Shikha Sharma

I was in a long distance relationship for two years before my husband and I got married. He was in Pune. I was in Delhi. We saw each other once a month if we were lucky, twice if someone's work trip conveniently aligned, and roughly never if either of us had a bad quarter at work.

At the time, I was convinced it was the hardest thing I'd ever done. I spent a meaningful portion of those two years crying in airport parking lots, which is a specific kind of miserable that I wouldn't wish on anyone but which, apparently, builds tremendous character. I also consumed a frankly unreasonable amount of airport food in my feelings, but that's between me and the IndiGo terminal at T3.

In retrospect, those two years of long distance were one of the best things that ever happened to our relationship. I find this both deeply romantic and mildly embarrassing to admit out loud.

What Long Distance Forces You to Do

When you only see someone once a month, you cannot coast. You cannot rely on physical proximity to do the emotional work of staying connected, because physical proximity is the one thing you don't have. So you actually talk. Like, really talk. You have entire conversations about feelings and fears and what you want from the future, not because you're particularly evolved as a couple but because it's 11 p.m. on a Wednesday and there's nothing else to do except talk to this person or go to sleep, and you're not ready to go to sleep yet.

I learned more about my husband during those two years of long distance than in the entire first year of living together. Every conversation felt like it mattered because we both knew there was a return flight on Sunday and we'd like to have actually connected before it took off.

My friend Ananya did long distance for three years before she and her partner finally moved to the same city. She told me the first six months of living together were genuinely disorienting. "We went from these incredibly intentional, scheduled calls where we'd talk for two hours about everything, to sitting in the same flat and somehow communicating less," she said. "We'd be in adjacent rooms and not speak for three hours. That would never have happened when we were long distance. We'd have called each other in a panic."

The proximity, it turns out, creates its own kind of distance. You stop scheduling connection because you assume it'll happen naturally. And then it doesn't, because life fills the space, and suddenly you're those people at the restaurant on their phones and you have no idea how you got there.

The Habits Worth Stealing

I've thought about this a lot, mostly because I'm the kind of person who analyses their own relationship history for fun, which my husband finds charming and my therapist finds completely unsurprising.

The first thing long distance couples do is schedule time together and treat it like it matters. This sounds obvious and yet the moment you live with someone it evaporates completely. You stop making plans because you tell yourself you don't need to, you live together, you'll find the time. You don't find the time. The time finds a way to get filled with grocery runs and work stress and the collective energy drain of adult life. Schedule the time anyway. Your relationship is not too comfortable for effort. Nothing is.

The second thing is that long distance couples over-communicate in the best possible way. Not just logistics, actual things. How they're feeling. What they're thinking about. The small observations that never seem important enough to mention in person but somehow make it into a phone call because you have an hour and you want to fill it with something real. My husband still sends me something he saw on his commute that made him think of me, a habit he formed when we were long distance and a text was the only way to share it. I've never asked him to stop. I hope he never does.

The third thing is that long distance couples have learned to fight efficiently, which sounds unromantic but is genuinely one of the most useful relationship skills I own. When you're arguing over the phone, you cannot storm off into another room. You cannot give the silent treatment because the silent treatment over a phone call just means someone hangs up, which is somehow worse than the original argument. You have to actually talk it through, right now, tonight, before someone goes to sleep, because the next time you'll see each other in person is three weeks away and you cannot spend three weeks conducting a fight over WhatsApp. You resolve things. Quickly, imperfectly, but completely.

My husband and I still fight this way. We sit in the same room and have the conversation start to finish before either of us leaves. Our friends find this slightly intense. I find it a tremendous time saver.

The Part Where Living Together Wins, Obviously

I want to be fair here because long distance is, let me be absolutely clear, terrible. I don't want anyone reading this and thinking I'm romanticising airport parking lots and dropped video calls. Living together is better in every measurable way. Waking up next to someone you love is better than a 9 a.m. video call where one of you is half asleep and the Wi-Fi keeps buffering at the worst possible moment. Sharing a meal at your own table is better than eating the same takeaway in different cities and calling it dinner together.

And having someone notice you're stress-working at the kitchen counter at 10 p.m. and quietly put a cup of chai and a couple of Sunfeast Marie Light biscuits next to your laptop without saying anything is worth more than any amount of long distance character building. My husband does this. It remains, several years in, one of my favourite things about him. No airport parking lot produced that. Just time, and proximity, and someone paying attention.

The point isn't that long distance is better. The point is that long distance taught us things that living together never would have, and the couples who managed to hold onto those habits after they finally moved in together are the ones who seem most like they're still choosing each other, rather than just co-existing in reasonable comfort.

What I'd Tell Every Cohabiting Couple

Pretend, once a week, that you don't live together. Make plans like you'd miss each other if you didn't. Show up to those plans like they matter. Talk about something that isn't logistics. Ask a question you don't already know the answer to. Text them something you saw that made you think of them, even though they're sitting in the next room.

You don't need the distance to be intentional. You just need to remember what it felt like when you didn't have a choice about it.

And if you genuinely can't remember, I have some airport parking lot recommendations that will absolutely jog your memory. Deeply formative. Would not recommend. Completely changed my relationship.

Ten out of ten, would not do again.