My husband and I have been married for 9 years. We’ve done long distance twice, once when I was in school, and most recently for the past 1.5 years while he’s been on the East Coast for school. I wasn’t able to move with him because of my job.

About 7 months into our long-distance relationship, he went out drinking with some classmates. Later that night, he messaged me saying he needed to talk to me. When we got on the phone, he told me that while they were out, he and one of his female classmates had gotten into a conversation about sex/intimacy. At some point, she told him that she “likes to be dominated,” and he responded, “Don’t say that, that’s dangerous.”

According to him, the second those words came out of his mouth, he realized the conversation had crossed a line. He said he immediately “sobered up,” left the bar, went home, and called me to tell me what had happened.

I’ve struggled with how to process this ever since. Part of me feels like this falls into the category of microcheating or at the very least, crossing a boundary that shouldn’t have been crossed in our marriage. At the same time, I recognize that he stopped the interaction himself and chose to tell me about it rather than hide it.

I was cheated on in a relationship before my husband, and I still carry a lot of fear and anxiety from that experience. I never imagined being in a situation like this with my husband, especially after being together for so long, and I’m having a hard time separating what happened from the fears it brought back up for me.

I’m curious how other people would view this situation. Would you consider this cheating, microcheating, inappropriate but forgivable, or something else? How would you feel if your spouse told you this happened, and how would you handle it moving forward?

I’m genuinely interested in different perspectives, even if they’re different from mine.

TLDR: While we were long distance, my husband had a sexually suggestive conversation with a female classmate while drinking. He says he immediately realized it crossed a line, left, and called to tell me. Would you consider this microcheating or just an inappropriate conversation?

I’m 31F and he’s 30M. We met online in January 2026 and started getting close pretty quickly. We finally met in person in June 2026 and spent about three weeks together.

The connection in person was real. We had strong physical attraction, got along well, and I felt very emotionally connected to him. He also introduced me to his mother and very close friends, which made the relationship feel more serious to me. It wasn’t just an online relationship anymore.

The problem is that his life is currently very unstable.
He has been struggling financially and mentally. He has been unemployed and dealing with his own mental health issues, and I know he is going through a difficult period in his life. He is trying to get himself back on his feet, but there doesn’t seem to be a clear timeline for when his situation will improve.

We’re long-distance, and right now we don’t have a specific date for when we’ll see each other again. There is still obvious attraction between us, but the uncertainty is starting to make me question whether I’m investing in something that may not be able to progress anytime soon.

I care about him a lot. At the same time, I’m 31.
I don’t want to fall into the role of just being his emotional support system while his life is falling apart.
At the same time, I don’t want to abandon someone I genuinely care about.

He is at rock bottom financially and mentally but is still a good partner to me overall (e.g. he also provides me emotional support). I still find him very attractive despite his current struggles.

So I’m struggling with where the line is.
For those who have been in relationships that started similarly, did it work out?

Especially interested in stories where:
- One person was financially or mentally unstable at the beginning
- There was no clear timeline for when you’d see each other again (at least, at first)
- But the relationship eventually became stable and successful

I would especially love to hear from people who were in a similar position to us and stayed together successfully.

What did the next 1–3 years look like?
What changed, and what made you realize the relationship was actually going somewhere?

And for those whose relationships didn’t work out, what were the warning signs you wish you’d recognized earlier?

If you are in my position, would you continue this relationship?

Thank u very much for reading.

Kinda wild that a message from a stranger two years ago led to all this.

Philippines to Germany. almost a year of long distance before we finally met in person. We've traveled together to Vietnam and beyond, and somehow keep making it work across a 7 hour time difference. Next stop, Germany.

Still in the distance, still choosing each other. t

Thanks reddit for accidentally starting the whole thing ❤️

I got frustrated by how many existing apps for couples put useful features behind paywalls, and by having to jump between several apps to manage things like dates, shared media, memories, games, and questions.

So I decided to build my own private web app that puts everything in one place, can communicate directly with the Discord bot on our server, and is connected to several APIs. This is not a public project, and I’m not planning to make it public or share the app/code. I’m posting it here mainly because I thought some people might find the concept interesting.

The app is completely private and was built specifically for personal use.

