The curse of being apart – in today’s world where we have globalization it is easy to fall in love or find play partners… sadly most of the time they are not in reach, so here are some things you can do to make the relationship work.
Trust me when I say it is way better to find a partner and have an LDR than to miss out on that person and search again. – but I’m biased, of course, because I almost always had LDR with the people I felt closest with. One of which is [C] who is now my wife…
Understanding relationships
The first thing you and you’re Submissive have to understand is that Long distance relationships (LDR) are not a “relationship light” Version. It is not something you can push to the side and not deal with, just because the other person is not in your area.
It is harder to be in an LDR but from my perspective also more rewarding if both really put in the work.
As a Dominant, you have the responsibility to shape and create situations in which you both can connect to each other. You manage the amount of reconnects and that is a very important balance… too much and your submissive will feel overwhelmed and pressured, too little and your Submissive or you lose the connection.
So it is partly on you to manage all that – that said your Submissive has a big responsibility too. She has to follow where you lead which is a big responsibility and challenge because some of her instincts will tell her to ignore you or even to give up…
Make a plan what you want to do with your future – if you are fresh together discuss what you would like to do in 3-6 months. If you can theoretically visit each other make a list of possible dates, don’t just say “oh yeah I’m free every weekend” because you will not be free when your partner spontaneous wants to visit (Murphey’s law).
If you are longer together take advantage of services that make it possible to travel very cheap – most countries have a network of travelers on some website where you can buy a spot for less than gas price and you don’t even have to drive yourself. Also if you or your partner is able to work via laptop (or Home office) invest in a good model and use the travel time to do work. It will give you surprisingly flexibility.
Rituals
Rituals are your Alpha & Omega – try to have at least 3 solid rituals that connect you in your daily routine.
Rituals I can recommend:
- Message/Call every morning, often this can be done on the way to work for one of you. Talk about the morning, what you want to do over the day and so on… 5-15 minutes is a great time for this.
- Good Night Call every evening, this also can just take 5 minutes and is for reconnecting. it sounds wired but the saying good night in a call is something that has a great impact on the emotional well being for both Dominant & Submissive.
- writing a journal entry every day
Rituals give you a basis for your relationship even when you get busy. There are exceptions but in general, you will try to do your rituals and you will be happy you have them because you will look forward to them.
They are also a good deterrent to not communicating after a fight – next morning you do the call and you both are pressured to do it and so to work things out, just like couples that wake up together.
Control rules
Control rules are important in an LDR, a lot of rules are designed to connect on different levels and in different situations. It opens up situations to play at another time and also makes sure you both feel that the other partner cares about you and is “with you” all the time.
When you design rules you always have to keep in mind backup plans and what is possible.
Be creative and really think about how often your submissive has to contact you over the day for a given rule. If you will know the time she will have to ask you be sure you can be available at that time.
Rules that can work and might be a good point to start:
- Ask for permission on something – this can be literally anything that does not happen like clockwork… If you like bladder control it can be asking permission to pee, if you like food control every time the Submissive wants something sweet, and so on…
- Rules that control her behavior – this can be anything from letting her only talk formerly, to ending every email in a certain way or even that she has to spread her knees when she is at her desk.
Refrain from rules that impact her work relationships – rules that forbid eye contact or to ask somebody for help are not helpful for your submissive and you should always be aware of how her work culture impacts her!
Couple Activities
In LDR you also need activities you can do together. There are actually quite a lot of options if you really look into it. There are Browser Plugins to watch a movie together on Netflix or Amazon. Computer games come in a lot of variations on PC & Mobile and don’t even cost much.
Find something that you can discuss together. For instance about Physics, Philosophy or Politics. – With these areas, you will learn a lot about your partner and their inner thinking.
If your partner speaks another language at home, learn that language to a basic degree.
Learn from each other – usually one has skills the other can use and vice versa. If you are planning permanent it is also a good idea to coach one another on career decisions and what to do next.
Dealing with loneliness
Dealing with the distance and loneliness is part of an LDR and trust me, in comparison to other problems it is still way better.
One of the things that really helps is to have a messenger with voice recordings (WhatsApp, Viber). They do SO much for staying in contact and getting these really important moments where your partner can’t call but want to tell you something emotional or amazing. (They are one of the best tools for normal relationships too)
Something else which helps and even psychologist advice is to have a token to represent the other person. For many Vanilla relationships, this is a plush animal that represents the other partner. You can put on that animal your deodorant or perfume and when you meet up always refresh the scent and sleep with it (in a non-sexual way).
