Keeping a long distance relationship alive with your girlfriend is a difficult thing to do. Your girlfriend can suddenly lose interest and pull away from you at any moment because you’re so far away.
This article will show you exactly what you need to do to keep your long distance relationship alive. But first, let’s kick things off by taking a look at an email I answered from a reader experiencing a long distance relationship problem of his own.
Hi John,
Thanks for reaching out. Managing a long distance relationship is never easy, please see my comments to your email in bold brackets below:
My girlfriend and I have been dating for 3 years. She is 30 and I am 37. We were both full time professional track and field athletes prior to retiring from competitive athletics, which happened shortly after we met. For the first two years, we lived together in various settings and just in the last few months, I took a job in NYC where her family lives and we got an apartment together. Shortly after we signed the lease, she took a job on the other side of the country. Although I know she really wanted this job, as a result of me moving and her taking it, I was confused, hurt and was passive aggressive at times over the month before she left mostly because the decision was not made by the both of us, as mine was.
Your girlfriend put you in a difficult situation here. You moved to be with her, then she did a complete 180 and decides that she’s going to move to the other side of the country. In this situation, it’s difficult to stay cool and not be hurt, even if the job is one that she wanted. However, in order to keep your girlfriend attracted to you it’s important to get into a position where she is chasing after you and more invested in you more than you are in her. So, in your situation where your girlfriend has actually decided to leave and move across the country you have to let her go and “counter intuitively” it works best if you encourage her to leave and take the job. The reason why this works from an attraction perspective is that by doing this you’re sub-communicating to your girlfriend that you can live your life happily enough without her and that you’re not concerned about if she leaves. This will make her confused and put her into a state of doubt and uncertainty. This state of uncertainty has been scientifically proven to increase a woman’s attraction for a man through increased anxiety (University of Virginia).
She tried to tell me that I was being too passive aggressive but I was not able to see my faults because of my own pain. She also was unable to understand why I was upset. Shortly after she left for her job I realized my faults and did my best to apologize. I texted her more than I should have, sent flowers and apologized a lot. At the time, she was having no part of it, as the texting all but stopped and the “I love you’s” did too. I was ignored at times as I know she did not want to deal with our relationship during this time.
In this case you were chasing your girlfriend, which is always a mistake. As a professional athlete you’re going to be physically superior to 95% of all other men in this world. This is both a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because a lot of women will find you attractive. It’s a curse because if you don’t act in a strong and dominant way which is how most women will expect you to act based on your appearance then women will lost attraction fast. Women will also test you a lot more than most guys because they’ll want to ensure that your physical strength and appearance is not just superficial but also congruent with real mental strength. This means you must always maintain the three CCC’s which are (1) Control – of yourself and no chasing (2) Confidence and (3) be a Challenge – make your girlfriend work for your approval.
Luckily we had a month together before she took off full time. The first few days she was back were very hot and cold, as she told me she was still angry with me, but over the next week or so, she started to warm up and at times it was like I had my girlfriend back. That being said, it is obvious that she is very guarded, albeit the moments of vulnerability.
Since leaving, we have texted a few times a day and I am letting her initiate. The only time I initiate is if I text her I love you in the morning before work.
You’re doing a great job making sure that she initiates the texts, however, I would cut out the “I love you” messages altogether. I know it’s a habit and it’s also what you think she wants to hear. And yes, superficially on the surface it is, but deep down in your girlfriend’s female core she won’t respond to this and her attraction for you won’t increase or be sustained this way. It’s better to put her into a state of uncertainty while she is away from you. That way she will be thinking about you and the state of your relationship—this will do more for your cause than a 1000 roses and romantic dinners. If a woman is comfortable and has certainty in a relationship, that’s when trouble sets in and they start looking at other possibilities and options. You will want to make sure that your girlfriend sees you as the higher value person in the relationship—a man that has options and who she has to work hard to keep in her life. From a biological perspective, a man should always be the higher value person in the relationship (even if this is value is just perceived value).
In her mind, she was hurt and is slowly starting to trust that I will not hurt her again. I am aware that my feelings matter, too, and I am hoping that this distance will help her realize that both her and I were at fault. I am also aware, that her attraction is most likely fairly low. I realize the distance makes this significantly harder, but what should be my course of action for the next 12 months? I want to be supportive and have no intentions of playing games but I also have to protect myself, hence why I’ve decided to reach out. Prior to leaving she told me that she knows this is selfish but that she loves me and can’t wait to start our lives together when she gets back. She also discussed engagement and kids, which although nice, was horribly confusing and contradictory to her actions. It’s as if she wants to have her cake and eat it too.
Don’t worry about upsetting your girlfriend, this is a state that you want your girlfriend to get into. You want her to cry and be upset over you sometimes (as callous as this might sound). If your girlfriend gets upset over you and the relationship that means she is investing her emotions into the relationship and will be less likely to leave you. According to a woman’s reasoning she will think that because she is crying and upset over you then she must love you. She told you that she loves you and can’t wait to start her life with you together when she gets back, however, a woman’s words only hold truth in the moment when she speaks them. And as one famous proverb says, “believe what you see and lay aside what you hear.” In the case of your girlfriend her action was to leave and move across the country. This indicates, as you rightly pointed out, that her attraction at present is low; however, with the right strategy which I’ll outline below it is very easy to raise your girlfriend’s attraction for you and keep her interested over the next 12 months.
