Note: I wanted to perhaps write something about pregnancy or abortion this week, on account of the terrible horrible no-good news out of the Supreme Court. But honestly, I am so exhausted by the aggravation of it all that I don’t feel up to it. I can, however, write about some sex I had recently, and encourage you to donate to an abortion fund if you're able. Now back to our scheduled programming.
One of the hardest things about being in a long-distance relationship is saying goodbye at the end of a visit. It can be vexing to even wrap your mind around the fact that this person, who you’ve only just gotten used to seeing in three dimensions again, is about to go back to essentially existing inside your phone for a while. Sometimes the sadness drifts in preemptively over the days before a scheduled farewell; other times, it lays in wait until the moments right before, triggering a teary meltdown and a deep, primal longing to shout, “Please don’t go.”
My spouse and I live 500 miles apart, and have experimented with many, many different techniques for mitigating painful goodbyes over the nearly 4 and a half years we’ve been together. We’ve instituted end-of-visit debriefs, where we discuss over drinks or brunch the best things we did together recently and when we might see each other next. We’ve started saying goodbye only in private locations, ever since we tried to do it in a New York City subway station once and found that it just compounded the problem. We’ve made a habit of speaking by phone the night one of us arrives back home, as if to reaffirm that our connection still sparkles despite the distance.