A very old version of this practice is to have your own Song. Music is a great way to connect feelings with your inner self and can bring back the feelings of when you were together.
As we are in the BDSM sphere it can be something else, a Status Collar or even a Training Collar do wonder! You can give your submissive an instant feeling of love, happiness and security if you let her wear that Collar in times of need.
Advantages of LDR
In my personal experience, most of my relationships were long distance – that gave me somewhat a better understanding of what relationships are actually about if you strip things like restaurants, movies, and sex. It’s not about superficial stuff but about really intimate knowledge about your partner and a lot of couples I know have less knowledge about their partner after five years than I have about a submissive and the submissive have about me after only one.
It’s also easy to understand why – if you just do Netflix & Chill all the time (or equivalent distractions) you don’t get to know your partner as well as if you talk for hours every day…
Trust me here – the focus on “being together” is not what makes a relationship work or not!
It’s the stuff that happens in between.
One last advice
Always, Always, ALWAYS have enough money to buy a Trip to your LDR and back.
You always keep that in an extra box – preferably in cash. Never touch it other in extreme emergencies where you need it.
There are certain situations in your life that will have a huge impact on you, your relationship and therefore your future. You don’t want to make the mistake and let money be an issue in these moments. And I’m not talking about the times you will be crying because you can’t be together – I’m talking about the times when a relative dies, your partner was brought to the hospital or when a big fight prevents you from having a normal conversation via your preferred messenger…
Never quit because of distance
This is one of the hardest aspects of LDR – some people can’t deal well with it and at some point quit the relationship in the hope to find somebody in their own area.
Let me be absolutely clear here: I know nobody that quit their relationship because of this problem and was happy after it. Everybody that told me they quit because of the distance, regretted that decision and had a hole in their life.
Do not, do not, DO NOT QUIT because of Distance!
To make you understand better I picked 3 LDR´s that I had and that shows some of my points best… Also, I hope that the first one will give you hope while the other 2 will show how it can be and maybe even warn you.
LDR with [C]
As you should know by now, [C] is my wife for over half my life now. We met in a Chatroom and we got to talk, then to visit and then we were together… And still apart because we needed 2,5 hours to visit each other.
We lived long distance, in a time where we didn’t have WhatsApp with voice messages, we didn’t have video calls and we didn’t have the ability to watch Netflix together… and we made it work!
One call in the morning – timed because we both didn’t have a lot of money.
SMS over the day – also counting because of money (a message cost 20cents at that time)
Long calls in the evening in which we talked about our day and made plans for the future…
We visited once a month and whenever we got extra money again. – It worked!
We were happy and we are still happy and when things get tough we do know we can make it work because we made it these first 2,5 years in which we were apart!
LDR with [NG]
She was actually pretty “close”, at the time we had an LDR with her because she was such a wonderful person. It was a Friends with benefits kind of situation but [C] and I had a crush on her. The LDR with her was short but very rewarding.
We had 3-way calls in the evening, send voice messages, had play together. She is still the only one we did play on video with which was something very special. People always think you can’t have these special moments via video – yes you can if you open your eyes.
LDR with [JP]
Oh boy – she screwed with everything in my playbook – someday I will write some posts about self-sabotage and how a submissive can push a relationship to the brink. But for now, let’s say that everything that I mentioned here was out of the window with her.
We lived ~6 hours apart, not included traffic or other problems. In the end, before she ended it, we met every 3 weeks for at least 4 days (2 days Home office rules!) and even tried to reduce that time. It helped to get problems out of the way but was obviously not enough.
In hindsight, I just think that she never wanted too much commitment which ended in us only having some rituals at some points. We didn’t have the plush animal (she had her own) or Music (she didn’t hear any).
We did have a lot of voice messages and a lot of video calls with deep and wonderful discussions and we had times in which we didn’t communicate because she wanted to be alone – But it still worked for 1,5 years and it would have worked longer!
So let this be a warning but also hope:
If you don’t do EVERYTHING right you will still be able to have a good and very rewarding LDR, but your Submissive has to commit to it and so do you as her Dominant!
