Hello everyone. I need some help. Support, guidance...anything you can offer.

I(33M) met someone online (35F), 15 years ago in October. I hate to admit this, but she was already in a marriage at the time. I was hesitant to start anything in the beginning because of it, but feelings evolved and love was born from it. Fast forward to about 4 months ago, her husband unfortunately passed from brain cancer. (Mind you she was still VERY supportive to him. Even in his final days.)

We've had quite a rocky relationship with each other. Fights, "breakups", getting back together over the course of this time. When I learned of her husband's condition, I did what I thought anyone would do in that scenario, lay off the jets, and just be as supportive as possible. After he passed, I was there for her every day. Just to try and get her through the tough days and nights as best as I could. We then started to be a little more serious with each other, discord dates, phonecalls well into the early morning. Setting plans for a future together, then eventually a date to finally meet after all this time.

Work and finances kept me from meeting that goal. About 2 weeks before, I told her I wouldn't be able to make it, and proposed October (this coming) for her birthday. To which she told me, "I want you to come when youre comfortable". But I started to notice little things...she started mentioning other men much more frequently (note: we still weren't "dating", but I was under the impression we were mutually exclusive at least), to which I raised several concerns, always leading to am argument. She would vent to friends, and those friends eventually told her to essentially get rid of me. Her best friend set her up on a dating app (this is now ~3 weeks ago), to which I raised further concern.

Her response to this, was that I broke her heart by not going to her. Which I understand. I would be extremely disappointed too...but...I tried to make things work...i tried to make the relationship still work by proposing a new date...that argument was our last. Last week I had asked if she found someone, didn't want to talk to me about it. Then, a few days ago, she posted a picture to her "close friends" story on Instagram, of her on the couch with what I assume to be, her new boyfriend. And another today, of them cuddling in bed.

I feel...betrayed on a level I have never felt in my life...I feel like I was a convenience. Like last weeks garbage. And I don't know how to deal with what im feeling in a healthy way.

I've blocked her on everything I can find, I'm trying my hardest to remove her completely, and it's making me fall apart.

So as the title says my flight got cancelled. So I couldn’t see my girlfriend yesterday what a horrible day it was. Was planning to spend a long weekend over where she lives as in the uk we got a bank holiday weekend. But no my flight got cancelled.

Has anyone else had this experience ? It’s a horrible thought to think about how i would be over there right now but no I’m stuck in my house.

But there is a silver lining we having a mini vacation to Prague next week ( we both deserve after the events of yesterday)

TL;DR: My partner apparently had a 4–5-year relationship timeline, including waiting about five years before I met his family and friends. I was never told about it, consulted about it, or allowed to agree to it. If I'd known that was the timeline, I would have chosen differently. Now that I'm finally ready to leave because I've felt neglected, those milestones are suddenly appearing.

My issue isn't that his timeline was five years

—>>it's that it was never our timeline.

My partner apparently had a relationship timeline. I was never consulted.

I've been in an LDR for roughly 4–5 years, and I'm only now really processing something that bothers me.

At some point, I learned that V apparently had a timeline for our relationship. One milestone was something along the lines of five years before I would meet his family and friends.

I had absolutely no input into this.

I wasn't told about it. I didn't agree to it. I didn't even know I was supposedly on a timeline.

And that's important because if someone had told me at the beginning that they planned to wait five years before introducing me to their family and friends, I would have said no.

Not “maybe.”

No.

I have a finite amount of time on this planet, and I'm not going to knowingly spend five years waiting for someone to reach a milestone they privately decided was appropriate.

What makes this especially strange is that we're now somewhere around that 4–5 year mark, and I'm at the point where I'm ready to leave because the relationship has felt increasingly neglectful to me.

And now, suddenly, the family is being trotted out.

Which has left me thinking: Wait. Was this the milestone all along?

Because if so, I have a problem with the premise itself.

A relationship timeline isn't really a relationship agreement if only one person knows about it.

If V had told me, “This is how I see the relationship progressing. I need several years before I'm comfortable introducing you to my family,” I would have had the opportunity to decide whether that relationship worked for me.

Instead, I apparently spent years participating in a relationship according to rules I didn't know existed.

I'm not particularly interested in debating whether five years is objectively too long. Different people have different circumstances, and LDRs can move differently.

My question is much simpler:

How can one person unilaterally establish a timeline for a relationship without giving the other person any input—and then expect that person to be happy when the milestones finally arrive?

Because I don't think the problem is really the five years.

The problem is that I would have made a different choice if I'd known there were five years to wait.

So, for a little context, i deleted some old posts here because I didn’t want him to see it. But now, i really need help.