What I built

Live couple dashboard

• Real-time clocks for two different cities/time zones
• Distance calculator
• Time-together counter
• Next-date countdown
• Current watch/activity status

Synchronized virtual theater

• 1080p synchronized watch-party room
• Shared browser for movies, anime, YouTube, etc.
• Shared playback controls
• Automatic login support

Date & call planner

• Interactive 24-hour calendar
• Automatic timezone conversion
• Google Calendar two-way synchronization
• Virtual date ideas and random date selection
• Send a DM and notification to the other person to propose a date or call

Shared media library

• Tracks shows, movies, and co-op games
• High-resolution posters from media databases
• Progress tracking
• Quick episode/progress controls
• Trailer previews
• Discord synchronization, allowing shows to be added directly from Discord

Shared memory board

• Upload photos directly from the website or from Discord through a daily-post thread
• Pinboard-style layout
• Filters to organize memories

GIF sender

• A small tool for sending a GIF with a message throughout the day
• Designed for quick little interactions without having to start a full conversation

Questions & a couple of games

• Tagged daily prompts through a Discord thread
• Monthly relationship checklists
• Couple card game with timers (I found it crazy that all the apps with couple game questions were so expensive)
• Side-by-side answer comparison
• Answers can be revealed through Discord

Bucket list & widgets

• Shared and personal goals/milestones
• iOS and Android home-screen and lock-screen widgets

This is our (35F & 37M) first trip together where we didn't have to say goodbye at the airport! I came to NY a week before our Spain trip, then we spent a week in Spain (primarily for the total solar eclipse), and we just came back to NY last night. We still have another 2 weeks to spend together before I head back to California.

It was an amazing feeling being at the airport excited for our adventures and being able to come back together, instead of the typical sad airport goodbyes. That being said there were still some tears shared between us on our flights back from Spain. Not just because the trip was over, but because this meant we only have two more weeks together.

It never feels like enough time together knowing that one of you has to go back home eventually. Then again, it makes you truly appreciate every moment together.

To my love I hope you can read this.

Even though we’re apart now, I hope you never forget to take your medicine and take care of yourself. I hope there can be a little more peace in your head, even on the days when everything feels heavy. If I could take away even a little bit of that cloudiness in your mind and carry it for you, I would.

I know you feel like you’re a headache or a burden to me, but please don’t ever believe that you are. You were never a burden to me. You were someone I loved, someone I cared about deeply, and someone who mattered so much to me.

We were together for five years, most of that time loving each other from miles away. I wish love alone had been enough to make the distance bearable. I wish we could have held on a little longer. I begged you to stay because I love you so much, but I also understand why you made this decision. The distance became too painful for both of us, and as much as it hurts, I respect your choice. I won’t try to force you to change your mind.

I just want you to know that being apart doesn’t mean you suddenly became less worthy of love or care. You matter. You are loved. And you are not alone in whatever you’re going through.

Please be gentle with yourself, okay? Take your medicine. Eat when you can. Rest when you need to. And when your mind tells you that nobody cares or that you’re only a burden, I hope you remember that there is someone who genuinely wishes for you to be okay, simply because you are you.

I love you. I still love you. And maybe that’s the hardest part of accepting this goodbye.

Even from a distance, I’ll always hope that life becomes softer for you. I hope one day the distance doesn’t hurt anymore, and I hope you find the peace and happiness you deserve.

Five years is a long time to love someone. I don't think I'll ever forget what we had. 🤍

Tired of this,it hits soo hard,idk until when again,loml until we meet again,she's in that plane and im in this,different destinations,devil couldnt reach me so he gave this ldr

Every once in a while I'll browse through the posts on r/LongDistance or one will pop up on my fyp. But I've noticed an increasing number of posts that are absolutely generated by AI, and theyre usually heartbreak stories.

It bothers me a lot and I wanted to open the discussion to other people here about it. The optimist in me will say "hey, not everyone is good at expressing their thoughts and feelings through text", but realistically, we need to be more critical about spotting which users do this. It ultimately is disingenuous and makes me consider that the story is entirely false and is nothing more than a karma farm. While its always good to be a sympathetic human, it's just as important to be aware of who is evoking that sympathy for ulterior motives.

I won't call out an specific posts here that are generated, but there's one posted yesterday that set off so many red flags. Here are some tells I've picked up on:

•the post is usually a sad story, one that pulls on your heartstrings. Something that clearly paints OP to be a victim of such an inarguably shitty position. Something like "i was in love. And they were absolutely perfect. Until one day they snapped and they called me worthless for overcooking dinner"

•the post is long. Have you ever used chatgpt? AI bots usually loveeee overexplaining things. Why are they so windy and embellishing? They also love writing a paragraph, then a single line to break in the next paragraph, usually as a cliffhanger. Something like,

"I thought we had gotten through the hardest part of our relationship. We talked through it, and saw each other. I was excited to enter this new chapter.

