One partner in Europe, the other away earning money — and within months the marriage is coming apart. My answer to «how do you save a long-distance relationship» is very short.
How do you save a relationship at a distance?
Right now a lot of people come to my consultations with exactly this situation: they live apart, and their relationship is falling apart with them.
Some are in different countries because of the war. Others chase money — they drive long-haul trucks or take jobs far from home.
I often say the choice here is very simple. If your husband or wife comes first, then we accept every risk and stay together no matter what. If earnings, the child, opportunities in Europe or anything else comes first, then don’t be surprised when the family breaks up.
I never tell people how to run their lives. I always stress that everyone is a grown adult with a head on their shoulders, and God gave each of us free will for a reason.
My job is only to explain the possible scenarios and bring a person a little closer to reality. All I do is point out cause and effect.
The overwhelming majority of men can live normally without their wife for a matter of weeks. Then come the porn, the messages to other women, the affairs.
On top of that, at a distance people drop out of the context of each other’s lives. They run critically short of things to talk about — even for a ten-minute FaceTime call.
I constantly hear from men whose wives are in Europe that they feel abandoned and unwanted.
It happens the other way round too.
If a man works far away — a long-haul driver, say — his wife carries the children, the household and a pile of problems alone, and simply burns out emotionally.
Everyone’s circumstances are different, but the diagnosis is always the same: distance kills a family fast.
For my part, I don’t judge the women who took their children to Europe and stayed there. I don’t judge the men who, in their drive to earn a decent living, spend one day at home out of thirty.
You know better than anyone what to do with your own life, and every situation is unique.
All I’m trying to do is point out cause and effect, so that when the family does fall apart, the person knows for certain that they chose this and acted with their eyes open. So that it doesn’t hit them like a bolt from the blue.
Men often tell me in sessions: “Everything was fine for years, and then out of nowhere she said she wanted a divorce!” And I say this: if the person you love is silent, it doesn’t mean everything is fine.
The volcano inside heats up very gradually, and at some point it erupts.
My personal position is that I will not leave my wife for any amount of money and for any opportunity. She is the closest and dearest person to me on this planet.
Leaving to earn money for the sake of the family, to me, is like shooting yourself in the leg for the sake of your health. The men I counsel on the brink of divorce somehow don’t celebrate all the money they made once the wife has filed and the court date is coming.
So my answer to “How do you save a relationship at a distance?” is very simple: you don’t.
Do you agree that distance kills everything, and that within seven or eight months even very good marriages start coming apart at the seams?
Articles do not fix relationships
Texts give you understanding, but your situation is always more specific than any text. Fifty minutes is usually enough to see where the problem actually starts.
Talk through your situation
