No LDR's for me

Today, a young man from a Midwestern state contacted me on a social networking site, asking if I'd like to chat.  Me being a friendly guy who like chatting -- especially with young, good-looking guys -- I said sure. We had a pleasant conversation right up until the point if he asked if I'm okay with long-distance relationships.  I told him that I'm not interested in that sort of thing.

It's hard to have this when you're
separated by multiple state lines.

Personally, I don't get the concept of getting into a long-distance relationship anymore.  I can certainly understand toughing it out if an established and stable relationship has to turn into a long distance relationship, say if one person in the relationship has to go on an extended trip for work or the couple is planning a move, but one has to move first while the other one stays behind to take care of business.  In those and similar situations, it makes sense to try and keep the relationship together until those in love can be reunited.  But notice that even in those circumstances, I would only think this if there was the understanding that the long-distance aspect of the relationship was temporary.

You see, the physical side of a relationship is just too important to me.  If I'm in love and involved with a guy, I expect and want us to be close enough that we can spend a significant amount of time holding hands, cuddling, kissing, and making love.  I expect us to be able to fall asleep laying next to each other -- possibly even holding each other -- if not every night, then multiple times a week.  Yes, there's more to a relationship than physical intimacy and sex.  There's common interests, communication, common goals, mutual support, and several other things.  But the physical intimacy and sex is an important and integral part, too.  And that's something I want and need on a regular basis, not just when the two of us can arrange to get to the same state, let alone the same city.

I think this is especially true when a relationship is just starting.  I've come to realize that the kind of physical closeness -- and yes, even sexual closeness and intimacy -- are important components in the process of building a developing relationship.  So I can't imagine limiting my ability to engage in that process more fully by "dating" someone who is hundreds of miles away from me.

I admit though, that I was more open to the idea when I was in my early twenties, just a bit older than this guy.  I don't know if my own experiences translate to him -- and don't wish to suggest they necessarily do -- but I know that for me, it was a matter of being somewhat desperate to find a guy to love.  I had just come out to myself and my friends and moved back to a very rural area.  There weren't a lot of openly gay guys and even less decent venues to find them anyway.  So I'd often meet guys from other places -- some of them hundreds of miles away -- and would want to get into a long-distance relationship with them.  I figured I didn't have any local prospects and -- to be honest -- I was a little desperate.

Of course, at the time, I also had this pie in the sky notion that if things worked really well, I could just move to wherever the guy in question lived.  This was at a time in my life when, as I've noted before, I was much more willing to quickly uproot myself for a guy.  To the point where with some of the guys, I would've moved if they asked me, as I had already convinced myself (way too soon, I admit in hindsight) that things would definitely work out.

Fortunately, I've grown a bit wiser and a bit more careful since then.  I'm not quite so willing to jump in and commit to something under an initial sense of euphoria, convincing myself that it will last.  These days, I want to build things more slowly and know that's the right thing to do.  So I'm not willing to jump into a long-distance relationship because the ability to build those up is severely limited.  I suppose you could say I'm not that patient.