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E81: Coping with time differences

We’re discussing the burden of time differences this week, and how to face them together as a couple. For long distance lovers, a hefty time difference can make it difficult to find time to say a quick hello, let alone enjoy deep and meaningful conversations. This episode offers tips on how to make the most of the time you can spend talking, how to cope when you can’t, and everything in between. 

From Long distance to marriage – Episode 81 transcript

Rich	Hi everyone, and welcome to episode 81 of From Long Distance to Marriage. This week we are going to be talking about time differences and how to cope with them when you’re long distance.
Aindrea	That’s really hard. I think people who have a relatively small-time differences of an hour to three, it’s a little bit less challenging. But those who have 5 hours or more, then that’s tricky. I think people can struggle with their social life and jobs and commitments, then trying to fit that time in for each other when they’re in completely different time zones. I know for us we had an 8-hour time difference, sometimes 7. To be completely honest we just tried to be as flexible as possible.
Rich	Yeah. Obviously, it can make communication really hard. That’s the biggest challenge people have with it. You may only have a small window, especially if you have school or work, you may only have a small window from one of you being at home and one of you getting home, they may be asleep when you get home and vice versa. We had a lot of late nights and early mornings.
Aindrea	You had late nights, I had early mornings.
Rich	Yeah like really early mornings, middle of the night.
Aindrea	Yeah. So I was 8 hours behind Rich, so it would be 4am my time would be noon his time. I was teaching at the time; I was getting up early but didn’t have to get up that early. I would get up at half 3/4 so we could talk before I went to work. It was like late morning, mid-day for you.
Rich	Then I would stay up till like 1/2am.
Aindrea	Later probably, because I would be home from work at about 3:30/4.
Rich	Yeah.
Aindrea	You would stay up for hours. Sometimes I would stay upstairs, miss dinner with my family, when I was still living at home. I would go downstairs for dinner at like 7pm because that would be 3am your time. So that meant that essentially, you were probably on a weirder schedule than me because you’d be waking up 11am your time, I would be waking up at 3am. Which meant we were waking up at the same time. We were in a unique position. You were working freelance so could set your own hours. I was a teacher so would wake up really early. But I think the thing to be careful of is that although you do have to adapt and give and take to accommodate each other’s time zones, you don’t want to do it to the point you’re a zombie or nocturnal or missing out friends.
Rich	We were really lucky too that we were able to do that. If I had to be at work at 8/9 in the morning, then I wouldn’t have been up till 3am. That would have reduced our window to talk and the conversation would have been restricted quite significantly. It’s similar for you, if you hadn’t been getting home at 3/4pm and got home at 6pm instead or later like other people normally do, we couldn’t have spoken. In a lot of ways, people’s education or work life or existing personal life, can almost make some relationships impossible.
Aindrea	Yeah. I think if that’s the case and you’re not as flexible in terms of what your daily requirements are. We had a lot of flexibility, mainly because of you, but my days started early and finished early which was nice. You need to have the conversation of planning. This day I am going to wake up extra early or this day I am going to stay un extra later. Yes, maybe you do have to be up early for work, but you stay up till midnight a few days a week. It’s a burden you’re going to have to share.
Rich	Yeah, you do. Like we always say, one of you may be in the situation where they require a bit more consideration than the other one.
Aindrea	Like if you’re a student and you’re working.
Rich	Yeah, not everyone has the same flexibility. One of you may be able to say I will work around that, don’t worry about it, you’re more rigid than me. On the flip side of that, some jobs will be easier. If you work shifts, then they may coincide with when your partner is up and about anyway. But also, it’s an opportunity to be a little bit creative. Like do voice notes for when they woke up or send them a nice message. So, although it can be difficult and restricting and frustrating that you can’t actually talk to each other when and how you want, it also gives the opportunity to show your love and care for them in a slightly different way.
Aindrea	If you are a couple who live in drastically differently time zones, that means a pretty big move for one of you at some point. You really have to give a lot of yourself in a long-distance relationship and this is probably one of the first areas you have to make allowances or sacrifices to do that. One of the things that people can find really challenging in a long distance relationship is not being able to get hold of the person when you need to, if something has happened or you just need someone to talk to and it’s in the middle of the night there time or they’re at work. You can suddenly feel very cut out and you’re further away than you really are.
