SSP153: Listen to these 9 minutes if you want your long distance relationship to last

One of the biggest challenges in relationships is learning to maintain the intimacy when you spend time apart. And maybe you're experiencing this in your relationship. You've got some travel coming up, you're spending a time away from your loved one, and maybe you're a little bit concerned on how to maintain that sense of connection when you're far away from each other. And I wanted to make this video to share some of the big lessons and opportunities I've seen since doing more than two years of long distance with my partner and how you can start to incorporate some of these shifts in perspective while you're away and still have a nourishing relationship that still feels like you're just as close together, even though if you're not physically in proximity with each other. Now, to give you some bit of backstory about this, my partner is from Canada, I'm from Australia. And we first started dating when we were 21. And I met her on exchange while I was studying in the Niagara region, Ontario. And my first night out partying, I met this amazing Canadian lady. And I thought at the time that was a one and done kind of thing. And it just so happened I ended up bumping into her every single night. Every time I went out for the first week, I went home with her. Fast forward to today, and she's been my partner for the last almost 10 years. Soon to be married. I might propose to her soon when the time's right. And what that what involved or what opened up for me during that process. At the end of my exchange period, after four months of seeing, seeing her and being with her, we faced the prospect of me having to go back to my regular life in Australia. I had a corporate job set up after I finished my degree, and she obviously had a few semesters left at school in Canada. So we were kind of like, okay, what do we do here? End this relationship or do we keep it going? We ended up deciding just to leave it. And I flew back to Australia and a few months went by and I realized, hey, I really love this girl. I want to, I want to give this a crack. I really want to give it a shot. So I called her up one afternoon, just said, hey, I'm down to give this long distance thing a go if you are, and to see if we can make this work. And she said yes. So it took us a couple of months to figure out a plan for when we were going to see each other again. And she ended up booking a flight to Australia and she got her visa sorted and we Ended up doing long distance for eight months. Eight months of talking on the phone, really developing that connection with each other. And what it enabled something huge to unlock in our relationship was just the foundations. The foundations were so solid because we realized we just loved hanging out with each other. We love speaking to each other on the phone. We love connecting and conversing as friends. And maybe in your relationship, maybe you've overlooked that part. Maybe your partner's become a bit of a just someone that you live with, maybe a housemate. You're losing that sense of friendship and connection. Because a relationship can play many roles, and the roles really get defined or refined when you spend time away from each other. And I know you're probably thinking, yeah, but that was eight months. It wasn't two years. But over the course of the 10 years I've been with my partner, we've had many moments where we've spent months apart because she was back traveling, seeing her family. I was traveling to another destination because of my job or my business. And cumulatively, there's been over two years of time apart. And the time apart has obviously shifted and evolved. It's. Our relationship has evolved, but the core of it kind of stays the same. I want to share that with you to implement to your relationship, if you are going to spend time apart from your loved one, the core of it is there must be a daily checkpoint. You must always have some sort of daily checkpoint, and it differs from man to woman. What I found for us guys is that it can be so easy to get lost in our. In our work or our solo time. I really love having solo time, so I actually feel like I get really clear and dialed in when I'm on my own. But it's important that I don't neglect just touching base with my partner, giving her a message, sending her something beautiful, giving her a reminder, just going out of my way to make sure she knows I'm thinking about her is key. So if you're a man, make sure you set that up, have some reminders throughout the day, drop her a nice message, and that's going to go a long way to make sure she feels loved and loved and led and supported by you. If you can, set up a call at least once a week where you have the opportunity to speak about things that you're feeling, unpacking emotions from the week, really having that safe space where you and your partner can still really confide in each other is so important because depth of connection is built upon how much authenticity we can open up how much emotions can we share and allow the other person to receive that? And you don't need to be in physical proximity with someone to do that. You can do that on the, on the phone. So it's important that you carve out that time where you can have deep conversations. A deep conversation for me requires over an hour, so just know that. Go make sure you're looking at your schedule once a week schedule in a minimum of one hour conversation. You can call that like your date, your hangout time, right? You could do, you know, have a glass of wine while you do it. You can maybe watch a show while you do it. You can maybe while you're getting ready to go out or something, just have extended periods of time where you're going deep with your partner. More the better. But at least once a week, I would suggest. Now the other thing I like to do is build sexual anticipation. One of the beauties of spending time away from your loved one is you really start to build a stronger desire for them sexually because obviously the physical aspect's not there. And you can play with this a bit. And I know you get where I'm going with this, right? But what I found, like, after