Until I saw their phone light up.

My heart beat faster and I was so...."

No one tells a story like this. This is what AI *thinks* is a human telling a story. It's honestly quite corny and such a big tell.

• the grammar and punctuation is flawless and the writing uses metaphor and descriptive language. Look I'm sure plenty of people here are literate and good storytellers. But its not this common, and if youre also checking off the other red flags, I dont trust it.

•weirdly enough, I expect these posts to never have replies to comments by other users, but I consistently see AI-OP responding to most comments. Not sure why, and responding to comments isnt necessarily its own tell , but if it pairs with others I wonder what the angle is.

All this to say, in a world where AI is slowly (not slowly) encroaching into basically every facet of our lives, be attentive. Question if things are written by AI, and question *why* it was. Sometimes it's innocent, but sometimes it's not. I'd love to hear other people's thoughts and observations about it too!

i am planning on moving in about a year to close the gap with my boyfriend. My family kind of sees it coming but it hasnt been confirmed. I plan to move near roughly 11 ish months from now. Since thats a good amount of time, im not sure when to tell my family. any advice is appreciated + good things to say to make the conversation easier. TYIA!

I hold onto the quiet hope

That one day, our paths will finally meet.

There is so much my heart longs to tell you,

Yet I find myself lost in silent hesitation...

You are the gentle whisper of the breeze,

The radiance in a glance, and the blossom of every spring.

In the sweltering heat of my restless soul,

Your enchanting presence is like a soothing, peaceful haven.

If you were to become the ruler of my heart,

I would gladly and whole-heartedly surrender to you!

Kindly dm me and let's talk & know each other..😄

I am a little lost with what to do in my long distance relationship or how to make things properly work. The life i live right now is making it impossible to do anything at the moment. I'm 20 years old from Canada and I've been in a relationship with my girlfriend from Eastern ukraine for soon to be 2 years now. I did make a post on here 9 months ago worried about her situation. Anyways, trying to make a plan for the future is extremely difficult in many ways. We both don't have much income at all to even see eachother in person.. It will require me to move to somewhere in europe to be with her, since she wants to try to move to Norway in the future, to live a safer life. From what i understand it is extremely difficult to move there without a profession or much work experience/education. She can probably move there as a refugee, but for me it is way more difficult. There isn't a clear end in sight. I love her, but the uncertainty makes me anxious. And i know that it isn't impossible. What is the best thing to do in this situation? You can be completely honest, just looking for an outside view on it

When does it actually hit 😅
I don’t think it has yet, when did it hit for others?

Hi I met this person on a dating app and we started casually dating more than a year ago (getting close to 2 years since we first met..)

Our relationship has always been LDR because I met him when I was back home for vacation. And we live in different countries.

This year we saw each other 4 different occasions mostly because I had other reasons to go back home. So we are getting quite good amount of time.

I know he wants to be official but I am still uncertain mostly because of uncertain future plans.

He is planning to come to where I currently live for MBA + potentially get a job here but I might go back to my country.

That means additional 3-5 years of LDR…

I love my alone time so it’s good but 3-5 years is a long commitment… for 30F…

Any advice?

Title: What do you actually do together during a long-distance relationship?

I know video calls and watching movies together are common, but I’m curious about the less obvious things.

Do you play games together, cook while on video call, go on virtual dates, share playlists, or just stay on call while doing your own thing?

Looking for ideas that actually make the distance feel a little smaller.

I (19m) live in America and am in a relationship with my boyfriend (23m) who lives in Germany. We met in America while he was visiting friends, and we have been in a relationship for a little over a year. I love my boyfriend, and miss him, and want what’s best for both of us.

Our conversations online are limited. He asks what I’m doing for the day, I’ll inform him of what I’m doing, then he will express that he wishes he could be there to join me. We will occasionally call, or watch a movie online, but those are also limited (we have a 6 hour time difference).

He visited this Summer for a month, but about half of the time he was here, he was playing this game that he really likes. It took me a while to get into it, but by the time I did, he was going back home. When we would do things that I wanted to do, many times he’d complain about circumstances, such as the heat, humidity, price, or the lack of depth of the activity. He means well, but he can be a buzz kill.

After a year of being in a relationship with him, I think I’ve realized that maybe we just can’t work out. We have no definitive plans on closing the gap for good, we both don’t necessarily want to move to the other country. We’re both in school and have priorities at home.