Keeping A Long Distance Relationship Alive
One of the great fears that all people have when entering into a long distance relationship is whether or not our partner will lose attraction for us and get lonely and start seeking out love and companionship from a man who she can physically see on a daily basis.
This is a completely understandable and rational fear because if we don’t handle things the right way when we enter into a long distance relationship it’s very easy for things to fall apart and our girlfriend to lose interest in sustaining the relationship.
In order to keep a long distance relationship alive and the fires of love burning strong, it’s important to use the right mindset and approach.
Remember, dating your girlfriend when she is physically close and present is different to dating your girlfriend when you are in a long distance relationship with her.
One of the best ways to make a long distance relationship work with your girlfriend is to make her think about you and want you even when you’re not around.
For this to happen you need to make sure that your girlfriend is the one who is chasing you and coming after you.
Anxiety & Uncertainty Fuel Attraction
Nothing lights the flames of attraction and desire more strongly than anxiety and uncertainty in the female brain. It doesn’t feel like the right thing to do, but acting indifferent, making your girlfriend text you first and holding back on expressions of love and devotion will keep a woman fixated on you.
If you’re always available and ready to speak to her and see her at the drop of a hat, a woman will slowly but surely start to lose attraction for you.
There’s a good reason that the divorce rate currently hovers around the 50% mark. The reason for this is that society has taught men to chase women and tell women what they want to hear. Whereas scientific research says the exact opposite.
Now I know how difficult it is to actually pull away from your girlfriend when she pulls away from you. It’s hard to make her chase you and hold the course. It’s also hard to trust that this will actually work. That’s why I always like to include valid scientific research to back up what I say.
Scarcity Will Make You More Desirable
One of the cornerstones of a successful long distance relationship is to be the best and most desirable man in your girlfriend’s life, even when you’re not with her.
It doesn’t matter how great you look, what you’ve achieved and how successful you are—if you don’t have the right mindset when dealing with your girlfriend then it’s going to be hard to sustain a long distance relationship with your girlfriend and make it work.
Part of a successful long distance mindset is not investing too much time talking on the phone and texting. This also includes other subtle nuances like making sure that your girlfriend is the one reaching out to you first.
Now what if you are the one who is currently doing all the chasing, pursuing and caring in the relationship? That’s nothing that a little withdrawal and scarcity won’t fix.
Back in 1975, researchers Worchel, Lee and Adewole wanted to know if women would value identical cookies in two identical glass jars the same way.
The setup for the experiment was simple: one jar held 10 cookies and the other jar held just two cookies. Now the women were asked to rate which cookies they thought were better and more valuable.
The results of the experiment showed that women valued the cookies in the jar with only two left (remember that the cookies are also absolutely identical).
The results of this experiment are incredibly important. It shows that the idea of scarcity directly impacts on how valuable we think something is. This is the same reason why diamonds are so valuable.
Now if you’re in a long distance relationship, it’s important to understand and use the scarcity principle to your advantage. This is best achieved by making yourself less available. It really is that simple.
I’ve seen many guys rescue their long distance relationships by completely backing off and acting in an almost indifferent manner. This has the double effect of making a woman feel anxious (which increases attraction and will also help to refocus her brain back onto her partner); a woman will also feel like their partner is much more valuable if their partner becomes more scarce.
How To Keep Your Girlfriend In A Long Distance Relationship
If scientific research and my own experience dealing with thousands of clients over the years is anything to go by, then it’s incredibly important to use the right strategy in a long distance relationship. This shouldn’t be viewed as game playing or manipulation, but rather tuning into the right mindset that actually attracts and makes your girlfriend come to you.
In all relationship, especially long distance relationships, it’s important to put yourself first as a man. Society and culture will tell you that this is the wrong way to be and that it’s not gentlemanly behavior; however, ignore this truth at your own peril: women don’t respond to culture and society, they respond to biology and evolution. And biology, for better or worse, has wired women to be attracted to men who are strong, bold and selfish.
This is because men who are self-interested and bold are much more likely to acquire more resources and be successful in life; therefore, women have been wired to seek out men with these traits. This has been backed up by research conducted at the University of Amsterdam.
It’s also a truth that being hard to get is a much more effective strategy in a long distance relationship than being too available (European Journal of Personality). Text and pursue your girlfriend too much and you’ll suffocate the life out of your relationship.
It takes enormous self-confidence to date women who are incredibly beautiful and desirable because these women always have lots of dating options. Fortunately for you most men will not be up to the task of dating women like your girlfriend because their value won’t be perceived as high enough.
Remember, it takes strength to walk away from a woman, this is the same strength that women are attracted to. When you can date an incredibly beautiful woman and be strong enough to let her walk away from you without trying to stop her, you will have then developed the perfect mindset and strength needed to attract and date the most desirable women in this world–you will also have your girlfriend chasing after you, desperate to see you again and be in your presence.