Long Distance Relationship Advice - Ways to Make It Work

Have you fallen for a guy in another city? Do you find yourself worrying about how to conquer the challenge posed by the miles between you? Are you dying for some solid long-distance relationship advice? If so, read on for some solid advice about how to know if your long-distance relationship can really stand the test of time.
Long distance relationships are a challenge. You don't get to spend time with the person enough to solidify things. It's easy to fall into a fantasy of who they are, because your connection is build on tenuous things, time spent on the phone rather than gazing in each other's eyes. Emails rather than touches. Therefore, it's important to keep the following tips in mind.
Tip #1 - Know Your End-Game
This might be the most important piece of long distance relationship advice. When you're dating someone in town, you can dawdle, take you time, and not worry about where things are going for a while. In a long-distance relationship, you need to know what the long term plan is. How long to do expect to be apart for? How do you expect to end up in the same city?
If you can't answer those questions, you need to either downgrade the relationship to a fling, or find somebody more local.
Tip #2 - Keep Your Social Life Active
A lot of people in a long-distance relationship find themselves sitting by the phone, and they neglect their real-world social life. But phone calls and IMs and skype aren't replacements for real human contact. If you want to avoid putting too much expectation on your long distance relationship, you must keep your local social life active. This also means allowing your partner to have a local social life, too. It can be hard to keep jealousy in check when he tells you about all the fun people he was hanging out with, but you have to trust him if you want him to trust you.
Tip #3 - See Each Other When You Can
This is a very important bit of long distance relationship advice, because it is a good marker of your commitment to the relationship. You need real, in-person face time to know if things have a chance of working. If you aren't making that a priority, then you're never going to know, and you'll be stuck in limbo for a very long time.
Lots of people in long-distance relationships worry about the daily phone call, text, or email, but in the grand scheme of things that is much less important that the time you get to spend together. Be relaxed about the phone calls. Appreciate the time you take with each other.
Lastly, remember that when you do visit each other, one of you is on vacation, so it's not quite the real world.
If you can follow this long distance relationship advice, you'll have a good chance of seeing if your relationship is really the thing for you, or if its just a pleasant diversion until you find someone awesome who's also local. Good luck, and remember to enjoy it! Relationships are supposed to be fun!