There are so many different ways of looking at our situation, and, if you’re not careful, you can get lost in it all. When there is too much of something, it can be difficult to keep things under control. But, with a little time and patience, it is possible.

Sara and I are now entering the busy period of our relationship. She is about to start her summer vacation and so is much more available. My work pattern isn’t as straightforward or structured and whilst this gives me more flexibility, it poses different challenges concerning the generation and delivery of work as it is much more free-flowing and organic.

The important thing to keep hold of is the need to maintain a balance so that your life remains on track, but also so that your relationship can still grow and flourish. In essence, this is all about planning and, for a long-distance relationship, this is so much more significant, if not a critical success factor.

Recognising the limitations and working within them, rather than against them, is a key element in making things work. It’s not what you could call romantic, but it is reality. So I guess you could deduce we must be doing something right.

It starts off with identifying the fixed factors in your lives and then building your ‘we’ time around them. If you don’t actually manage the situation like this, then things can end up drifting and what you can achieve and experience together may be less than it could be. Furthermore, you can end up in a real mess of constantly having to catch up with things.

As individual people, in a situation like this, I guess you find out pretty soon how committed you are to each other, as spontaneity and other spur-of-the-moment random acts of romance have to take on a different shape and form to what you would usually expect.

However, we’ve been together for nearly four years and we are still sharing a life, albeit an unconventional one, in two different countries, benefiting from the latest technological advancements to make our situation sustainable in economic terms too.

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