Our story
From 5,200 miles apart to married bliss
Listen to us tell our story in the first episode of our podcast
Hi, we’re Rich & Aindrea. We did online dating before it was cool. We began talking on an art forum in 2003, in our tender teens. The problem was we were separated by 5,200 miles and a lot of water – she was on the west coast of the USA, he was in England.
But 7 years later we met, and married the following year.
Closing in on a decade of marriage, we understand the ups and downs of long-distance relationships (including the struggles that no one tells you to expect) and how to make a successful relationship.
We built From Long Distance to Marriage for all types of couples – long distance or not, married or not. Join us to get our tips for fun date nights for the different seasons, making your own ‘traditions’, ideas for those of you maintaining a long-distance relationships, how to transition into marriage and living together, and a lot more.
Want to know more about us? Keep reading…
By Aindrea
It was the autumn of 2009 and at the age of 23, I was in my first of only two years spent as a teacher. August and September had passed in a frenzied blur of figuring out just what the hell I was doing. It had been a long and tiring day spent battling pubescent 12 year olds in an attempt to make them understand decimals. In any case, on that late October day, I came home and found a letter from him waiting for me on the kitchen counter. And even though we had been in contact a little bit, the weight of my feelings for him hit me like a ton of bricks.
I don’t know for sure when I realised that I still had room for him in my heart. But in the months leading up to the day that I received the letter, he’d reached out to me a few times and we were really talking again. I suppose the room for him in my heart opened and grew as I remembered how much I enjoyed talking to him.
The letter was no great confession of love that still burned strong. It was familiar, and comforting, and in the letter he told me how he still always thought of me and how during a family vacation to France and Spain, he couldn’t get me out of his head. He sent me a braided leather bracelet, like the one he had sent me so many years before. He told me about finishing university, and how good it felt to be writing to me – but mostly how happy he was that he hadn’t lost my friendship forever.
I was immediately taken back to my senior year of high school when we first started talking. That was early 2004, and I had been after song recommendations for the mix CD I was putting together for the following summer – a collection of ’60s/’70s rock songs that centered around the theme of drugs. I’d never done a single drug, but loved the music of the era. I took to deviantart.com and posted in the music forums asking for recommendations. Amongst the replies that all suggested various rap songs (despite my clear plea for rock songs), there was one person suggesting the exact kind of music I was after. I clicked on his profile – a boy, my age, in England.
He must be sexy, and have a cute accent, I thought.
So I messaged him.
I wish I could remember the details of our first conversations, but I don’t. I wish deviantart had saved those messages from so long ago, but they didn’t. All I remember is that I felt an instant connection with this boy who had excellent taste in music. We spent countless hours messaging back and forth, planning to meet one day and open up a record shop in Camden in North London. It was an intense closeness, considering we’d never met or even spoken verbally.
We stayed good friends over the next year or so as I ventured off to university and had some unsuccessful relationships. He was always there in the background, and even though we didn’t talk as often as we did at first, that closeness was still there offering comfort. It wasn’t until another year or so later, in 2006, that we starting talking again daily. Again, it was deep and intense, deeper than anything I’d known, even with someone face to face. I quickly started saving to go and meet him in England, and got lucky finding a super cheap flight for Christmas day – he told me to buy it straight away. We were so excited, and couldn’t believe we were going to meet. We were counting down the days, working through the limited time we had to talk now that Rich had started university as well. It was hard and we missed each other, but we had Christmas to look forward to.
My Christmas visit never happened. We were too young, the distance was too great, and we didn’t know if we’d be strong enough to keep it up. It was devastating and eventually we fell out over it. It was a really hard time for us, but we eventually decided to move on as friends. After that, we didn’t really keep in touch like we did before. Our wings were spreading in university, our social circles were growing and life took us in different directions. Rich eventually found a steady girlfriend, and I dated throughout university. I vividly remember sitting across the table from one guy or another at an Olive Garden. He was nice, harmless, inoffensive. But he didn’t captivate me. None of them did. It drove me crazy, the fact that I couldn’t connect with any of these guys on the same level I did with a boy I’d never met, an ocean away.
But now, in 2009, none of that mattered anymore. Because now Rich and I were both grown up, finished with university and working, and he had sent me a letter. I wrote him back, telling him that I still cared, too. And just like that, we picked up exactly where we left off.
I fell for him even faster and deeper than I had the time before, and it was mutual. It was different this time – we were more mature and ready to make it happen, and technology had reached a stage where it was much easier for us to talk every single day, even when we were out and about. I remember telling my mom I was talking to him again. She warned me to be cautious, remembering how crushed I had been when it hadn’t worked out the last time. “Be friends with him, but don’t get too invested.”
“It’s too late,” I admitted. By February 2010, we were 100% into this, speaking every single day on Skype or at least emailing each other constantly throughout the day. This was before the days of Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp or iMessage, so we had to be creative. On Valentine’s Day, I bought a plane ticket to see him after I finished teaching for the school year. We’d spend two weeks together in England, and he’d show me everything I wanted to see there. Again, we counted down to the magic day. On June 22nd, I climbed on a plane for my first international flight and flew to London.
I was 23, and had been waiting for six years to meet him.
I can only describe coming through arrivals, cautiously searching the crowd for his face as surreal. I didn’t know what to expect. We had discussed it so many times.
What if it wasn’t the same in real life?!
Would he actually be there, waiting for me? Was any of this real, or was it all a cruel dream?
Then there he was, walking through the crowd towards me, smiling nervously. The first few hours were ever so slightly awkward, riding back to his house in the car, meeting his family. It was like being in elementary school, not knowing how to act when your teacher assigned a seat for you next to your crush. But later that day, after I’d showered the icky feel of travel off me, we shared our first kiss, and it was perfect. It was better than we had ever imagined it would be. We fit together perfectly, and we were thrilled to finally be together.
We spent that summer in a heady daze of paradise, and I even extended my two-week trip to a month. We savoured every moment of our time together before I had to head back to Arizona to get ready for the new school year. Saying goodbye to him at the departures terminal in Heathrow was sickening. I walked away from him with a broken heart and in a daze, walking through security with tear-blurred vision. I don’t actually know how I made it onto the plane, but somehow I did. We had tentative plans of when we would see each other next, but nothing set in stone. It was awful being apart, and for six months we struggled with the strain it put on us both, until I went back to England for Christmas. Our reunion was perfect, and we both admitted we couldn’t do the long distance anymore. Rich was working freelance, so he was able to come back to America with me after Christmas. I showed him everything I could when I wasn’t working, and he got to know my family, living with us.
In April of 2011, he made me the happiest girl alive when he proposed. It was bliss, and I’ll always remember the day we went to pick out my engagement ring as one of the happiest of my life. Getting my fiancee visa was surprisingly smooth, and once I finished out the school year, I packed my life into 3 suitcases and followed him across the world. On September 2, 2011 we were married in a small ceremony with just 18 people there. It was sweet and simple, and exactly what we wanted – because it meant we were together, for good, and forever. We’d made it, and we planned to spend the rest of our lives never taking the fact that we were together, side by side, for granted. And for the most part, we’ve done a pretty good job so far.
We want to help you reach your bliss, too
We wrote The Ultimate Guide to Long Distance Relationships to share all of our learnings with you. It’s the book we wish was available when we were still apart, and guides you at every step of the way – from the earliest days, to meeting for the first time, applying for visas, and learning how to live together after you close the distance.
Take all the confusion away by downloading your very own copy, and let us help you create the relationship of your dreams. Download it here.
