Dear Boyfriend,
We have quite the journey ahead of us as members of the exclusive long-distance relationship club! The next few years are likely to be a challenge as we finish off our undergraduate degrees in our respective states. I have never been in this position before and thus have no idea how to go about dating someone who is over one thousand miles away, but I see this as a growing opportunity. Just keep faith. Try to keep in mind the famous quote “most obstacles melt away when we make up our minds to walk boldly through them” (Orison Marden).this situation of ours provides us with the perfect opportunity to embrace our respective college experiences and continue to create the future we desire.
Despite the hardship and pain associated with long distance, I see this as a positive change. College is a time of development and self-discovery. We have so much greater opportunity to continue to define ourselves and shape our own personalities while being apart. I love you dearly but now I do not have to worry about defining myself as your girlfriend. I can figure life out on my own and work through the problems that come up without your immediate assistance. In this way I will find my own feet and courage without developing reliance upon your support and guidance. In a sense we have the best of both worlds right now, we have someone there for us if we need them to be, we have a constant friend, but at the same time we are allowed the space to continue our life experience individually and without restraint from the demands of a close knit relationship. As Lao Tzu said, “being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives your courage”. If you and I use the courage and strength that we generate in this relationship and allow it to enrich us while apart we are well on our way to surpassing our goals and becoming the individuals we desire to be.
This is especially prominent when studies are involved. College requires significant amounts of attention and time. The grades we get now define our future successes. If either of us want to achieve our dreams of getting into medical school, which we had set out before we even knew one another, we must excel in school and significantly challenge ourselves. Being apart gives us less of an excuse to take time away from our education. We pose less of a distraction to one another this way; we have no valid reasoning to take us away from what we need to get done. The time it takes to send a text or write a letter even, is significantly less that the time we would spend hanging out together or going on a date. Being apart allows us greater time to focus on what’s really important right now: school and working towards a better future.
By being in a relationship, we also decrease the stress of being alone or feeling the need to find a companion of the opposite sex. According to Cornell, fifty percent of students meet their spouses in college, a statistic the majority of the population is aware of. This assumption can put a lot of stress on an individual to date and explore their options and may make people more willing to engage with others they would usually have the better sense to avoid. This is especially likely when alcohol is involved, which occurs rather frequently in the college scene, as you well know. By being in a relationship with one another we do not need to worry about looking for that other person, we already have each other. We are thus reducing our stress of courtship significantly in the grand scheme of things. Yes, it takes a bit of time to maintain a relationship and some stress, but trying to impress someone else or taking the extra time in the morning to prepare and look nice or spending hours talking with friends about possible boy/girl options takes up more time and effort than you and I currently spend working on this relationship. Being together reduces our stress and effort spent to try and become the average college student on the lookout for love, we have already found it.
Speaking of love, this long distance relationship has taught us both more about our relationship than being together ever could. We are getting to see the effort to which we are both willing to put into this relationship as well as the strength of our emotions for one another. Telling you goodbye really made Thomas Haynes Bayly’s statement, “absence makes the heart grow fonder” all the more prominent to me. It’s true. Saying goodbye to you was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do, but I learned more about my feelings for you than being with you could ever have shown me. Plus, I know that if we can make it through this current struggle, we can make it through almost anything together. Right now all we have to hold us together is communication. The distance provides us with the chance to perfect those skills and be better able to express our emotions, concerns, and etc to one another and in all aspects of our lives. We are building life skills that will serve us well no matter what the future holds and providing ourselves with crucial knowledge as to the sincerity and longevity of our relationship.
Our long distance relationship may be a blessing in disguise that will allow us to continue to become the people we wish to be without losing the companionship of one another. We have space to grow and a relationship to cultivate; in the garden of life we are richly blessed. Embrace each day, remember your goals and believe in this relationship. We are on a track to success and happiness that no other situation could bring with such effectiveness.
With love,
Amy
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Amy,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed this post. I am currently in a long distance relationship. Even though we are not thousands of miles away, there are several issues that you brought up that made me think about the things that have been problems in my relationship. I liked the way that you put different quotes into the paragraph. It seemed that you believe that long distance relationships can work, but only if the people in that relationship are willing to work at it. You stressed the point about education, which is very important. If I was receiving this letter, I would fully understand. There are very valid points about the reasons behind not having a long distance relationship, but it also shows the ways that these relationships can make it through the hardships, which is appreciated. There were some parts that did not seem as if you were actually writing to a person but as if you were writing a paper for a professor. But all in all I enjoyed this post.
-Mariah
The article is very heart touching and moving, and quite timely for college students since large portion of them is going through this emotion stress right now. I loved they way you written this article like a letter to your boyfriend, by doing that you created an image of you and your boyfriend relationship to me as a reader and in the same time you give strength to other couples who are in the same position as you. The quotes were quite wonderful and represent what kind of feelings you had toward your boyfriend and toward the long distance relationship. Few things might want to consider to add in your article are: first what are the tools that can help supporting and holding the relationship together in times of stress or fighting, secondly to be more affective you could add some examples of people you know or famous who have had a long distance relationship in their life and it was successful, last but not least, you could add some memories to the readers to describe the strength of your long distance relationship with your boyfriend, overall a very nice article, well done.
ReplyDeleteBlogging for the public good was a refreshing topic in the sense that it laid out a specific groundwork but allowed for a great margin of interpretation and innovation in each of our own blog posts. I was particularly excited to challenge myself by writing my argument in the form of a letter. I was hoping to appeal to a very specific audience but incorporate ideas that would end up allowing my argument to expand to a greater audience of all people who are involved in long distance relationships, are considering one, or are curious about a positive argument. The letter format served another purpose, to add to my ethos. By writing to my boyfriend as the author, I justify right away that I know what being in a long distance relationship is like, that I understand what I’m talking about which significantly boosts my ethos as an expert on the subject. The main source of my rhetorical appeals is in the form of logos where I use pathos driven quotes from well know people and religions to justify the claims that I am making. Looking back at the comments that my fellow writers have posted, I am glad to see that my intended audiences were clear and that my argument was stable, but as I am reflecting here I realize how little my piece lacks in concrete examples of what I assert. All of my claims are abstract ideas of which I provided no examples. Upon revising I hope to tighten my language, continue to clarify my arguments and add more concrete evidence to support my claim which will end up adding to my ethos, my logos, and if I use emotional examples, I could also add some better pathos to the piece. The addition of all of these rhetorical strategies will strengthen my piece significantly. I intend to work on the formatting in which is wrote this piece and try to make my argument more letter formatted yet more argumentative at the same time. Writing an argument as a letter is a little difficult for me and I would like to try and make the whole blog post flow better as both a letter and as a persuasive essay.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Amy, for a very thoughtful post, and one that works well in a letter form. I like how this works to identify a very precise reader (your boyfriend), but you use this occassion to speak to others who are either in similar situations (like Mariah) or who can sympathize with the difficulties you face.
ReplyDeleteI agree, too, with your own thoughts that you could use additional concrete examples. One way that you might do this is to consider the other relationships you see around you. That is, when you generalize about what life is like at college when it comes to relationships, if you could identify even one or two anecdotes or observations drawn from friends or peers and use them to illustrate your thinking, you'd go far in branching out from your own relationship as the only experiential evidence that you draw on. Somewhere near the end, too, you might frame your thoughts as if you were giving advice to others, too. That would help you extend the argument a bit and connect with the audience who is reading your post.