Rich	Yeah. Something we never did, I know video chat wasn’t so much of a thing and I don’t know if we would have done it anyway, but some people will leave the video chat running while the other goes to sleep. Which is nice in a way but not really for me. Facetime didn’t exist for us. That’s another option too. If you are both comfortable with that.
Aindrea	I just remember after we’d met and we were apart for 6 months, I had a really hard time, my anxiety was really affected. There were times where I mentally and physically needed to talk to you, and I couldn’t. I wasn’t going to try wake you up but that was really hard. That’s something people can struggle with, the divide you feel when it’s night-time on the other side of the world. Even if it’s not something bad that’s happened, like something great has happened and you want to share it, you’ve got to wait and it’s all delayed.
Rich	Yeah. You had the kind of job, teaching, where you couldn’t have your phone out. So, I had to wait till you had a designated break, before you could reply. Or if you were out with friends and wanted to check in and say hi, I would have been asleep because it was the middle of the night. There’s a lot of loneliness that can arise from that.
Aindrea	Absolutely. That’s the real challenge. There’s not a great deal you can do about that side of it unfortunately, other than talk about it, tell each other how it makes you feel, so you can understand how it affects the other and decide what to do to try cope with that. I know you didn’t have as hard of a time as I did, not necessarily a time difference, that sucked because we were both tired. But I feel like I was mire affected by the loneliness. I had that period of time where I was up, and you were already awake. Then we’d talk after I finished work then you would go to bed, so I had a whole evening ahead of me where I couldn’t then talk to you.
Rich	My work was flexible as well. I would often be working at 10/11 at night. So, if I was at home, I could occupy myself. But you left work and went home with not much else to do. That was a difference with us.
Aindrea	Yeah. We were really lucky. Even though it was difficult we made it work without too much hassle. I think if couples who have ridiculous time differences, like America to Australia where it’s almost a whole day different.
Rich	But then it comes to almost the same. But there’s a couple of things to mention, it’s an opportunity. We did a recent episode on cheap date ideas, the scavenger hunt was one, that kind of thing requires thought and planning, so you can still invest time into your relationship even if the other person isn’t available for you to talk to. The Scavenger hunt is an obvious example, you can spend some time planning that. But it also ties into what we’ve said in the past is that your partner doesn’t complete you, they complement you. I don’t want to suggest that you shouldn’t miss the other person, because you can. But equally It may be a good time to think about other things that interest you.
Aindrea	Spend time with your friends or family.
Rich	Yeah. You don’t want to become that clique person who as soon as you get a girlfriend/boyfriend, you forget about your friends. You’re more likely to become that person when you can see and talk to your partner whenever you want to. You’re probably more inclined to always be with them or in communication with them. But when you’re in long distance and got forced hours apart, it’s a good opportunity to think about what else you want to be/do. Is it a good time to work on a business, invest in friends in families, put towards your relationship without that person being there. You can develop a relationship while simultaneously feeling like the relationship is all you’ve got. That’s a potential benefit that never really gets discussed.
Aindrea	Yeah. That’s a relief in it too. When we were apart and things were really difficult because distance is, it was a relief for an escape for me to go see my friends and not think about it for a whole. It didn’t mean that I didn’t miss you or didn’t think about you, but it wasn’t that type of longing like if I had been sitting at home.
Rich	It’s almost like you’ve been given bonus time, because you have the time with the relationship and you’re able to give 100% to that time because you know there’s a certain limitation to it. But it also means when that time is up, and the other person has to go to sleep/work. You’ve got a time with no obligation of oh I have to check my phone; do they mind me doing this. It’s free time that you can do whatever you want with. Not every relationship has the benefit of that.
