Erin, 36 from Arizona writes…

After meeting my boyfriend, 3 months later we had to start a long distance relationship that has lasted so far for almost two and a half years. He lives overseas in Europe on a work related project that should finish in another six months or so. He has come back to visit me a couple times, each trip being only a week or so. The rest has all been by phone, email and instant messengers, almost daily. Over the past couple months or so it started getting harder and harder to contact him, to the point where now if I leave a voicemail (he rarely answers the phone anymore) he takes a week to call me back, usually with a pathetic excuse about work being busy. However, if I call him from a number with no caller ID or with a calling card from a pay phone he answers every time. I really don’t want to lose him, but feel like I am. We have endured so much; it would be so bad to lose it all now when we’re so close to being together again. Is he really having a hard time with work and his commitments or has he found someone else?

Dr Thatslife has this to say….

Let’s look at the long distance relationship concept first… Long distance relationships are always a total nightmare. They really do live up to their less than stellar reputation, pretty much without fail. No matter how good the intentions are, or how “different” your hack at it will be, they eventually collapse under the weight of the unnatural needs of such a relationship. At some point, someone in the relationship will shit the bed and seek or get themselves into a predicament where someone else can fill the voids a long distance relationship creates. Those cravings and longing for intimacy and contact with one another simply cannot go ignored. Our tenancy as people to fill voids in our lives by looking outside our relationship is a natural one, and a powerful one.

These relationships are unsatisfying, monotonous, routine, and downright fucking boring. And there is no way you could possibly convince me otherwise about your particular long distance relationship, it’s the same boring shit as everyone else’s that has failed in the past. After two years of this routine, every time you two are on the phone, you couldn’t seriously give a fuck about the mundane details of each other’s day except to try and extract whether the other person is frolicking in the sack with someone else. And his week-long visits here and there are simply pussy teases rather than anything useful. They only reinforce “Yep, when he leaves again, I’ll be rubbing one out each night on my own.” for the foreseeable future. Be honest with yourself about this, it’s fucking BORING.

This is his less than subtle way of letting you off the leash. It’s his way of saying “maybe if I slow down the relationship enough, it will just… stop breathing.” This could be for a variety of reasons, one of which is that he may have found someone else. But really, I would look at this positively. Instead of him leading you down the garden trail right until the last moment, he has given you an “out” that attempts to, in his mind, shut things down in the most amicable way. Think of this as your cue to move on, and seek someone that is accessible that you can build a healthy relationship with.

The other aspect of this is that you’re desperate. Sorry, but you simply cannot justify having a measly 3 months of hanging out with someone, then commit to years of waiting by the front door for his return. There is no real excuse for this except that you are clinging on with some romanticized image of him, and lack other options – it doesn’t matter what violin story you wrap around it. You are too blind with needing “someone” to realize you are completely and utterly unsatisfied with your life as a whole. It may be quite difficult for you to admit this, but deep down you know that the past two years were a total write-off, and waiting another half year has no guarantees that after all that, he won’t have changed to your disliking, or the relationship simply fails to work.

Move on… start enjoying your life Erin.

That’s life!