long-distance relationships

How to Make a Long-Distance Goodbye Easier

Kate Sloan

You know how they say “sadness is the price we pay for love”? I’ve never felt that more strongly than in a long-distance relationship.

Saying goodbye to a local partner is NBD; you know you’ll be seeing them next Tuesday anyway, and that if an emotional emergency before then necessitated their presence, you could just swing by their place. But goodbyes with long-distance partners can be heavy: you’ll soon be once again unable to touch and kiss this person you love to touch and kiss, and you may not even know when that gap will be closed again. There’s no way around it: it sucks.

This melancholy interaction may be inevitable, but there are things you can do to avoid falling into a pit of despair every time. I say this as a woman who, nine months ago, broke down in tears on the floor while clutching my partner’s leg because I so desperately didn’t want them to leave: things need not always be this dramatic! Here are some habits I’ve picked up that have made these long-distance farewells easier to handle…

Stay in the moment. It’s very easy, the day that one of you’ll be headed back home, to spend all day long fretting and crying about how sad it is that you have to part ways. But that’s a trap, and it robs you of the thing you’ll miss most once they go: quality time with your beloved. Try to stay focused on your partner right up until you have to start dealing with travel logistics – it’ll be easier to let them go if you know you made every moment count.

Sort out your travel well in advance. Nothing kills the good vibes at the end of a long-distance date faster than freaking out about last-minute travel mishaps. Plan your route to the airport, bus station, etc. during a calm moment so you won’t have to do it during a sad, scary one. Check in for your flight on your phone so you don’t have to rush. Make sure you know where your passport is. The more of this stuff you get out of the way earlier, the longer you can enjoy your sweetheart’s company for.

Reminisce on the highlights of your date. My partner and I do this as part of a ritualized “debrief” at the end of each of our dates. We go back and forth listing our favorite things we did together on that visit, both sexual and non-sexual. It lets us process those experiences together while lifting our moods and getting us excited about things we want to do again sometime. This is one way we try to leave our dates on a happy note.

Plan your next date. This isn’t always possible, because travel is a fickle mistress (not to mention expensive), but if you can figure out when you might next see each other, it helps. Life might well throw a wrench into your plans, but at least it’ll give you something to look forward to in the meantime.

Exchange tokens of affection. Temporarily losing your physical connection with your partner is really hard; exchanging physical gifts of some kind can help mitigate that feeling of lack and loss. You could lend them a T-shirt that smells like you, or leave them a bruise on their ass as a badge of honor; they could give you a stuffed animal to cuddle, or write “Remember I love you” on your arm. There are a lot of ways to leave a little piece of yourself with someone so they feel like you’re still there even when you go.

Say goodbye alone and in a quiet place, if possible. I learned, after one particularly painful goodbye in a New York City subway station, that farewells in loud, public areas make me feel disconnected and unresolved. I need concentrated time with my partner right before our paths diverge. This could be as elaborate as an intimate last-hurrah date in the corner booth of a fancy restaurant, or as simple as sleuthing out a quiet alcove in the train station for one last heart-to-heart before “all aboard.” You’ll feel better if your last few minutes together feel just as connective and intimate as the high points of your date.

Reflect and process. You’ve already discussed your date with your beau; now it’s time to sit with all those feelings on your own. Journaling on my homebound plane ride is always my favorite way to do this – I’ll write about the best parts of the date, any questions or worries it left me with, and how it all felt. This process helps me transition back into my “real life.”

Be gentle with yourself. It is totally okay – normal, even – if you feel sad for a few hours or days after bidding your love adieu. Try not to beat yourself up if it takes you some time to “get back to normal” emotionally. I often find that this type of sadness comes with a bodily sluggishness that makes it harder for me to accomplish anything once it sinks in that we’re apart again, so I try not to schedule anything rigorous or anxiety-provoking within the first 12 hours of my arrival home, if not more. It’s an act of self-love to observe your own patterns in this way and set boundaries or make adjustments accordingly.

