The second choice

France, morning

I went out with three girls yesterday. Very nice people, I never met two of them before. Of course, one is leaving next week, one in a week and one at the end of the month. Our lives of people moving continuously around the world..... when you find someone with whom you would get along well, they are moving to another place.

And this goes for romantic relationships too. It takes sometimes to build something and then with the gypsy kind of life that we have, when the relationship gets strong enough and you are deeply in love for each other Puff! it is time to move. And distance relationships are painful. I don't know how people manage them. I had a relationship when I moved to Germany and it soon became a distance relationship and the distance was killing me and it was very painful. It was not fun for anyone at the end.

Then I had a very long distance relationship with the olandesino. We managed for very long time, across the world, even with an Ocean in between. But I don't know how many times in the relationship I felt heart broken, I felt that I couldn't take anymore, I felt that I would leave my job, my dreams just to be with him. I don't know how many hours I spent on skype just to talk to him and see him with the web cam. I don't know how many hours I stared at the computer screen wondering why I had to be so far from him, why we couldn't find a job in the same place, why we had to keep moving all the time, why we have to have only short contracts or short-term fellowships that wouldn't allow us to make any plan.

Distance relationships for me could work only if they are limited in time and if the distance is not so much to allow to see each other often enough. Often enough being for me at least once or twice a month. Otherwise, it will just became a growing pain and a struggling.

How did I get in this status of mind? Because one of the things I talked about last night with these girls was exactly this, how to deal with distance relationships. And the positions were pretty much clear:

- You block yourself, avoid to fall in love for anyone and get attached
- You keep having "fun" relationship with people who are ok but for whom you don't feel that much, so that when you will leave there will be not pain and something to carry on with a distance
- You try anyway, even knowing that probably will hurt you like hell at the moment that you will be apart

If you didn't try a distance relationship, you can't understand what I am talking about. And I am not writing this out of arrogance. But because I heard so many times from my friends and family things like: you have to be strong, it is not so bad, at least you have each others, I think I could do it, I think I could manage, you suffer only because you are too needy....and things like this.

I may be needy and probably I am. But meeting more and more people with a life-style similar to mine, you understand that it is not just you who can't deal well with distance in a romantic relationship. They are just hard to deal with if you love someone very deeply. Someone manages them (and they have all my admiration).
Someone decides that she/he can't take it anymore. And if this goes with the thought that the person you leave was the "person you wanted to spend your life with" then you will keep loving this person for very long time.

One of these girls yesterday told me that his ex- was the person she thought just right for him. But it didn't work because they were apart for so long that it was hard to keep a healthy relationship. So, finally she realized that she had to give herself a chance and move on and try to find someone else, even if this person would probably ends up to be a second choice. Even if she will never stop to love her ex-. Even if she will miss him. Even if she will have moments in which she will thinks "why?".
Until one day in which she will find someone that from just being a second choice will became so important in her life that she will not want to be with anyone else but him.