Does your marriage involve one spouse working away from home? Or travelling a lot? Maybe you are a military family or you commute to another city for work or do camp work. Let’s talk about some of the challenges and also some ideas to make the most of this situation!

It can be tough being separated from your spouse for long periods of time. And when this happens regularly, due to work or some other circumstance, your marriage is bound to be affected in some way. But that change doesn’t necessarily have to be bad, and with the help of our list of do’s and don’ts you can make sure you stay connected to your spouse no matter the physical distance between you.

What is a Long Distance Marriage?

Who knew, but long distance couples account for over 1 million couples in the USA[i] and this number is continuing to grow. There are a few flavours of this:

Couples where one spouse goes away for weeks or months at a time for work. Military couples would be an example of this. In Canada we see a lot of this related to the oil industry where camps are set up in northern areas, and husbands go North to work like 3 weeks in one week out kind of thing

There are also dual-commuter couples where both spouses travel away for work or education

And there are couples who live in different geographical locations on a semi-permanent basis due to work or other factors

If you don’t fit into any of those groups, another definition of a long distance relationship (LDR) is simply that the couple are "unable to see each other as often as they like, due to time or distance constraints[ii]".

So how does being in a LDR affect your marriage? There are mixed results from the research on this one, but most find that there are no concrete differences in terms of satisfaction or commitment between long-distance and close-distance relationships[iii]. This means that spending long periods of time apart doesn’t automatically spell doom for your marriage, and making the relationship work is largely up to the individual couple.

So let’s get into the do’s and don’ts of long distance relationships.

Do’s and Don'ts

Don’ts

Do Not Have Unrealistic Expectations

If you are in this situation you are probably already aware of some of the common challenges faced in long distance relationships. These include:

Increased financial strain from travelling

Difficulty forming new relationships and friendships in your separate locations and balancing these with your marriage

Difficulty assessing each other's emotional state or the state of the relationship

Try to be aware of these challenges and other issues like loneliness: it then becomes a conversation about something you both experience. Can you discuss this without feeling guilty? Have you chosen to see this as something that gets between you, or can you share the burden together?

Those are expectations that come into play when you are apart. What about when you are together? Avoid putting too high expectations on the time you do spend together: couples often expect their limited time together to be perfect: intimate and romantic and all these wonderful things and can be distressed when this doesn't turn out to be the case.

Do Not Be Negative

Those expectations can easily lead to negativity in thought or emotion.

A study from 2007[iv] found that negative affectivity (displays of negative emotions) were linked to relationship instability. This effect was stronger for men than women, and also stronger for long distance couples than for geographically close couples.

Being far apart makes those negative comments much more of an issue, because it could be days or weeks before you get to speak to each other again, so you’ll have all that time to stew over every word. Obviously arguments and disagreements will happen in an LDR, like in any marriage, but just be careful that they don’t sour your entire experience of time together. If you fight,