LDR Tales: Where'd You Go?

One day I just might write a book about Long Distance Relationships or LDRs as we kids call it these days. ;)

There's a whole culture around Long Distance Relationships. When are you officially "dating?" When do you meet? When do you announce you're a couple and is that before or after you meet? When and how do you say "I love you" and mean it more than the casual "Love ya" you do on the internet? When do you introduce her to the family? When do you say you're in a relationship and change your status?  Then there's the communicating -- how will you talk to one another? How many texts is too much or too little and how much do you talk on the phone? Do you have conversations with other people when you're on the phone, watch television, do your homework or do you just talk on the phone and nothing else? Let's not forget the whole sex thing. Do you have skype sex, facetime sex or phone sex or a combination of all three and does this happen before or after you do it in person?  And speaking about "in person"-- who goes to visit who? Who moves? Do you move in after you meet? How long do you do the LDR before you move?

Yup. There's at least a book worth of valuable information and guidelines just waiting to be scribed.

I don't have time for all of that, but I thought about sharing little things about my current LDR that I find amusing.

I think it started after we spent eleven days together. Before then, if one of us fell asleep on the phone, we'd be embarrassed. There would be apologies, emphatic declarations that neither of us snored, and then we'd hang up and go to our own corners of the bed thousands of miles away from each other. Ok, not thousands, but over a thousand. But when we met, suddenly sleeping together became our sleeping pill. Mainly hers. Sorry baby.

Now when we talk on the phone, she's going to be sleeping and I'll be listening to her breathe into the phone. It's gonna happen. It's just a matter of time. Sometimes I'll join her, but the time difference and her new work schedule means she's usually winding down as I'm just getting started. So we talk for awhile and then the sound of sleeping breathing noises begin. At first I'd hang up as soon as she fell asleep, but then she'd call me back. "Where'd you go?" she would ask. "Baby, you were asleep," I'd reply. "But I woke up and you were gone." Yeah. So now I stay on the phone for probably close to an hour. I mute the phone and watch television while she slumbers like a baby, and, like a parent does with a sleeping child, softly start warning her in her sleep that I'm going to go soon. If she argues in words that actually make sense, I stick around a bit longer. But if her words come out like some strange disjointed drugged up dream state, I hang up and know that she's out for at least four hours. Sometimes I join her and sleep alongside her, headset in, curled up, eyes closed --- it's almost like how it was when we were sleeping next to each other except I don't feel the weight of her arms flung over my body, or feel her curled around me until the moment we both get way too warm. Typically my snoring will overpower hers and she'll hang up on me and I'll wake up when things are too silent wondering where she went.

It's a routine now. A habit. The only way we can sleep. To many it will probably sound insane. Probably as insane as the two of us on the phone for hours when we're home. Or being on the phone when we're talking to other people, something that would normally drive me crazy  but with her seems perfect. LDRs are insane. As insane as falling madly in love with someone who lives miles away from you -- someone whose voice you feel in your bones.