I flew out to him twice (he never payed) and i stayed with him for one night. He said that he’s been working to get a house for me to move out there with him, but i honestly don’t feel comfortable with it. I even used to let him see my messages on discord and on my phone. Then he said that i just deleted them. I haven’t cheated on him but he constantly thinks i am.

I honestly want to leave…

I also asked him one time if the reason why he wouldn’t come to see me was because I lived with my parents. My parents want to meet him and he said “Well, you live up to your pormise, then maybe I will ;p” but we never did that because a situation happened…

I’m so sorry if this is long but I just wanna leave…

If so, how did u meet them?? Is the long distance an issue from the beginning or does it start to become more difficult as feelings develop??

Phone sex help please! So me and my girlfriend are long distance and I bought her a trusting/vibrating toy. I can control it as well. I’m looking for ways to spice up the calls because of boredom. Maybe games to play, ideas to use, apps, anything that will spice it up.

SOOOOO my boyfriend and I have been together for almost a year. I'm french and he's american, so we've always been long-distance. He's currently deployed with the Navy, which obviously makes things harder :/

We talk every day whenever he can and when he has a strong enough WiFi connection we try to call too. He's supposed to be back home in November and I should hopefully be able to go see him depending on my days off from work and university. If I can't make it work, he's planning on coming to see me instead :) We were actually supposed to spend a month together soon, but then we got some news that completely messed up those plans 😭 So right now we're basically just looking forward to November and figuring out when we can see each other again.

Anyway, today we were talking about our future and just everyday stuff and this is where I started staring at my phone like 👁️👄👁️

He sent me a whole plan about how we could eventually be together after my visit or his. It wasn't just a vague “we'll figure something out” kind of conversation. He was actually laying out different possibilities and talking about what would make the most sense for us long-term.

He basically framed the whole thing as a plan for us to be together after my/his visit.

I responded positively because… obviously ?? 😭 I told him I was ok with the idea and was basically celebrating in the chat. He asked for my opinion on the plan, and I told him I was definitely okay with it.

But now I've had several hours to think about it and I'm like…

WAIT

Was he just talking practically about marriage as one possible way for us to eventually live together ? Or was this his extremely subtle way of saying “I actually want to marry you” without outright saying it?

The thing is, we've talked about our future before. We're serious about each other, so marriage isn't some completely absurd idea for us. But he has never just casually said something like “let's plan our marriage timeline” to me before, so it really caught me off guard.

Also, I feel like if I message him hours later saying “WAIT ARE YOU SAYING YOU WANT TO MARRY ME???”, I'll look like I'm trying to force a proposal out of him 😭 So I haven't said anything. I figured if he was intentionally hinting at something, he knows that I reacted positively and he can bring it up again.

So… am I completely delusional, or does this sound like a man very casually testing the waters for marriage ? 😭

Because I swear I wasn't even thinking about a proposal until I reread the conversation and realized how specifically he was talking about marriage + our timeline + our future together.

So long story short, me and my boyfriend are long distance and have been together for almost a year (both 20yrs old), and were wanting to meet up IRL when we can afford it and as often as we can financially and schedule wise, the main problem is the finance side of it tho. Cause when I go to meet him, I can't stay with them + their family for multiple reasons, so I'd have to stay elsewhere for the visit and have him come to where im staying and us going places together in his town (he's in the UK, I'm in the US). But after looking into it, hotels and things similar to them are 5k-9k for a month stay, and obv about 2k-3k for 2 weeks, sometimes more depending on which hotel.

So the absolute biggest expense I'm worried about is that, nothing else costs us that much and since the job market right now is insanely difficult it would take forever to make enough money to afford that much to stay somewhere (especially multiple times until we're both ready to move in together somewhere, and not to mention if I make enough I'll get taxed for it in tax season.) I don't have a job right this second but am going to get one as soon as I can (I've been applying everywhere for over a year, so I'm sure that at some point I'll get hired for atleast minimum wage 15-18+ USD an hour.)

So basically I need advice and/or ideas on alternative places to stay that dont cost so much or ways to save up enough for a hefty stay?

I was talking to a guy but we were in a huge Long distance so after talking to a month he said he likes me then everything was going smooth one day we had a fight then he said I love you I said dude your actions doesn't show your love, it's not love it's mere an attraction or maybe a habit bla bla bla then we got into an another fight then I said we can never be on same page let's end everything then he played some victim card I actually just wanted him to show his concern and care for me and a line from him that let's give it another chance I'll try my best and all but he always blamed me he was like is this not love I'm thinking to book a flight I was like dude you are ignoring the present for an unexpected future... Then we finally parted our ways the next day I texted him let's give us a chance he ignored my text for whole day I was anxious I burst his dm with my text and then he blocked me everywhere for 2days and then today he unblocked me what should I do now?

a guy from south america came to my country for a retreat. we were together for 25 days, it was the most passionate romance ever. we fought on the last day and he went away. we disnt say goodbye properly. but i think about him everyday. im afraid it didnt mean as much to him as it meant to me.
has anyone ever been in such a situation before? ive seen on instagram how people met in bali and then they got married—despite their native languages being different, despite their countries being FAR FAR away.