Stay in touch. Like a kink scene, a long-distance date shouldn’t end with you just disappearing – there’s gotta be aftercare! Try to be available to your partner for texting, emails, phone calls, or your other conversational medium(s) of choice – maybe even more available than usual. Both of you might still be feeling pretty mushy-hearted, and there might be more to talk about and process. Plus, of course, knowing you can still talk to someone easily can make it a lot easier to stomach their physical absence.

Notice what works and doesn’t work for you, and adjust. If you have some goodbyes that particularly suck, or some that are unusually easy, it’s worth discussing together: what factors contributed to this outcome, and how can we adapt our future approach with this new knowledge in mind? All the above tips are practices my partner and I have come to after many, many months of trying different strategies and talking about our feelings. It’s half-trial and error, half-scientific method. It can’t erase our pain entirely, but it offers us a toolbox for managing that pain.

How have you handled goodbyes in long-distance relationships? Got any tips (or warnings)?

12 Days of Girly Juice 2018: 2 Fears Defeated

Kate Sloan

I’ve conquered a lot of fears in the past few years, or at least attempted to. Hell, life with an anxiety disorder is basically just a long process of battling fears, like walking through a brambly underbrush with a machete in each hand. In 2015 I upped my blowjob game and delved into threesomes; in 2016 I fucked on camera and navigated casual sex; and last year I explored polyamory more deeply and got better at tactful rejection. That’s a whole lotta scary things, and I’m proud of myself!

Here are two things I’d previously feared, that I managed to face head-on in 2018…

Long-distance relationships

I swore, when I was younger, that I would never fuck with an LDR. “I need a lot of attention and physical affection,” I reasoned, “and that just isn’t practical if the person lives far away.” What I had neglected to plan for, however, is that sometimes you fall in love with a geographically distant person even if you had planned not to – and that distance does not have to preclude the exchange of attention and affection.

Knowing full well about the hurdles long-distance couples face, my partner and I approached our relationship with thoughtfulness and intentionality. We built systems and routines that helped bolster our burgeoning intimacy: good-morning texts, near-nightly phone conversations, FaceTime calls whenever convenient, selfies and tweets and emails. We crafted a sex life from sexting and phone sex (more on that in a sec) that feels as real, enjoyable, and important to me as any in-person sexual connection I’ve ever had. We made it clear to each other, day by day by day, that we are committed to making this relationship work and making it last. We look for new ways to do that all the time.

We’re also deeply privileged to live not terribly far from each other – a 90-minute flight or an ~11-hour bus ride – and to be able to afford to see each other about once a month. It’s funny: when we first started dating, we agreed that 2 months was about the maximum amount of time we’d ever want to go without seeing each other, but we’ve never actually waited that long. The longest we’ve spent apart at a time is about 5 weeks, but we average around 3 weeks between each visit. Sometimes it’s hard, but it’s always doable.

Ultimately I’ve come to realize that long-distance relationships – if they’re as conscientiously intimate as this one – may actually be better suited to how my brain works than local ones, in some ways. I’m an easily-overwhelmed introvert, so being able to talk to my partner while pajama-clad in my bed at the end of the day is often preferable to, say, going out for drinks or schlepping my stuff to someone’s house in the cold. When a local partner is too busy to see me for a while, my anxious brain takes it as a personal affront – but somehow it still feels like a treat every time my long-distance partner spends time with me over the phone. Our in-person visits give me something to look forward to, like a life preserver to cling onto when I feel depressed, and also give me motivation to deep-clean my room at least once a month. It’s pretty ideal, actually.

I’m not saying long-distance relationships are something I’ll continue to look for in the future – it’s my hope that they’ll be a rare exception in my life, rather than a commonplace thing – but I’m not nearly as put off by the prospect of them as I used to be. And that’s nice, because it means more opportunities for love, sex, kink, and joy are open to me now, all around the world.

