Taking the Long Distance Out of The Relationship

Boy meets girl. Boy dates girl. They fall in love. Easy, right? Well, not for me and Noly! Two very different cultures, worlds, lanugages and time zones are always bound to make things a bit complicated, but, genuinely by the grace of God, things have always worked out for us thus far. God has been super faithful to us and has always opened up the solution to what’s coming next at the right time- it’s been amazing. I won’t go on about it here, but if you’re interested message me.

Since arriving to Argentina a few people have, quite reasonably, asked me how it’s going with the Nolzster now I’m here, so I thought I’d wrote a blog post about it.

For those of you who have known Noly or me (or both) over the last few years, you will know we have been together for a while. In September 2015 Nolz asked me to be his girlfriend (wahoo!) and before we knew it we found ourselves plunged into a very long distance relationship. When I think about it I think it’s a bit nuts really, that both of us were willing to give such a long distance relationship a shot without having a clue how we were gonna make things work. I partly think we didn’t really think through what we were getting ourselves in for but I can’t even express how glad I am that we went for it! Nearly four years later and we’re still together and going strong. Being a long distance couple is incredibly hard. You can’t really begin to understand it unless you’ve been through it, but it has also brought us so many blessings. When you’re apart and all there is to do is talk, no dates or adventures, you get to know each other pretty well! As well as requiring a whole load of other things, trust, commitment when things get tough, good communication etc etc.

Over the last four years we have spent it going backwards and forwards between the two countries. For me, this has meant I haven’t had a summer for the last four years, as I’ve been leaving England just as we’ve been entering into summer and I get to Argentina and it’s winter! Then, when I leave, Argentina is just beginning to get warmer but I go back to England and it’s autumn. (I’m looking forward to getting at least a little summer here this year haha). It’s also made my finances quite an interesting topic but heyho 😂 that’s a working progress 😂

Over the course of our relationship we have spent various amounts of time in the other’s country. The longest being when Noly was in England for six months with Latin Link, though this was technically long distance ish as he was about an hour away from me (I’d take this over being country’s apart though haha) and the shortest being for two weeks last year at Easter and also in November/December for Cristian & Luci’s wedding. I worked it out the other day and in total we have spent a bit over one year together in the same country. I am looking forward to when I’ve been here for a while and we get to the point when we’ve been in the same country more than we’ve been apart in different countries!

As you can probably imagine, it’s so lush being in the same country as each other. Even if we’re not doing anything together it’s nice knowing he’s about 20 mins drive down the road from me. To begin with I found it kinda hard to snap out of the long distance mentality and was like, we need to make the most of every second we have together whilst we are together!! But now it’s chill. We manage to see each other most days, even if only for like. 20 mins or just working alongside each other. It’s easy to complain and always want to see him more, but after being long distance off and on for so long I can really appreciate all the blessings and things that we have, as the ‘normal’ couple things really haven’t always been a given for us.

Another thing that’s a change is that usually, we have a countdown clock in our head to when the other is leaving. It’s always at the back of our minds that ‘we’ve had half of the time together’ or ‘he’s leaving in three weeks.. two weeks.. two days..’, and whilst we try not to do this, it’s hard not to do and has been a bit frustrating to always have the end date for when we’re going to seperate again. But for now, at least, we don’t have this, which is so lush!

This time around of being together has been the most like normal life. The other times I’ve stayed in Argentina I’ve stayed at the Matus’ house and haven’t been working. Trying to balance how much we see each other alongside Nolz supporting me (being in a different country can sometimes be incredibly hard y’all) and continuing with his crazy amount of uni work was difficult to begin with but we’ve settled into a fairly good rhythm I’d say. It’s also more like normal life this time round too because I’ve started really trying to get to know other people and surround myself with different communities (By the way, I’ve been feeling so much better lately r.e. loneliness. I’ve been super busy and had various bits and pieces on so I think we’re on the up. I haven’t been down about this for a little while now so yay!) so that I have my own friends here otherwise I feel like I’m not my own person and that I’m just here as Noly’s girlfriend. In England I would do this naturally, but it’s harder for me here. Naturally, I’m kinda shy (..okay fine, fairly shy) and it takes me a while to feel comfortable with people. If you take natural shyness and the language barrier this can be somewhat of a challenge! But as long as I’m feeling generally upbeat, it can be quite fun and I think I’m beginning to rise to the challenge a bit. Being busy and having people around me is the way for me. Plus it’s definitely healthy for me to have other people to rely on and not just rely on Noly.

So yeah! I’m not sure what else to write without going mega gushy but to summarise, things are good and we’re happy 😊

From four years ago to today ❤️