Aindrea	No. Another thing is that if you guys get up, talk, work, eat, sleep, talk and so on, if that’s what your schedules are then what do you have to talk about. It’s important that you do the things that you enjoy and things you have in common. This doesn’t have anything to do with distance, but when I first moved here and I couldn’t work, Rich was working from home, I wasn’t able to work, we were both in the same house pretty much all day. We didn’t have a whole lot to talk about in the day. In the evening we would find stuff to talk about, but it made it feel like there was nothing to talk about, when we would usually have loads to talk about. It’s nice to have other things to talk about, you saw some friends, hung out with family, went shopping.
Rich	Yeah. It ties in really well to episode 60 which was common interests for couples. We covered how you have the common interests, but you have other things. We argued that was a really positive thing. It’s important that you stay interesting. You need to have something to offer someone, to be an attractive, appealing person. What you don’t want is to have feelings of dependency and feel like you have nothing to offer. I always say a relationship needs to be adding things to your life, and that’s true for both of you. In order for that to be true both of you have to make the effort to continue improving and offering value. You don’t want to make them your everything, despite what the movies say, you need to have interests. If you are happier, you’re going to be more given in a relationship and a more positive person to be around, which is attractive in itself. Beyond that, you are someone who people would want to be with, you’re an interesting, engaging person who has hobbies and knowledge. You can’t 24/7 be all about one other person.
Aindrea	Yeah. It’s important not to just pine in those hours when you can’t talk, or whether that’s because of the time difference once one of you is at work, or asleep. It’s worth bearing in mind that jumping on the phone and saying I miss you, where have you been, I haven’t heard from you. At first those things can show that you’re really interested and engaged in the relationship, but it can start to get old. I know that was something we struggled with. I was always ready to jump on the phone straight away. I don’t know if it’s a you me thing or a man woman thing. But you didn’t feel like you missed me as much because we talked every day. Maybe it was because I had that period in the evening where there were hours of no contact from you, whereas you were asleep.
Rich	Yeah.
Aindrea	So, I felt like I hadn’t talked to you for an evening or a night where you went to sleep right after you talked to me, and when you woke up, we were pretty much talking again. You didn’t have a chance to miss me. You’re not the kind of guy to say I miss you too, you would say oh we’ve just talked, you were honest about it.
Rich	Yeah. I didn’t have an opportunity to miss you.
Aindrea	Yeah. You weren’t a dick about it. It’s really important to remember that always saying that you miss them and making it out like you’ve missed out on something can wear someone down over time.
Rich	Dependency is not attractive. It’s very nice to feel wanted. A relationship is a privilege, someone wants to be with you and share their life with you, that’s a huge privilege and it’s wonderful. So, to miss someone that’s all great but that’s not the same as dependency or put the impression of I can’t cope without you. Those are fairly toxic traits that can very quickly push someone away. The type of person they don’t push away can have their own red flags. If you’re feeling like they can’t leave you alone or that you can’t leave them alone, that’s not the same as missing someone. There’s a limit between healthy and unhealthy behaviour there.
Aindrea	Yeah. Again, it’s okay to feel some uncertain and insecurity. Long distance really plays with your emotions, so you are allowed to struggle and to miss them, but it’s letting it take over which is the problem. We did an episode on how to stay sane in a long-distance relationship which ties into this. There’s people who get concerned and that’s normal, if you’re meant to meet someone for a date and they don’t turn up then you’re going to be concerned, so if you’re meant to have a phone date and they don’t turn up then you’re going to be concerned. But you need to just keep your shit together. Maybe their phone died, got stuck at work, got pulled into a meeting, or something like that. So, it’s finding ways to cope and that self-dialogue of talking yourself down, if that makes sense.
Rich	Yeah. So, the episode you’re referring to is episode 28, how to stay sane in a long-distance relationship. We cover more detail on this. If you take the view of what does it mean and takes to be a well-rounded healthy human being, there are visuals out there like a pie chart of what makes up a relationship. A healthy chart is never made up out one thing. If you just want to work then you’re termed a workaholic, if you put all your time into a hobby then you’re likely to become socially awkward, if you out all your time into friends then you can stunt yourself as an individual. You need to have balance. So put everything into it when you’re having relationship time but do other things also. If you want to spend time on the play station then do that because you’re not spending all your time on there, you have a relationship. What can you do to make yourself more productive at work or spend more time with your family or read more books. It doesn’t matter what you do, the point is that your relationship should only ever be one thing.