Phone sex

Another thing I thought I’d never like! Weird.

When I was a teen, my beloved friend-with-benefits would sometimes call me up and read erotic Harry Potter fanfiction to me over the phone. If I got turned on enough, occasionally I would touch myself while she breathed these fanciful words into my ear. I liked listening to her struggle to get through each sentence while straining to hear the changes in my breathing, the slide of skin against wet skin.

That was my only experience resembling phone sex, until about 9 years later, when a prospective sugar daddy emailed me asking if he could pay me for the pleasure of my company over the phone. The price was right and he was charming as hell, so we fell into a pay-to-play arrangement that culminated in a couple nights of him whispering filthy things to me while I moaned and purred and held a vibe on my clit.

I had always imagined that phone sex would require an equal give-and-take, a 50:50 exchange of dirty words and ideas back and forth, and indeed, I’m sure that this is how it works for many people. But I am a bottom, and a sub, and I go pretty nonverbal when subspace kicks in, so I knew I wouldn’t be well-suited to talk someone to orgasm. What I had overlooked, though, is that lots of tops and doms prefer to be the person driving the action, not only in person but over the phone too. That’s what my sugar daddy was into, and when I started dating my current boyfriend, I discovered that he was into it, too. He calls himself a “phone-sex top”: someone who says most of the shit and is more than happy to do so. It’s my reactions he gets off on: my moans, my squeals, my subspacily slurred responses to his questions. In this regard (and several others), we are perfectly well-matched.

It’s funny how I went from abhorring the idea of phone sex to it being easily 80% (or more) of my sex life this year. It’s a near-daily routine for us now, and as such, we’ve developed our own patterns, techniques, tropes and styles within our phone play, which you can read about in the interview series we did about it. Just like in-person sex with a consistent partner, our phone sex gets better and better the more that we learn about each other, and strives for a balance between reliable old favorites and exciting new explorations. It makes me so happy and doesn’t feel, at all, like a consolation prize for the “real thing.” Phone sex with my partner is real, deep, romantic, exciting, and a wonderful comfort.

What fears did you overcome this year?

Behind the Seams: Babes & Dates

Kate Sloan

May 11th, 2018. The “little boy at summer camp” vibez are so real. I wore this out to my fave local diner (which has since CLOSED, boooo) to finish up some dayjob work over bacon and eggs, and then hopped on the subway and went to the mall. Ended up buying a bunch of dresses and other assorted cuteness at H&M (including some items you’ll see elsewhere in this post!). It was a good day.

This shirt says “Babes Do It Better” and I have no idea what that is supposed to mean, but I like it anyway. Do you ever acquire a new piece of clothing that you think you’ll only wear occasionally but then you start wearing it all the time? This shirt achieved that status for me last summer… Sometimes a garment just feels right, for whatever reason.

What I’m wearing:
• “Babes Do It Better” T-shirt – Forever 21
• Danier leather jacket – hand-me-down from a cousin, adorned with pins from Kinktionary, L’Amour-Propre, and Hippo Campus
• Black rhinestoned shorts – H&M many years ago
• Giant Red Robot kneesocks – bought from R. Stevens at the Toronto Arts & Comics Festival in 2011 (I had been reading his webcomic for many years at that point and fangirled pretty hard about meeting him)
• Black leather Frye harness boots
• Coach turquoise leather turnlock tote – bought on sale for half-price last year and carried damn near everywhere since

May 12th, 2018. This was a weird/cute day in my long-distance relationship. In the morning I went to a local café to work on some articles for a copywriting client, and then I went to 7 West for lunch because I was craving their pesto pollo pasta. My boyfriend chatted with me over the phone throughout my meal – a frequent and favorite type of phone date we do – and then we just kept talking for my entire walk back to my apartment. Once I got home, we talked for several more hours, including some excellent phone sex and lots of giggles. All told, our phone date that day lasted 9 hours, because we’re weirdos in love. I adore finding ways to prioritize intimacy even when we’re so far apart.