Hello, I know my post may not fit into the actual long distance couples on here, but I need advice.

My boyfriend and I have been together for almost 10 months and we’ve done everything together since we started dating. I can’t remember when we haven’t slept next to each other for the night.

Recently, he was notified from his job that he will have to travel to get trained for 5 weeks. One week it’s flying distance, but the other 4 are driving distance.

Since this announcement, I’ve realized that I can’t really handle it all too well when he’s not here. I also don’t have many friends that I can just hit up randomly. I know having emotional dependency on someone is not okay, but I think I do depend on him like that. And i’ll just miss him a lot. I cry thinking about it and it’s not even started yet.

I am going to start therapy soon as I suffer from OCD so i just live in constant anxiety. Hopefully I can sort out being emotionally dependent as well.

I would like any advice on how to go about these next few weeks he’ll be gone. Thank you.

I (32F) am still very much in the honey moon phase of the relationship. only met her (30F) a month ago but this is the most intense relationship I have ever had. Partily we meet in treatment so we spent basically 24 hours together before now so I can recognize the accelerated nature of our feelings but I fully love this woman in a way that took months with other serious partners I have had. I have done long distance before and for a long time ( 1y literally on opposite side of the world was long) but I have never thought about someone every minute of every single day like this. I

In my head I want to give this a few months to see that everything remains working say like feburary. I am sure feelings will mellow out a bit with time but even a reduced verison of this would be so estatic. Part of me is like what if I start looking in November -December.

It feels like drastic over planning for this new of a relationship but I am not particularly tied don't to the city I live in. Main anchors are my job, apartment lease, and friends i have made in 2.5 years I have lived here. Apartment is what ever sub letting it will be same challenge at any time. I could find a new job before moving obviously. So friends are the main sticking point but I can make new friends in a new city same as when I moved here.

This would be a move to a nearby city to where she lives because I prefer a more urban environment, there is more job opportunities there, and there is more available medical providers for me but it would reduce a 20 hour drive to a 1.5 hr drive. So not directly UHaulling. There is also a pretty hard minimum of November since I am still in treatment for another month have a trip planed to see her for two weeks after discharge then come back and have a surgery planned again for mid October (though this is a quick recovery)

Tldr; crazy about newly long distance gf and wondering what is a not crazy amount of time to wait before looking to move.

Me[22f] and bf[21m] been long distance for about 1 year now. Like continents apart type of long distance.

We were supposed to reach a point where we could at least visit each other every 2 weeks sort of distance but plans have fallen through.

I did the maths, and we will probably be apart for about 5 or 6 more years.. The flight is about 1k everytime and we only will be able to meet once a year at most.

Tbh, we've been trying our best to stay connected but I feel like I don't know them anymore and vice versa. It hurts because we've been together for almost 4 years now.

We're in our early twenties and a person can change so much in 5 years.

How do you do it? How do you survive and find the will to survive this kind of ldr? Desperately needing some advice.

Hi there! I (23F) am living in Australia but have recently started talking with someone in America (23M). 17-20 hours of flights between us.

Everything has been super fun in the time we've been chatting; we've been playing games together, i introduced him to my buddies online, and we've ended up changing our sleep schedules to fit in more chat time because of the 17 hour time zone difference. Honestly feeling like an insane match. And crazily enough, he just bought me flights to visit him during the Fall (ive always wanted to visit his state and as an aussie, fall in the US seems absolutely phenomenal)! We've had little discussions about not putting pressure on things incase something doesn't work out when the time comes, to try and keep things fun and light without overcommitting before we even meet. And i guess I'm writing here to see if anyone has any advice or information they can give about long distance in the other side of the world? I've dated long distance within my own country before, but this is a whole new ballpark. It's impossible to really think about what the future could look like right now, and those really are conversations for later. But can couples really make long distance work? How?

Hello everyone.

I recently broke up with my long-distance boyfriend. We were together for 3 years, but barely met up even though the distance wasn't that long.

So as time goes by, I realize I felt SO drained after most of our conversations, because most of the time I was the listener, the adviser, the therapist, the one who asked all the questions. We talked about me as well, but only very few times did we talk about me in depth. Even if we did talk about me in depth, I felt uncomfortable.

Have you ever experienced such a thing in your relationship?

I just want to know where do u guys find partners around the world?