Between Miles and Silence: The Fragile Arithmetic of Long-Distance Love

They say distance makes the heart grow fonder. In a long-distance relationship, however, what you often feel is not loneliness but helplessness. Desire does not merely ache; it erodes. It thins, almost imperceptibly, dying a thousand quiet deaths, even as you learn—against logic—to savour the pain of longing. Its sharpness. Its intensity. Its peculiar reassurance that something, somewhere, still lives.

In our time, distance is no longer an absolute barrier. Flights are booked with a swipe. Calls collapse continents. Love that is committed—chosen rather than coerced—can find ways to meet. It can resist the easy temptations of proximity, guided instead by pragmatism and by a trust that distance itself slowly, almost reluctantly, forges.

So we plan journeys. We plan stolen days and quiet hotel rooms where time briefly loosens its grip. We try to preserve moments—not merely of passion, but of something steadier and more elevated, something that survives after desire has spent itself. These moments of togetherness are never perfect, never staged.

They arrive compressed between unforgiving schedules, amid deadlines and obligations, sometimes even when we are in the same city but living parallel lives. Still, we plan. We negotiate calendars. We manufacture time through effort and intent. We draw strength from these golden interludes, knowing they will not last, knowing that their brevity is precisely what gives them weight.

Commitment, in such a love, reveals itself less through declarations than through endurance. It shows up in missed flights and rearranged meetings, in financial strain and emotional fatigue. It is the decision to stand by each other not only in moments of tenderness but in seasons of uncertainty—when reassurance is scarce and patience feels like a diminishing resource.

And yet, presence does not always guarantee closeness. When we are finally together, I find myself with someone who barely expresses themselves. I compensate instinctively—allowing, excusing, assuming. I tell myself this is the silence of the uninitiated lover, that the desire and intensity on the other side must surely mirror my own.

Faith, I have learned, can be an act of imagination. And imagination, over time, demands energy.Still, I have chosen this—perhaps stubbornly—as something pure in a world where so much feels rehearsed. Where every emotion is curated for visibility, every word calibrated for virality, every gesture open to doubt. In such a world, imperfect love feels almost radical. Love, after all, is never seamless. Companions are never fully aligned—emotionally, intellectually, even physically.

Barriers persist, often multiplying just when you believe you have learned their contours. Yet you choose someone. You choose them despite the asymmetries, despite the silences, despite the flaws that refuse easy classification.

These are not the flaws of romantic cautionary tales or relationship manuals. They are intimate, idiosyncratic, almost unshareable—the kind that make you believe, irrationally, that this difficulty has been assigned to you alone.

And so we adjust. Because to feel something—even imperfectly—is better than not feeling at all. Better than retreating into safety. Love, after all, is both elixir and poisoned chalice. It offers no protection, only the chance to participate fully in one’s own life.

So here we are—walking, falling, dragging ourselves forward, and then, unexpectedly, running. We survive on brief sprints of joy, moments of clarity that restore momentum.

Perhaps this is what we are chasing all our lives: not permanence, not certainty, but meaning that must be pursued again and again. Because the moment we stop chasing—amid all our material pursuits—we risk losing the very reason we wanted them in the first place.

And yet, if I am honest, I know—somehow, from the entire journey so far—that this very lack of expression is what makes this soul most desirable to me. Not despite it, but because of it.

Desire, after all, is not always drawn to what is given freely; sometimes it is shaped by what resists articulation, by what remains withheld, unfinished, and therefore endlessly pursued.