I felt really cute in this outfit. It’s a bit “schoolgirl meets mime,” n’est-ce pas?

What I’m wearing:
• Revlon Ultra HD matte lip color in “Obsession” (definitely a current fave)
• Black and white striped tank top (new) – H&M
• Blue suede collar – L’Amour-Propre
• Black and white polka-dotted skirt – ASOS
• Black and white striped thigh-high socks (originally bought to be part of a schoolgirl costume for Halloween) – Amazon, I think?
• Black leather Frye harness boots

May 13th, 2018. I had a hard time getting out of bed on this day, so my Sir gave me some specific instructions and time constraints re: getting showered and dressed, and that helped motivate me a lot. It was Mother’s Day and I was headed to see my mom and give her a gift, so I opted to dress in a feminine, springy way I thought she would appreciate (and she did!).

This outfit also felt very DD/lg to me – pigtails, pink lipstick, sparkly jewelry, and short A-line dresses will do that – so I reflected a fair bit on what it means for me to “feel little” and how that manifests in my body and brain. (I want to write about this eventually!) I noticed myself feeling much cuter and more embodied than usual, and I think it was because my exterior matched how I usually feel – or want to feel – on the inside: feminine, optimistic, youthful, spunky, cute. Clothes are about so much more than just the visual!

What I’m wearing:
• Hair in high pigtails (I hope I never feel “too old” to wear pigtails; they’re cute at any age, as far as I’m concerned)
• Big blue and black sunglasses – bought on a whim at the hotel gift shop at last year’s Woodhull
• Revlon Ultra HD matte lip color in “Obsession” again
• Floral dress (new) – H&M (I have this exact dress in 12+ different colorways and will keep buying them as long as H&M keeps making new ones, because they’re super flattering and comfortable and FIFTEEN DOLLARS EACH)
• Pink sparkly Tarina Tarantino heart necklace – vintage on eBay
• Black leather Frye harness boots

While we’re talkin’ fashion… What’s your favorite piece of clothing right now? Also: got any great spring lipsticks to recommend?

10 Thoughts From Really, Really Good Phone Sex

Kate Sloan

1. I can never quite identify when our casual catch-up conversations end and our phone sex begins. It’s not like in-person sex where beginnings are delineated by a particularly passionate kiss or a deliberately incendiary touch; it’s subtler than that. Sometimes I muse aloud from my bed, almost absentmindedly, “My skin is so soft tonight,” and his voice drops half an octave as he counters, “Oh yeah?” Sometimes we’re talking about Sex Things we’d like to do and they suddenly become Sex Things we are doing right now. Sometimes his voice just hits me the right way, renders me all melty-hot and small, and I make a squeaky submissive sound he recognizes, and we’re off to the races. I never remember quite how it began. It’s the least important detail of all, anyway.

2. I thought I didn’t like phone sex. I was resistant to those whispered words and breathy moans, paltry stand-ins for the embodied touches I craved. But I guess I just never knew anybody who could talk like this boy does.

It’s not like he’s really touching me; it’s not like he’s in the room with me. That would be an oversimplification of what this interaction feels like, what it means. “I can’t be there to fuck you physically,” he tells me one night, “but I try to take care of the psychological side of things.” That’s exactly what it is: he is fucking my brain, while I fuck my own body.

3. Identifying and understanding someone’s kinks is an underrated skillset. It’s one thing to know how someone likes to be fucked or choked or slapped; it’s quite another to know why they like these things, how these things make them feel, the words and phrases and images that flash through their mind when they’re getting off. It’s shockingly intimate to know a person that well.

