Do Long Distance Relationships Actually Work? 5 Things I Wish I’d Known Sooner

By someone who learned the hard way and came out the other side with clarity.

When I was in my early 20s, I found myself in a long distance relationship whilst at university. I was hundreds of miles from home, cut off from my family and closest friends — the people who had always been my anchor. That isolation from my social support network made me far more vulnerable than I realised at the time. Without a community around me to reflect back a sense of safety and belonging, I poured all of my emotional need into one person. One relationship. One phone call at a time.

Looking back, I can see how that vulnerability quietly fed an anxious attachment style. It showed up as feeling anxious, clingy, and persistently neglected, even when things were fine on paper. Goodbyes at the end of phone calls were excruciating. I would spiral after hanging up, replaying the tone of his voice, reading into silences, wondering if I’d said something wrong. Being okay on my own felt almost impossible. The distance felt like abandonment on a loop.

To make it more complicated, I was in a relationship with someone I would sometimes go months without seeing. Someone who, I now understand, was dismissively avoidant. He kept emotional intimacy at arm’s length, was uncomfortable with vulnerability, and often pulled away the more I leaned in. What we created together was the classic anxious-avoidant dance: the more I reached, the more he retreated; the more he retreated, the more frantically I reached. Neither of us was wrong, exactly. We were just two attachment wounds colliding in a long distance relationship with no tools to repair the space between us.

At the root of it, I had an abandonment wound, one I wasn’t even conscious of, that unconsciously drew me toward emotionally unavailable partners. People who couldn’t fully meet my emotional needs. People who confirmed, quietly and repeatedly, the belief I didn’t yet know I carried: that I was too much, or not quite enough.

Knowing what I know now, I would never settle in a relationship where my core emotional needs aren’t met. My mental health comes first. Full stop.

So, Do Long Distance Relationships Work?

The honest answer is: it depends. Long distance relationships can and do work. But they require more than love and good intentions. They require compatibility, communication, and a clear-eyed understanding of what you each need and whether the relationship, as it stands, is actually meeting those needs.

Long distance relationships are not inherently doomed. But they do have a way of amplifying everything. What’s good gets highlighted by absence and reunion. What’s broken gets louder in the silence between calls. They are, in many ways, a pressure test for the relationship itself and for your individual capacity to hold yourself steady.

Things to Consider Before Committing to Long Distance

Before deciding whether to enter or continue a long distance relationship, it’s worth asking some honest questions.

1. Is there a plan, or just hope?

Long distance relationships are most sustainable when there is a realistic end date or a shared vision for eventually closing the gap. “Someday” is not a plan. If neither person is willing or able to relocate, and no timeline exists, ask yourself what you’re actually building toward.

2. Are your attachment needs compatible?

This is the question most people skip, and it matters enormously. Long distance relationships place enormous strain on anxious attachment styles in particular. If you know you need consistent reassurance, physical closeness, and regular emotional check-ins to feel safe, a relationship where contact is rationed by time zones, schedules, and plane tickets will test you deeply. This doesn’t mean it can’t work, but it means you need a partner who understands your needs and actively works to meet them, even from a distance.

3. Is the relationship strong enough to carry the distance?

Long distance relationships are not a good place to build a foundation. They are best suited to relationships that already have one. If you’re still getting to know each other, the distance can create an artificial intimacy through long phone calls and constant texting that feels intense and connected while masking incompatibilities that would show up in everyday life.

4. Are your emotional needs actually being met?

For me, the things I know I need in a relationship are non-negotiable: safety, empathy, genuine listening, consistency, the ability to navigate conflict without it becoming catastrophic, and repair after rupture. Confidence in the person I’m with. These aren’t luxuries. They are the foundation of a relationship where I can actually thrive.

In long distance relationships, it’s easy to excuse the absence of these things as a consequence of the distance. But distance doesn’t cause a partner to be dismissive, to shut down during conflict, or to fail to follow through. Those are character patterns, and long distance relationships won’t fix them. If anything, they make them harder to confront.

5. How do you each handle being alone?

Long distance relationships require both people to have, or to develop, a functional relationship with themselves. If you cannot be alone without significant distress, if being left to your own company feels unbearable, that is important information. Not a reason to give up, but a reason to do some inner work.

Things That Make Long Distance Relationships Easier

If you’ve considered the above and you’re committed to making it work, here’s what actually helps.

Consistent communication rituals. Not constant communication, but consistent. Long distance relationships thrive on reliability. A regular call at the same time each week can do more for your sense of security than fifty sporadic texts throughout the day. Knowing when you’ll next speak creates a container that eases anxiety.

Clear expectations around communication. How often do you each need to check in to feel connected? What does “I’m busy” look like in practice — radio silence for three days, or a quick voice note to say you’re thinking of them? Mismatched communication expectations are one of the most common sources of conflict in long distance relationships. Talk about it before it becomes an argument.

Planned visits, ideally with the next one booked before you say goodbye. Having something tangible to look forward to makes the distance more bearable. The period immediately after a visit tends to be the hardest emotionally. Knowing when the next one is helps anchor you.

Your own life, separate from the relationship. This is crucial, and it’s something I got badly wrong in my early 20s. Long distance relationships can accidentally collapse inward when there’s nothing else filling the space. Reconnecting with your passions, your purpose, your hobbies, and your friendships doesn’t diminish the relationship. It sustains you so the relationship doesn’t have to do all the heavy lifting.

The willingness to be honest, even when it’s uncomfortable. Long distance relationships have a tendency to breed performance, presenting your best self on calls, avoiding hard conversations because you don’t want to waste the limited time you have. But honesty is what builds the trust that makes distance survivable. If something isn’t working, say so.

Conflict resolution and repair. This might be the most underrated skill in any relationship, and it becomes even more essential in long distance relationships. When conflict arises, and it will, can you work through it without being in the same room? Can you repair after a rupture without a hug or physical reassurance? Practice talking through disagreements rather than avoiding them. A relationship that cannot navigate conflict safely will struggle enormously under the added pressure of distance.

An Honest Word About Attachment Wounds

If you find yourself chronically anxious in long distance relationships, struggling with goodbyes, checking your phone compulsively, feeling abandoned even when you’re not, it’s worth looking beneath the surface.

Long distance relationships don’t create anxious attachment. They illuminate it.

The good news is that understanding your attachment style is the beginning of changing it. When I finally started to understand why I was drawn to emotionally unavailable people, why I equated love with longing and anxiety with caring, everything began to shift. Not immediately. But irreversibly.

The Silver Lining Nobody Talks About

Long distance relationships, for all their difficulty, offer something rare: an extended period of being with yourself. Of building a life that is genuinely yours, not one organised around another person’s proximity.

This is a real opportunity to get to know yourself more deeply. To become comfortable in your own company. To sit with silence without filling it. To rediscover the hobbies that got sidelined, the friendships that were deprioritised, the passions and sense of purpose that belong to you and no one else.

The people who come through long distance relationships most whole, whether the relationship survives or not, are often those who used the time apart to come home to themselves.

Where to Start: Take the Attachment Style Quiz

If any of this resonates, if you recognise the anxious-avoidant dance, the spiral after a goodbye, the feeling of never quite being settled, I’d gently invite you to take my Attachment Style Quiz.

It’s a starting point. A way of beginning to understand the patterns you carry into long distance relationships and all relationships, so you can stop repeating them unconsciously and start making choices from a more grounded place.

Long distance relationships can work. But first, you have to know yourself well enough to know what you actually need, and to stop settling for anything less.

Because in the end, the most important relationship you’ll ever have is the one with yourself.

Take the Attachment Style Quiz and begin your healing journey.

Read More

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