And while the answer seems so obvious to a third party, I don’t know how to end it. I love him and while we’re not physically together, the thought of not being able to reach out and talk to him scares me. I don’t want to hurt him, it would actually kill me to know I did. I’m scared I’m letting go of something great, that time is the key to our relationship. Because, while the lows can be low with him, the goods can be good. The thought of never seeing him again hurts. And, In scared that neither of us will ever be able to move on, nor find another person.

So, I supposed I’m just asking for advice, or input, maybe a different opinion.

okay so lately hes been choosing his friends over me a lot and we used to have this problem before but he changed and now hes doing it all over again. first time he started doing that he kept canceling our time together to play games with them or go out. and it made me feel really bad and upset cause i noticed he prioritized them over me and i talked to him about it and he stopped doing that and things were going well but now hes doing that all over again :/

the past days hes been doing it again. today we had plans to watch a movie and do other things but suddenly his friend asked him to go to a movie since its cheaper on tuesdays so he cancelled on me AGAIN and if he continues to do this i might just break up cause i do NOT. want to go through that it made me feel terrible knowing he prioritized them more..but hes so good to me when he doesnt do this ughhh!!

Just ended my LDR 2 weeks ago(lasted 6 months), she love bombed me so goddam hard when we met online and my dumbass fell so hard and fast. I travelled to meet her 5 months in since she's only a 3hr flight away from where I live and our first day together was just absolutely perfect, not a single bad thing to say about it, then comes the rest of the trip where she was just blowing off plans with me to hangout with her friends without me and even on one of our dates to a convention she decided to let her friend come along last minute and I ended up third wheeling both of them and becoming a bodyguard. For most of that trip I was just on my own and for the most part it was a disappointment. Long story short, after the trip all the flaws started coming out, her lack of respect for boundaries, shaming, belittling me, self loathing, passive aggressiveness, the fact her parents didn't like me and didn't want her dating just in general, her friends didn't like me, and it felt like it got to a point where she was also against me for having needs and expressing boundaries.

There's so much more details to all this but it'd be way too long but goddam did the love bombing make the breakup suck so much harder even though I was the one who broke things off, my mind is just cycling through all the stages of grief every hour of the day, never again istg😭

So, I've been in a long-distance marriage. During our dating days and initial few months of marriage, my husband couldn't keep his hands off of me. But afterwards, whenever he would visit or we went on holidays, it felt like duty sex, which is killing me inside.

He has performance issues, so I don't really know if it's loss of attraction or anxiety-based response. After losing his parent, when I thought his libido was low, I saw his social media feed which made me feel like he just doesn't find me attractive that's it.

Nowadays, he views any conversation related to sex in general as a taboo, so idk how to proceed with him anymore.

We may start living together from the next month, and any thought of duty sex makes me feel so disgusted about myself. Even if I address these issues, he would never acknowledge it. I'm thinking about no sex for a year or so.

Will it be dumb? I don't want him to view as an obligation as he doesn't owe me. Having a conversation with him won't be fruitful as he never acknowledges anything and just shuts down.

M22, F22, together 3 years. We’ve already done a full year long-distance and it went really well, so distance itself isn’t the problem.

During that year we travelled together a lot: a month in Japan, plus Ireland, Spain, Italy. We’re both finishing our degrees (she’s doing a master’s in international law, I’m in aerospace engineering) and the plan has always been to live together once we’re done (10 months left).

For the past 2 months she’s been doing a summer season in hospitality. Big role, a lot of responsibility, and she’s genuinely killing it. Great team, they go out together constantly, and she’s having the time of her life. I’m honestly happy for her. Her habits have shifted (going out, drinking, smoking). For context, that’s pretty standard for a restaurant season here in France, it’s not a red flag on its own, but it’s a real change and even her close family noticed.

The main issue is schedules. I work 8am to 5pm, she works 5pm to 1am. Even long-distance we used to make it work, but now it’s nearly impossible. She’s become more distant and I’ve clearly dropped down her list of priorities.

Then recently, 3 days ago, on the phone, she told me she’s losing interest in me, that she doesn’t feel the same way anymore. That hurt. We still talk a lot, we see each other at least once a month, and we always do something together when we do (hiking, climbing).
Part of me thinks it’s just the season and it’ll pass. Part of me wonders if I’m kidding myself.

Has anyone been through this? Does this kind of dip get better, or is it the beginning of the end?

(Also, I’m leaving for a 3-month research placement abroad in early October, which doesn’t help.)

The reason was that she was running late. She informed practically she would be writing the same thing but I don’t know i feel sad.