And know me, he does. He keeps a “mental model” of me, he says, and updates it each time he learns something new about what gets me panting and dripping. He also keeps literal notes on me, in an app on his phone, because he is a nerd – but I think he barely refers to them anymore; he doesn’t need to. When you’ve fucked someone over the phone as many times as he has fucked me over the phone, and you really listen, you learn which phrases make them purr. You memorize when each particular moan will happen and what it denotes. You develop strategies for pushing them over the edge, and you sharpen your approach until it glimmers. Shockingly intimate, indeed.

4. But it’s not just his words. It’s his voice. So boyish and goofy when we’re joking around. So helpless and smitten when we’re confessing our love. So dark and oaky when he’s dominating me from afar. I could melt into it. I could dissolve in it. I often do.

5. “There is no one else I’d rather be in a long-distance relationship with,” I told him once. What I meant was: we are both verbal, and auditory, and kink-nerdy, and digitally savvy, and all those things combine to make a connection that can thrive through texting and phone calls and giggly FaceTime convos. Only a certain type of person could carry on this type of relationship in this electrically connective manner, and I’m so glad I found one in this world. Phone sex with him is not a stand-in for what I want. It is what I want. Or part of what I want, anyway.

6. The first time he wanted to slap me through the phone, I balked a little. Hurting myself, even at his behest, felt off somehow – a farcical facsimile of the thing we both really wanted: his hand arcing through the air again and again to redden my cheek. But I had trusted him with so much already and it made sense to trust him on this, too.

We experimented with different approaches, and, as two communication nerds are wont to do, eventually found what works best for us. He tells me to place my hand on my face. He tells me what intensity he wants these next impacts to be, on a scale from 1 to 10. And then, when we’re ready, he says: “Now.”

It always surprises me how readily my hand responds to him, as though possessed by his dark dominance from hundreds of miles away. Rationally, I know I could decide not to hit myself, if I didn’t want to do it. But I want to do it. So I always do. And it tugs me down into subspace almost as fast as his slaps do when he is there to give them.

7. We sometimes use the word “snowglobey” to describe time we spend together. It’s that feeling when you and your sweetheart are locked in a close moment, fleetingly frozen, and nothing outside your connection seems to exist. Time stretches endlessly, and it’s also over before you know it. You’re insulated. Embroiled. Snowglobey.

I have a bad habit of checking my phone when I’m supposed to be focusing on other things (these days, don’t we all?) but my mind doesn’t wander when his voice is fucking me. I forget that Twitter and Facebook and Slack exist. You only know what a big deal that is if you, too, live a phone-focused life. If you do, then you know it is a huge deal.

What a gift to give someone: some distraction-free minutes of pleasure, riveting and riveted. What a beautiful gift my love gives to me when he weaves stories so absorbing, I forget my body ever knew anything but bliss.

8. He murmurs filthy things about what he would do to me if he was here, but – vitally – he also tells me what to do to myself, right now.

He chooses my sex toys for me, and decides when each can come into play. He tells me how to use them: “Harder.” “Faster.” “Deeper.” He can tell how well I’m following his directions by the sounds I make. “Deeper than that. Almost. There you go.” It’s his mastery of me, as much as his dominant directives, that renders me a submissive puddle for him. I always do what he says, because if I don’t, he will know – and if I do, I will come. He will make sure that I do.

9. You would think that the orgasms would feel the way they do when I jerk off: quick, easy, small, predictable, perfunctory.

They don’t. They feel the way they do when he fucks me IRL: momentous and monumental, never quite expected, knocking me over like a wave. Afterwards, I lie there, cunt pulsing, breath slowing, all the energy and stress drained out of me. I listen to the rhythms of his voice and his breath, syncing with mine, floating back to earth, and I feel a peace and a connection I only ever previously knew while curled up against someone’s chest after they fucked the life out of me. I never knew I could get here without touching him at all. But here we are.

10. We learned pretty quickly that aftercare matters, even for phone sex. Saying good night just after orgasm left me as cold and alone as I’d be if one of us rolled over after sex, said “See ya,” and took off. My logical brain posited, “It’s just phone sex; it can’t need as much aftercare as an in-person kink scene does, because it can’t be as intense!” But it can be, and it often is, and aftercare is as important as ever.

