Source
r/LongDistance•
dotoneone

In your LDR, how important is quality, daily communication?

Question

Hey guys, first time poster here. I was wondering in your LDRs, how important is it for to not just have daily communication, but quality daily communication?

Would you be satisfied with just good mornings and good nights, with small, brief conversations in between? Or would you require a little more substance than that?

Do you think this is just a personal preference, or something that's required?

I ask because my girlfriend's been working more lately (LDR of 1 year +). She often arrives home between 10PM - 12AM her time, and we may or may not chat for a bit, but she usually sleeps or falls asleep (which is okay with me as I encourage her to get more rest). But during the day, communication has often become little to none aside from the 3-5 message bursts every few hours.

I'm thinking about bringing it up with her as sharing quality time with her is important to me, but I'm not sure I'm over thinking or overreacting and maybe I just need to give it time and space.

Forgive me if a thought or sentence is unclear as this is currently running through my mind.

Posted Dec 21, 2018, 1:01 AM UTC

139
unicornrankAUS 💕CAN•

It's mostly personal preference, and largely dependent on the circumstances in your relationship.

You can ask for her to spend more time, while also keeping her busyness in mind. Maybe think up something practical beforehand to suggest to her, for example like a routine voice or video call.

10
henry40213Taipei - Pennsylvania (7705 mi)•

I would add to this by saying scheduled calls of deep communication is really helpful. My SO and I have one long video chatting session on the weekends, in which we put all other life distractions away and just talk. This honestly is what keeps me excited throughout the week. At the same time, however, expect that sometimes things may just get hectic in one of your lives and such calls may not be possible. Being in separate places means two different lives, and is naturally more difficult to have constant communication daily.

8
coastalkid92Canada to UK•

It really depends on the day and the circumstance.

I know for myself when my SO and I are both working, it's idle bits of chit chat throughout the day when we can. But when our days off align, we get a bit more time together and we try to prioritize that.

8
Shalala1212US-UK•

It’s very much personal preference and how each of those preferences mesh together within each relationship together.

For my SO and I, we don’t do any routine good morning/good night texts. We text if we have something to say. Usually a couple texts a day, sometimes a whole conversation, occasionally no texts all day (though true that it’s rare). A lot of our texting is random links to things we saw or read. We only voice/video chat on weekends, which is when we have the majority of our quality time/communication. We’re very satisfied with this level of communication and I find it helps us keep things “quality”.

If we were trying to talk daily, I’m not sure there would even be enough to say to keep it “quality”. It’s easy at first when you’re both super excited and have a ton to learn about each other because you just met but things settle eventually, that’s natural. There’s only so much that goes on to talk about on a daily basis, for us anyway. So if we save up for weekend chats, there’s more to talk about rather than doing whatever little bits to scrape daily.

5
cavicat•

If you're uncomfortable or feel unsatisfied in your communication, it's important to let her know before it becomes a problem. It might not even occur to her, or maybe she's thought of the same thing.

I just genuinely enjoy listening to what my partner did at work, he has an interesting job and he's a good story teller. I recognize though that he sometimes needs to just come home and drop, with little/no time to talk and that's fine. I guess I just like connecting in some way daily.

2
lintan96•

I think it varies in all relationships on how important it is to have quality and daily communications.

My boyfriend and I we text everyday, throughout the day and we would call 2-3 times a week. But that’s because right now I just finished my bachelors and I’m waiting to start my masters so I’m free for a few months, and my boyfriend is finishing up his bachelors but he’s interning around the world and fortunately he’s not very busy so that’s why we get to text throughout the day. On days when he is busy, he’s send good morning text and tells me he’ll be busy today at work so he will text me later when he’s free which is fine.

But as of next year in February, we both will be busy with classes, so we talked about this and said we don’t have to text throughout the day like we are right now cus I want to focus in class and I want the same for him. But if we are free for a bit it’s always nice to check up on each other or when we are back at home and if we want, we can end our day together by calling. We agreed on this plan, but we will see though when the time comes and see if it’ll go as we want haha.

I’m a very passionate person and I usually need validation from my boyfriend and my boyfriend is the opposite of me and it was tough at first because I would always assume he doesn’t care about me but that wasn’t true. But you can see why constant communication is important to me and I’m fortunate enough that he’s willing to communicate that way with me and making it work.

But it is important to have your own time. Very important. And it’s important to get your needs across your partner as well so that you’ll be happy and satisfied in your relationship!

2
TiredTigerFighter•

For me personally I need a lot of texting and calling. Not as much as when we first went long distance but we still call nearly daily and text most of the time that we can even if it's just memes and lame talk.

2
TurbulentCherry[Georgia] to [Sweden] (2686km)•

We text a lot, and substance of those texts depends on the day and how we're feeling,but calls are once a week thing. It's a personal preference I guess. It's not necessary to have long discussions about stuff every day but if thats what works for you...

1
BleuBird18•

It sounds like she is pretty busy at the moment, but does try to respond when she can, which is good.

Switching to email or letters may help. More time between communications, and you have the ability to work on a response over time.

You have the opportunity for more in depth conversations.

1