After arriving home from my weeklong trip with Jewel in Hong Kong, I had to deal with and face a lovesick heart.? Probably the most devastating aspect of a relationship with an individual halfway around the world is the feeling of desperation and uncertainty associated with being separated by such vast distances.
Difficulties of Long Distance Relationship
If you are contemplating such a relationship with an individual from a country that is across the ocean, it is best to prepare yourself for the heartache of being separated for long periods of time until you are finally able to be together.? Long Distance Relationships are never easy within the same country, but there is a host of other issues to consider when they are maintained across country lines. ?Additionally, if your relationship works-out and you want to eventually be able to be together with your sweetheart in the States via the immigration process, there are many steps, challenges and expenses to overcome.
Cultural Differences
In order to maintain a functional relationship, you?ll want to make several trips to be with your sweetheart and get to know her family.? You?ll want to adapt to the culture and learn of her country customs and ways.? As I found out and will expand upon in future postings, there are huge cultural differences to overcome that can cause significant misunderstandings and a relationship to fail.
The cost of the travel and time-off from work can be a tremendous challenge when attempting to maintain a long-distance relationship.? Learning to adapt to extremely dense populations, pollution problems, food and water-born sickness and chaotic driving conditions in the Philippines or most developing countries can be very daunting and overwhelming if you don?t maintain a sense of voyage and excitement.? But if things work-out and you find your soul-mate, the rewards, life-experiences and sense of adventure gained from traveling to and learning about a new and distant culture greatly offsets the challenges. Especially if it is the culture of the one you are in love with.? I have no regrets in making the choices I did discovering love in the Philippines.
The Difficulty of Separation
Being separated from Jewel and its associated pain continued to be difficult for me.? I was glad I had my family close-by (my brother and mother) to help defray the emotional pain experienced leaving Jewel behind, realizing that being able to see her again represented quite a difficult situation. Separated by a 16 hour plane trip plus layovers and another couple of hours to the Philippines and the expense of another trip was overwhelming to me.
Technology Helps Maintain Love
For the next few months, I spent most of my free-time on the phone with Jewel talking about everything and anything. At this time the Internet was becoming more ubiquitous in the Philippines.? I had arranged for Jewel to get internet service and a good laptop with webcam.? I was able to offset much of the cost I had incurred purchasing calling cards to stay in tough up to that point. I had also purchased a Vonage phone for Jewel so I would be able to call her or vise-a-versa anytime night or day without additional charges. ?It helped both of us maintain some sense of relationship as we would end each of our days being able to see each other as we discussed the issues of the day. Technology assisted us tremendously in the ongoing pursuit of our relationship. Quite possibly, we would not have become husband and wife had we started this relationship during another time in history where such technological advances were not available.
Love Trumps Fear
My trepidation of not wanting to travel to the Philippines was overcome by the sense of incompleteness I experienced in not being with Jewel.? It was only 3 month before I decided to overcome my fear of traveling to a third world country with some recent violent news events that involved Americans.? After all, I had been a West coast American boy who had never traveled east of Utah, north of Seattle or south of Tijuana. But love does funny things to a man, and I wanted to learn more about my loves country home culture and family. Three months was enough separation time for this long distance relationship?my trip was scheduled for the end of May of the same year.
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