We've been long-distance for 6 years and have learned a lot about our marriage, including that distance doesn't work for us

• My husband and I have been long-distance for the majority of our marriage.
• We've learned a lot about ourselves and each other.

My husband and I have been long-distance for six of the seven years we have been married. It's been difficult, but we tried to make it work for financial reasons. While we now know it will not work for us long-term, the experience has taught us much about ourselves and each other.

When we got married, I wanted to be a professor. Such jobs are scarce, and it's normal for married academic couples to live at great distances from each other, even in different countries or on different continents. I applied around the world for both K-12 teaching positions and academic jobs. I counted myself lucky when I landed a K-12 job in Miami, only about a two-and-a-half-hour drive across Florida from Fort Myers, where my husband and I had been living together. I moved there after accepting the role, and he stayed put.

I fell in love with K-12 teaching. My husband applied to jobs in Miami, too, but wasn't getting offers of the caliber he wanted. After we had been long-distance for a year and a half, he moved to North Carolina for a job he felt was a step forward in his career. Almost immediately afterward, the pandemic began, at which point we agreed it would be foolish for me to leave my job to move with him.

Around that time, he got into Harvard Business School's MBA program, but the school deferred his start date for two years because of the pandemic. He decided to continue working in North Carolina during that time. My salary and benefits are about as good as I could hope for as a teacher, so at the time, we both agreed that I should only leave my job if I could get something even better. We didn't want to give up the cushy job I had for something worse, knowing that I would be the only one of us earning money during his full-time MBA program down the road. I never did find a better job, so we remained long-distance for the full four years.

He has now graduated and accepted a job at an office in Miami. He has six months of training in Latin America for the job, and then we will finally be reunited under the same roof.

Throughout the years, my husband and I have managed to survive the distance because we have adhered to a few guidelines in our decision-making at every step of our relationship so far.

Getting to know your own needs is important

It's important to have an understanding of your own needs and to communicate those with your significant other. A big part of the reason we have been long-distance for so long is that I misunderstood myself as someone who wanted to prioritize my work over my relationship until a few years into the separation.

Once I realized I wanted to prioritize the relationship more, I felt we were stuck with the distance because my husband was in grad school and not earning any money. If I had understood myself before the same way I do now, I never would have agreed to a probable four more years of long-distance back in 2020. Instead, I would have taken the chance of getting a job with a worse salary and benefits in North Carolina for the sake of being together. Knowing myself better now has enabled me to communicate to my husband that we must come together under the same roof for good in 2025 after his training.

Learning about your partners needs is important, too

My husband, unlike me, prioritizes work over relationships and doesn't feel he needs physical proximity to me to demonstrate his care. We have visited each other regularly over the six-year period of distance, which has been sufficient for him. It took time to understand that this characteristic does not reflect apathy, but rather a different style of showing and receiving affection than I have.

For his part, he listened to me when I told him I realized that I do require more frequent physical proximity, which is why he applied for jobs in Miami post-MBA as opposed to other cities where there are more opportunities in his field.

Expect that there is always going to be give-and-take

It's essential to understand your own needs and those of your partner, and then cultivate a lifestyle that strikes a balance between them. For many couples, that includes living together; for others, it does not. What's important is to never stop mutually respecting each other and adjusting your lifestyle as a couple to reflect your evolving needs as you grow older. Do this, and you have a good chance of success.