Aindrea	Yeah. I 100% agree with that. Another thing we talk a lot about in various episodes is that you need to take care of yourself in order to give the best of yourself. So, if you are using that time when you can’t talk wisely to take care of yourself, maybe that means doing exercise, a facemask, going on a shopping spree, cleaning up your space, getting a good night sleep. Whatever it means, it translates to being a better version of yourself when you talk to each other again. If you’re well rested then you sound refreshed, if you’ve had a good time with your friends then you sound happy, if you’ve taken care of yourself then you sound less stressed.
Rich	Put it in another way. If you start a conversation with your partner, do you want them to be like what do you want to talk about, nothing really happened and be quite boring or do you want them to be happy and tell you all about what they’ve done. The more interesting a person is and more engaged they are, most likely the happier you are around them.
Aindrea	Yeah. You also don’t want your partner to be pining and hurt and sad, and that’s not from a I’m not interested in you perspective, but we want the best for our partner. You don’t want them struggling and to suffer.
Rich	Another thing is that if you want this relationship to be a long-term thing, it’s worth knowing at the outset that the longer it goes on the more you’re going to rely on those things. You’re not going to get 10, 15, 20 years in without anything to do. We spend most of our time together outside of work but we each have our own interests which is important. The longer the duration of the relationship is, the more important it is that you are someone who can occupy yourself.
Aindrea	Yeah. It’s important to not be threatened, especially in this time difference scenario, that your partner fills the hours and do things they enjoy. That’s good, that’s okay, don’t be threatened by that. It doesn’t have to be things you enjoy too. Rich is very good at guitar; I have no musical talent. I appreciate his love of it and appreciate music. So, when he buys a new guitar, I always come with him.
Rich	Because there’s a nice pub next to the shop and we have lunch.
Aindrea	No. We do. But that wasn’t always the case.
Rich	That’s now how I bribe you.
Aindrea	But it’s more that experience together. I like seeing him in that element because it makes him happy and it’s something, he is passionate about.
Rich	That’s true for both of us. For a long time, you’d like your Louis Vuitton bags, and one day when you went to get it, I came with you. I wanted to make it an experience for you, rather than ordering online to the house. It’s nice because you get to share it with your partner.
Aindrea	Yeah. It’s great. You’re not necessarily into designer purses yourself but you knew it was something I was working towards and saving towards. You don’t have to love what they’re interested in but it’s something else you can talk about that they appreciate and show that you do have separate goals and interests, which is really sexy, that people have a mind of their own.
Rich	Yeah. What we’re saying is that it works both ways. If that’s what you find attractive in them then that’s what they probably find attractive in, you too.
Aindrea	And if not, and they just don’t want to hear what you’re interested in, and just want to talk about that they’re missing you, then that needs balancing and addressing.
Rich	Yeah. Another element of this, coming back to what you said about feeling threatened, if one person has interests and hobbies and the other doesn’t, it’s not uncommon unfortunately for jealousies and insecurities to kick in, because they don’t have anything to do.
Aindrea	Or they can’t join in with it.
Rich	What do you mean? You can’t do it together?
Aindrea	Yeah, like if you’re going on a mountain hiking trip and you’re going to be out of contact for a few days.
Rich	Yeah. That’s true but I think that’s a separate thing. What I’m talking about is that they don’t really have a problem with you doing things, but it highlights that they don’t have anything do, like boredom. The problem there, it may be one of them problems that isn’t said but sometimes you have to read between the lines a bit. If you say I am doing this, and they respond that’s fine, I am doing this, it’s rarely a problem. It’s when it’s oh I am going to be here on my own, you’re not going to talk to me. It becomes passive aggressive and lead to an argument. What the problem really is that they’re sad and it’s highlighting that. Bear that in mind. Or maybe that’s you, maybe you’re thinking that you have a problem with them doing things but actually you don’t, maybe you’re unsure what to do with your own time.
Aindrea	Yeah. We experience that sometimes just in our normal day to day married life.
Rich	Yeah. By no means is it a time difference exclusive.