a few weeks I'm like, wow, I'm fucking getting really horny right now. I'm like really missing my girl. And she, I'll get her to send me photos, I get her to send me things to just like, just nurture that spark. And as a man, my suggestion is refrain from ejaculation. Don't watch porn, it should be a given, but just remove porn from your life. Remove looking at Instagram models or anything like that, Just, just look at your woman, get her to send you photos and let the juices of that real polarity and attraction come back. And this can be a beautiful thing because for my partner recently, we just reunited in Colombia. We about six weeks apart and we have felt so connected since, since reuniting. Like the polarity is so strong. Like my, I just keep getting hard around it all the time. And for me it's, it's a beautiful thing that you can be in a long term relationship and still feel like you've just met each other and that's how you can keep this honeymoon period going. I feel like we've created so many mini honeymoon periods throughout the 10 years of being together. It's really allowed the relationship to take on a whole new trajectory. It's allowed a depth of connection to go even deeper and most importantly, the depth of attraction. So spending time Apart allows this attraction to come back. You rediscover or your woman or your man with new eyes. How good's that? It's all down to how you set up your time away. So remember, as men refrain from ejaculation, see how long you can go. I've gone, I've gone months without ejaculating. But I set up certain rituals and practices in my life to be able to circulate that energy so it's not stagnating and I'm becoming neurotic and distracted and destabilized. But just remember, the more you hold on to your life force and your semen, the more energy is going to build inside of you. Right? Which makes the sexual encounter when you first reunite just amazing, man. You won't last very long, but just allow that. My suggestion is, when you do kind of get into the heat of love making, when you first reconnect, see if you can bask in the. In the pleasure. See if you can allow that pleasure to intensify and relax into that intensity. And it's a beautiful spiritual practice for men to become more capacitated to sexual intensity because it's your ability to widen your container on an emotional level so that you can handle more of her emotions. And being away from each other also allows you to practice that in your own life. As you build your sexual life force, you're going to notice that you don't have outlets through sex to distract yourself. You don't have outlets through ejaculation to release that intensity. And time away from your partner is going to allow you to build that and deepen into your connection with your own body. And then also when you have time alone, it's how can you deepen into your own sexual practices? You know, for me, learning to connect sensually with myself without needing an end result, but learning to just feel more deeply and allow that sexual energy to move through the body is a really great thing to do. And both men and women can do that. And I would suggest it. So you've got these really beautiful things that unlock through spending time away from each other. And I found there is a sweet spot, you know, for us when we spent three months apart from each other last month, that was really hard. It was really hard to spend that time away. And when you're on different time zones, I was back in Australia and my partner was in Europe, in Portugal. And we just found it really challenging to find times to connect. But what's so important is that friendship, intimacy, where you can have a Laugh together, you know, make sure you set that up and you'll find that you'll come back together even stronger. The beauty as well is when you have time away, you'll get new perspectives of ways that you can show up better in the relationship. And that's the invitation to here with this is treat it as a time where you're on retreat from your partner and you want to come back together. Almost symbolizing the beginning of a new chapter and a new, you know, a new evolution of your relationship and define what is gonna be better, what is something you can both agree on so that you can both build on this attraction that's there and nurture it and support it. So that would be my, my. Another suggestion is come back together, prepared for a new level that you're gonna co create and if you're a man, build out a plan. When you're on your own, build out a plan like, build out like a plan for your relationship that you can enroll your partner into and she's gonna feel so inspired and led by you that she's just gonna melt. Promise you that. So there's some opportunities for embracing time away from each other. And then time away is also. What are you filled that extra slot with? Remember, you know, you've got all this space now in your life. Your partner's not there, what are you going to do with that space for the men? Again, I would highly suggest filling it with development, personal development, business development, filling your mind, expanding your ability to deepen into your purpose, whatever that may be like for me in my life. You know, I, whenever I'm away from my partner, I go deep into my meditation or I'll go deep into learning on a new topic or go deep into understanding a new marketing channel. In my business, I fill that time productively with things that allow me to go further in my purpose. Because when I'm around my partner, I'm going deep. I'm going deeper into intimacy and lovemaking and support and relational leadership and sometimes more just pleasure and fun and relaxation because the feminine energy in my life supports that. So there's growth in both. But just make sure you utilize it. It's beautiful and I'll leave it there if you want more support going deeper. I have a five day email course. The link will be in the description. Really to give you the clarity on how to love and lead with confidence in your relationship. People are going through it, are loving it, so highly suggest checking it out. All the best on your relational journey, my friend. We'll see in the next video. Peace.