[Harky167]

Hello,

I’m 19 years old, and this is my first relationship. I spent a semester at a university in a different country, where I met this girl and we started dating. There’s no cultural or language barriers since we’re the same ethnicity.

Now that semester has ended and now I am back in the UK, we are now in a long distance relationship; we promised to buy plane tickets so we can visit eachother, and we text and skype frequently too. We’re pretty committed.

There’s just one thing that I just can’t get over no matter how hard I try; she’s best friends with her ex-boyfriend.
They dated for the first two years of high school, and then they broke up (because she made some mistakes apparently) but still remained best friends. As far as I know they don’t meet up frequently, but they do message eachother quite a bit.

I have met him, and he’s a great guy; we clicked pretty well, and I trust them both enough to know that they’re not flirting with eachother behind my back.
But it still kills me that she’s close with him. I know that she’s not going to cheat on me; I know that their feelings for eachother have died down. But it still really bothers me, especially when they do meet up.

Am I the one being immature about this, or is this a genuine problem? I’m reluctant to talk to her about this because I know it’ll go nowhere. I can’t tell her to stop communicating with him because that would be really selfish of me, and yet every time she does I just feel intensely jealous, especially because he gets to be next to her when I can’t. What should my stance be for this dilemma?

[AskApril Masini]

You’re both 19 year olds in a long distance relationship after dating in person for a semester and then going back to your home country to finish school. What will help you to understand the situation is that long distance relationships are different than in person relationships. They’re much more difficult to carry out because of the distance, and one way to make them work is to give each other much “longer leashes” — in other words, you have to be a lot more understanding of the situation and of her possibly dating other people because you’re not there to take her out or spend time with her in person. Teenagers and young 20-somethings are vital and interested in dating. If what the two of you had was the stuff of long-term commitments, then you should work at the relationship over the distance, and be patient and understanding of the distance and her desire for companionship (as she should, yours). But if a long distance relationship is not something you’re realistically going to be able carry out, then you should let it go. I hope that helps.

[Member]

Posts