We catch our breaths. We whisper I-love-you’s. We lie in bed sighing contentedly and giggling like goons. We describe how we would touch each other if we were together, and it feels almost real: fingertips brushing along heated skin. We find our way back to the world outside our little snowglobe. That world is just as harsh and unpredictable as ever, but I feel strengthened by the love I’ve given and received. Like a hot cup of coffee, my love emboldens me, refuels me, warms me right through.

There was a time when I thought I didn’t like phone sex. I wish I could lean back through time to that past version of me and tell her: “Just you wait.”

5 Ways to Make Long-Distance Relationships Suck Less

Kate Sloan

I always vowed, as a young naïve little thing, never to get into a long-distance relationship. Touch is one of my major love languages, and I’m not the type to need a lot of “space” in my relationships: if I love someone enough to want to be their girlfriend, usually I want them as close as possible, in every way possible.

So it was a surprise when I met a boy who lived in New York and wanted him to be my boyfriend. I knew more-or-less what that would entail, and I still wanted it. I knew how hard it would be, and I still wanted it. I had often wondered, unempathetically, of friends in LDRs, “Why can’t you just find someone closer to date?” and I see now that that’s a question akin to when folks used to ask me, “You’re attracted to butch women? Why not just date men?” The answer is, you can’t control who you fall for. When you want that specific person, it’s neither appealing nor always possible to find a passable stand-in. You want who you want, and you love who you love.

Like the relationship nerds we are, my partner and I have experimented with lots of strategies for feeling closer when we’re far apart. Here are five things I’ve found helpful…

He told me to order a Manhattan because that’s where he lives. What a dork.

Phone dates. My partner and I talk on the phone almost every day for at least an hour or two, which – oddly – means I’m in touch with him more consistently and intensely than I have been with anyone else I’ve dated, despite him living 500 miles away from me. It’s so nice!

Like in-person dates with a nearby beau, these can be either pre-planned or impromptu, and they’re delicious either way. Sometimes we talk aimlessly for hours while we’re both lying in bed; sometimes I get dressed up for a jaunt to my favorite restaurant and he chats with me throughout my meal; sometimes we have raucous phone sex (see below). In the early days of our relationship, we frequently stayed up all night talking for six or seven or eight hours, and it felt akin to those love-drunk dates where you watch the sunrise together on a rooftop or some romantic shit like that. Aww!

We also do weird-cute things like hanging out on the phone while we’re each separately working on our own stuff. Or like… I’m screensharing with him right now as I type this. (We’re nerds, okay?) Jasdev Singh uses the term “ambient intimacy” which reminds me of this kind of low-pressure, casual “date.”

Whether you go with Skype, FaceTime, or the actual goddamn phone, I think the real-time aspect is important here. Texting is fun, but it can feel like your partner lives in your phone – and you want them to feel real to you. So make the time for actual, meaningful chats.

Wearing his shirt. Aww

Physical mementos. I have a T-shirt of my partner’s that I keep in a Ziploc bag so it’ll continue to smell like him, and when I take it out and press it to my face, I almost always burst into tears. #OverEmotionalSlutLyfe, amirite?

I collect other little tokens, too: love notes he’s written me, tickets from shows we’ve gone to together, room keys from hotels we’ve stayed in, li’l gifts he’s given me, and so on. The ones that are flat enough get carried around with me in the back pocket of my Moleskine journal, so I can take ’em out whenever I need a reminder that I am loved. (Not sure what the people on the subway think I’m doing when I giggle awkwardly at a postcard I produce from the back of my notebook, but whatevs.)

Sending each other gifts in the mail is also adorable when feasible. I will never forget the time my partner sent me an enormous flower arrangement on Valentine’s Day, for example, and it still makes me smile to flip through the book he bought me just a few days after our first date. These keepsakes make our mostly-digital relationship feel more rooted in the material world. Like hickeys, bite marks, and bruises, they remind me that someone cares about me, even when he isn’t physically there to tell me so.

