IF YOU HAVE JUST started a long-distance relationship or if your partner has just been shipped off to distant shores, it may be a blessing in disguise. On the downside, gone are the daily friendly chats, the shared meals and the up-close and personal kisses and cuddles, only to be replaced by telephone calls, letters and e-mails.
But take heart, with this distance comes the chance to get to know each other in different ways, say the experts. The intensity of each moment of contact can make you more sensitive to each other's qualities, values, ways of thinking, dreams and aspirations, forging a deeper bond.
Sharon Glick, a relationship counsellor with St John's Cathedral Counselling Service, says in the right circumstances a long-distance relationship can actually work out better than an up-close one.
'It can be like a serial honeymoon,' she says. 'You're not in each other's face all the time and you don't have to deal with the day-to-day drudgery. You just look forward to being together, which makes things very romantic.'
Writer Suzanne Schubert recalls her parents' story as a classic example of a long-distance relationship that succeeded against daunting odds. Her parents met on a blind date in the mid-1950s, when her father was at army officer-training college at Sandhurst in southern England. 'Mum was summering as an au pair in order to learn English in the same village, and they met at his graduation ball through mutual friends,' she says. 'They fell in love that very night, and knew it was meant to last forever.'
Soon after, however, her father was shipped back to Malaysia and her mother returned home to Germany. 'They kept in touch by correspondence, and whenever he was sent to various war zones, he'd stop off in Germany if he could. There was one time when he had an hour at Frankfurt airport but wasn't permitted to exit. So they stood there on either side of the glass partition, trying to talk - very romantic,' says Schubert.