I always told myself anyone in a long-distance relationship is wasting their time and I would never be caught dead in one. Yet here I am, in a long-distance relationship. It’s almost exactly what I was afraid it would be.

To put it simply, a person in a long-distance relationship is single yet has none of the freedoms that go along with it. Initially, I thought this was going to be kind of nice. I thought it might be fun to spend four months watching my friends strike out with women instead of me for a change. The fun of being “that guy” wears off pretty fast. Eventually you start feeling as respectable as a preteen girl saving herself for Justin Bieber.

Then there’s Skype, which is the only way she and I can communicate, and it’s fine. My friend even told me some of the physical aspects of a relationship (the part that is nonexistent) can be substituted with this video technology. I said, “Heck, why not give it a whirl?” Well, I don’t know exactly how it’s supposed to work and neither did she for that matter. We gave it a go-around, and it was weird. Maybe we just don’t have the technological prowess others have, which I can live with.

Other than that, you’re constantly jealous. Imagination is a powerful thing, especially when it comes to imagining your girlfriend out at some Euro-house dance club until the early hours of the morning being hit on by aggressive foreign guys with too much chest hair. No matter how much you trust her, you can only keep out the whiney, insecure, petty, jealous boyfriend you always dreaded becoming for so long. Sadly, it becomes inevitable.

You try to reason it out, saying it isn’t that bad, but you’ll lose that argument. You can’t convince

yourself you’re satisfied with a long-distance relationship. In fact, they’re pretty miserable. Looking at a long-distance relationship objectively, they don’t make too much sense. The only reassurance and way to make sense of it all is to realize being with that person is worth whatever it takes (four months in our case) and to risk losing them would be infinitely worse. I told myself any guy in a long-distance relationship was a sap and then I became one. I’m fine with that.

— Hutton Marshall is an interdisciplinary studies junior.