Aindrea	No, it isn’t. A lot of that for me, is when I first moved here, I didn’t have any friends, didn’t really have a job that required much of me at first. If you went and did things then I didn’t have a problem with you doing it but you might have sensed me not being happy about it. But that’s because it reminded me that I was far away from everything.
Rich	Yeah.
Aindrea	So, it’s just something to look out for and the main thing is to communicate. It’s really important that as a couple you talk about how you feel in the hours that you can’t talk. We’ve seen couples on Instagram where they have the odd text but in terms of actually facetiming and having a verbal phone call conversation, it might only be once or twice a week in terms of weird time difference hours and different working hours too. So, it’s really easy for us to say don’t miss each other and you are in a unique position where you have lots of time to yourself but you’re also not single. So, it some ways, I hesitate to say the best of both worlds because it’s not, but you have love and a relationship, but you also have a lot of time to yourself where you can do things you enjoy.
Rich	Yeah. There’s a real mindset thing to this because there are positives and negatives, and you can choose to focus on either one. If you focus on the negatives it’s I can’t spend all the time with you as I want to, you can’t socialise with me. Those are all true negatives, but you can also think I have a relationship that allows me to have time to invest elsewhere without it being a compromise and sacrificing that. Also, it’s not limited to long distance. There are many couples who live together and rarely see each other because of the working hours. Especially right now, if you’re both front line workers, or one of you has to work away for work, anything like that. There’s a lot of couples who don’t see each other all the time. So, don’t think this is purely a symptom for long distance relationships.
Aindrea	But it does mean that if you deal with this and you’re long distance, when you do get together and finally close the distance and face these situations where one of you is working away or have weird hours, then you might be in a better position to face that because you’ve already done similar. I think it’ll be good to end the show on a high note in terms of how to work around time difference for date ideas. This depends on what your time difference is but one thing that’s fun is preparing a meal together at different times of the day. For us 10am my time would have been 6pm your time, we could both do breakfast, I would have breakfast for breakfast, and you could have had breakfast for dinner. You can try find that time to talk and cook together over the phone, make the same thing. Another thing is binge a show together but apart. If Rich and I were to binge a show right now, we would sit down and watch an episode together, but maybe watch an episode a day but watch it a different times because of different schedules, and then the next day you can catch up and talk about it. You can accommodate it to where right before you go to work while they watch it in the evening and vice versa. It’s just getting creative and seeing what you can do and think outside the box. Do you have any ideas?
Rich	No but I just want to add to that. It’s very easy to focus on this. Every relationship has it’s own challenges, this is yours. Don’t be thinking this is a grass is greener type situation where if only I was in a no distance relationship, because they have their own challenges, they’re just different.
Aindrea	You’re always going to have a challenge in your relationship. I can’t think of a period when there hasn’t been something we haven’t had to work around. Not just us but outside factors. It was distance and time difference then it was visas then it was getting a job, a place, money, more visas, family drama, job problems. There is literally always something and when you’re long distance, those little day to day things that seem to always affect you, don’t matter as much. Long distance boils down to a few things, no physical contact, time difference and missing each other. Obviously, there’s more than that. But use this time to solidify your relationship when you can so when you do close the distance and you’re facing other problems; your relationship is strong, and you can face those together.
Rich	Yeah. Before we end this episode, we will mention our Ultimate Guide to Long Distance Relationships, which contains pretty much everything we can think of. So, if you’re in a long-distance relationship, whatever stage, we cover from when you first get together right through to closing the distance and starting to live together. Everything is in there. If you’re in this situation then we think it’s useful. This isn’t a small guide just containing things you already know. It’s fairly lengthy, very thorough, we put a lot of work into it to make it as valuable and helpful for you. If you want more information or to get your own copy, it’s on our website longdistancetomarriage.com under the resources tab. It covers lots of topics from sending nudes, date ideas, visa applications, telling you parents. So, we will plug that.
Aindrea	As always, if there’s any topics you would like to cover, please get in touch on our website or Twitter or Instagram at mrmrsdistance. We are always ready to listen. Hopefully that’s been helpful. We know time differences are a bitch, but you can find ways to work round it to not work against you. Bye guys.