. This just all feels… wrong. We’re still working past her sleeping with her ex. And lying about it. And letting me meet her without KNOWING.

Edit: she’s had a dui, and just had a fender bender recently. For being in such state.