异地恋算恋爱吗？Does Long-Distance Count as Love?

Reposted from Zhihu Daily

I don’t know whether you have ever been in a long-distance relationship; if not, then I think I am fully entitled to regard all his conjectures about long-distance love as a kind of fantasy. Same city or far apart, love between two people takes many different forms. I believe this crude sorting by distance, this discussion that takes the part for the whole, is severely short on grounds. We grant that some long-distance relationships do harbor unrealistic illusions; yet many others are built on a foundation of deep mutual understanding, a state of temporary separation brought about by objective causes such as education or career.

On what grounds do we judge whether a relationship counts as love? Can we judge by age alone? Then does loving a younger man count as love? Can we judge by gender alone? Then does same-sex love count as love? Can we judge simply by how long two people have known each other? Then does love at first sight count as love? If none of the above standards deserves to be called a standard, then distance plainly cannot serve as the sole criterion for judging a relationship either.

There is a phenomenon always around us: we are in the habit of pointing fingers at other people’s lives, feeling out their lives by our own standards. “Old Wang next door hasn’t slept with his wife in a year; that’s no marriage at all.” “What kind of life is he living? No different from being dead.” Doubts like “the two of them can’t even see each other for half a year at a stretch; does that still count as dating?” are just as feeble, because the only ones truly qualified to pass judgment on a relationship are the people inside it. “A year without sex, but we simply want to live together.” “With ideals in the heart, material things don’t matter at all.” And likewise, “even if each parting lasts half a year, I have always held him as the best love of my life.”

Let me try to guess the asker’s intent: probably to discuss whether long-distance love is a healthy state for a relationship. Seen from that angle, a long-term long-distance relationship is clearly incomplete, for lacking certain kinds of contact and shared everyday experience; yet we cannot deny that long-distance love also holds many experiences that same-city love never gets to taste, experiences closer to the essence of love itself.

When you and your love grow interdependent from being together day and night, it is hard to tell whether the dependence comes from love or from companionship. What distance gives you is precisely a space of relative selfhood, letting you face this relationship squarely from a relatively objective vantage; you come to see with clear eyes that what you mean to each other is far more than simply keeping company, that the bond between you is by no means the “habit” of affection grown from long proximity, but a heartfelt admiration and love for each other.

Do you really think imagination alone can construct a perfect lover? When he often leaves your WeChat messages unanswered and won’t video-call you, can you still trust him, still feel secure in this relationship? When he cannot take an interest in your thoughts and your life, can you still cling to him, still brim with confidence that the two of you are “a match made in heaven”? Speaking from my own experience, far from preserving the beautiful fantasy of a lover in your head, distance instead makes you sensitive, melodramatic, uneasy, fearful; and the love that has come through that stage is, without question, a nirvana.

Beyond that, speaking for myself, the most valuable thing long distance has given me is a future with more planning and a longer horizon. While same-city couples agonize over “what’s for dinner tonight” and “which hotel room tomorrow,” our future is measured on scales of three months, half a year; there is no time to fret away your days content with the present, you simply have to work so that the two of you can truly share a future. I was just a girl student drifting along with nothing to do and no ambition, but for my love, for this relationship, the changes and compromises I have made are beyond what ordinary couples could imagine. To be with him I have had to chase a prettier GPA, higher G\T scores, more distinctive experiences; I too get lost, I too cannot help weighing whether the present joys and the easy life being sacrificed are worth it, and how is that not a kind of change and tempering? Looking from the more tolerant and confident, stronger and more independent me, who can deny that in all this we have grown?

To me, distance is only a spatial condition; there is no need to paint it as anything so special or so bitter. This world has never lacked for feelings that hold up against time and endure across distance, so long as you hold fast, so long as he keeps faith. Trying to draw confidence from other people is surely a mark of weakness; and for love, we ought to grow stronger.

With him in Beijing, we are a same-city couple; with him in America, we are a long-distance one.
Were he a girl, ours would be same-sex love; as he is a boy, it is opposite-sex love.
I love him deeply, so as long as it is him, it is love.
Anyone else, even someone who could stay by my side every day to keep me company and care for me, would, I fear, be only a passerby.
Those whose long-distance loves failed always think they lost to the future, when in truth what they lost to was still their love: either they were never right for each other, or the love was not strong enough to point the way to a shared future.