Digital intimacy. I used to staunchly believe you shouldn’t follow your beaux on Twitter, but, uh, I met this one on Twitter, sooo… maybe I should reconsider that policy. I get a li’l rush of adrenaline every time my love faves or replies to one of my tweets. Likewise when he texts me, emails me, Snapchats me, makes me Spotify playlists of songs that remind him of us… um, you get the picture.

We do nerdier shit, too, like using iOS’s “share location” feature so we can keep an eye on each other throughout our days, and adding continuously to a shared photostream that chronicles our relationship in snapshots and screenshots. (And, uh, cumshots.)

Lots of my LDR-experienced friends enjoy watching shows and movies online with their partner, by screensharing or using a service like Rabb.it. Could be a cute date night!

A lot of archaic h8erz will tell you that connecting via the internet is less legitimate than connecting physically, but a) I’ll take what I can get and b) they’re wrong. It all strengthens our relationship and makes us feel closer to each other so it’s all valid and important.

Phone sex. I HAVE A LOT OF FEELINGS ABOUT PHONE SEX. Eventually I will write some kind of how-to, although I don’t think I’m very good at it. (Suz is, though, and she wrote a good piece about it.)

Like in-person sex, phone sex can be whatever you want it to be. It can be as standardly vanilla or as deviantly kinky as you please. It can be hypothetical and distanced (“If I was there, I would…”) or immersively in-the-moment (“Get on your knees and suck my cock, little girl”). You can use toys (including app-compatible, LDR-friendly toys like the We-Vibe Sync!) or just get off the old-fashioned way. You can be yourselves, or play roles. You can craft detailed storylines, or just touch yourself and lapse into breathy moans.

Even though what we do during phone sex is essentially masturbation, it feels entirely different to me. The psychological and emotional aspects are much closer to my experience of partnered sex, and the orgasms are extra satisfying and exhausting the way that orgasms with partners usually are for me. Post-orgasm, when all that oxytocin is flooding my body, it’s so lovely to feel like I’m auditorily curling up with my partner for sweet cuddly aftercare. The whole process makes me feel so much closer to him and is often so good that I only miss fucking him IRL a little. (…Okay, more than a little. But less than I would if we weren’t having so damn much phone sex, that’s for sure.)

Doing our goodbye debrief at Reynard.

Proper goodbyes. The goodbyes my partner and I exchanged at the end of our second date were so disastrously bad that we vowed to never let that happen again. That farewell was rushed, took place in a crowded New York subway station, and ended on the sad note of us commiserating about how much we would miss each other and how hard it was to say goodbye. Then I got on the subway and he got into a cab and we both cried while texting each other about how hard we were crying. Not good!

In relationship-nerding about how to fix this issue for next time, we decided we needed to look at our in-person dates as if they were kink scenes – since they were just as emotionally and sexually intense as most kink scenes – and do proper aftercare. We needed a structured process to help us work through what we’d just experienced and float back into our regular lives without the harsh emotional drop we’d experienced that previous time.

Here’s what this looks like for us. We leave ourselves lots of time at the end of a date so we don’t have to rush our goodbye. We go for a leisurely meal or coffee. We talk about our favorite parts of the time we just spent together, both sexual and nonsexual. If possible, we try to nail down when our next date will be, even if it’s a month or more away, so we’ll have that to look forward to. We don’t say goodbye on the subway or in a cab, if possible, because that abruptness is the worst. Our goodbye on our third date took place outside his office building, where we could hug and kiss and stare moonily into each other’s eyes, etc., and we both left it feeling happy, hopeful, and only a little bit sad. Developing a farewell ritual that works for you is crucial, and worth taking the time to do!

What do you like to do to make long-distance relationships easier and more fun?