Communication Issues

[bob96]

Hey there.

First of all I'll start with clarifying who we are and our situation. We are an English boy and girl, we are both 15 years old. She attends high school in town, I am home educated. I live in a small village 8 miles from town, she lives in town, so the distance between our homes is 8 miles and its a bus journey apart. We both have parents willing to give us lifts and we have bus passes which reduce the cost of public transport.

Anyhow, we have been going out for 1 and a half months or so. We used to go to primary school but lost contact when she moved school. We were pretty good friends but didn't talk until 2 months ago when I added her on Facebook and we began to talk. She had problems with her ex-bf, they split up and I made a move, she felt the same - you could feel it was the right thing to do, not just standard needy teenagers. We have one year left of high school.

We met up for the first time and we got along great, the problem has never been how we got along face to face, we're both reasonably easy going people and we've had a lot of fun just talking, cuddling and meeting each others friends and family.

Due to the 8 mile difference and the fact she gets home at about 4pm, we can't/don't meet up in the week. It has recently been half-term, so we have spent a week together recently, but most of the year we see each other for the day each Saturday. Those Saturdays are perfect, we get on really well, we seem to make progress each time and we haven't had any disagreements or problems in that department yet.

However, the problem is when it comes to the 7 days in between. We like to maintain contact and we are both on our phones all of the time other than her school hours and when we are sleeping or otherwise busy. We don't talk ALL of the time but there is rarely a spell of 30 minutes where we don't speak via instant messaging on our phones (not texts, MSN and Blackberry Messenger mainly).

The problem is, we say "Hey", "How are you? Ok thanks", "I miss you", "I love you" and all the small talk, and plan out our days together before hand when needed, but other than that it gets very awkward. Not awkward, more like boring. Not because we are bored of one another, infact I have not spoken to her about this before so I don't know her opinion, but because we simply can't just talk to each other ALL day, nobody can, especially not when its via phone, and not even voice messages.

Both of us hate calls, that's just how it is, not to each other but in general. Calling wouldn't really solve the issue as the problem is when we are not face to face, we seem to always be in conversation, but that is boring conversation as we talk so much. Occasionally we just say stuff like "Im cold" and well, thats not very interesting chat. It ends up feeling like a pressure to have to talk all the time - even though its not. That said, we need to maintain contact because otherwise we'd only see each other once a week and that would suck as we both have phones etc.

My question is, how do we keep our relationship going outside of the AMAZING days we spend together once per week? I think the answers I will get is; ask her, but I'm wondering how she will respond and how you guys think she will react. How should I put it to her? I feel like asking her if she wants to meet after school in the week one day but I'm not sure her parents would be happy with that and it would make our weekends together a lot less unique. I did bring it up before but she just changed subject and didn't seem to think there was a lot we could do about it. Is there anything I can do to make things more interesting? Or is it simply a question of talking to her about it and risk upsetting her?

We're both aware of the long distance thing in our relationship and that we can't spend every day together, but I just feel we're missing something and its unreasonably difficult right now. Not because we don't love/want each other or aren't committed, but if she is feeling anything like me, it is stressful for both of us, which is a shame because when we're together in real life, we have the time of our lives and feel perfect together.

Thanks for any answers and opinions you have.

[steviej]

Lol@,long distance, some people on this forum really put that saying into pespective!

Quite simply, don't text as often! Don't reply instantly, if you're both busy during the day with school then she should only message at break times. If you're home educated tell her that you've been told to turn your phone on silent whilst studying so you can only message her on breaks.