The following is how my relationship with someone who lives far away led me to enjoy travelling.

Is there anything that could be more romantic than giving your boyfriend a last kiss on the platform of a train station while snowflakes fall from the moonlight sky? When I was 20 years old and stood in Charlottesville, Virginia, with my boots buried in the snow while watching my boyfriend's train drive away from the platform, I didn't believe it to be the case. As I watched the wheels pick up pace, I was whisked away to a time period that I had only ever seen through black and white films such as "Brief Encounter" and "Love in the Afternoon." The huge, wet flakes, my chilly lips brushing against his before breaking apart, the dark silhouette of the train gliding into the blackness of the night — every beautiful element defined our love as fated as one of Jane Austen's couples would be considered to be in one of her novels.

During the four years that we spent apart due to our long distance relationship, we frequently found ourselves in situations similar to the one you described. When we were both 16, my then-boyfriend and I started dating the person who would later become my husband. We went our separate ways before embarking on our college experiences in other states. He went to Clemson University, which is located in South Carolina, while I attended the University of Virginia, which is located in Charlottesville. However, despite the fact that we would spend the majority of the following four years living in different locations, we reconciled our relationship after spending our first year of college apart from one another.

We spent the first two years of college moving back and forth between our respective college cities whenever we had free time and financial resources. Before he could afford a car, he travelled to see me by taking the sleeper train. I would travel to be with him. After I completed my degree early and began working as a full-time teacher for Teach for America in Memphis, it became even more difficult to find time to spend together due to the fact that I was working and we had moved further apart. When he finally finished school a year later and relocated to Ithaca, New York, to attend Cornell's graduate school, the logistics situation grew more difficult.

Now, after more than a decade has passed, I reflect back on those years during which we were geographically apart and wonder how we made it through. When that day comes, I'll think back to the image of him stepping off the train wearing wrinkled trousers and a grey rucksack draped over his shoulder. He was silhouetted against the rising light as it peaked over the Blue Ridge Mountains. After my flight was cancelled and I was forced to find an alternative method of transportation, I will never forget the sense of relief that I experienced when I saw his lanky physique and brown locks for the first time at the muggy bus station. As I pulled into a random McDonald's parking lot in Richmond, Virginia, where he was getting left off, I will always remember the thrill of seeing him smile through the windscreen of his friend's car. It was two in the morning.

It didn't matter that we never went someplace exciting or together because we didn't start taking trips of that nature until much later, when we were living in the same city and both had jobs. Even though we were just going to see each other for a single day, the overnight trains, planes, and autos that we travelled to see each other when we were in our early 20s felt more romantic than any of the wonderful vacations that we enjoyed as "adults," including our honeymoon in Kauai.

It's possible that the standard for what constituted a "good trip" back then was far lower than it is today. We did not have any plans, such as locations to visit or restaurants to try, for our trip. Simply being together was all that we want. It did not make a difference if I packed the wrong clothes or if I came down with a cold. It didn't make a difference that we were snowed in in his filthy flat, which he shared with three other guys, because there was an ice storm outside.

We were not hiking the Kalalau Trail along the Napali Coast, watching the sunset on a beach with white sand, or exploring the Nantucket streets with their cobblestones. During such vacations, although I much enjoyed discovering new places with him, I also had pangs of disappointment. In contrast to our carefree long-distance weekends, this journey came with the added strain of trying to generate new memories and give the impression that we were on a romantic retreat.

We love travel to long distance, especially with my love partner and our fellas. Hope after the war to buy caravan and will drive through Europe, later USA pic.twitter.com/eYgEveZjdt

— Roman Kyryliuk 🇺🇦 (@KyryliukRoma) October 14, 2022

After we moved in together, I found that I missed travelling for the simple purpose of saying hello or farewell to friends and family. There is nothing more romantic than knowing that your journey will come to an end the moment you see your partner. It is the sensation of Darcy and Elizabeth finally coming face to face in the countryside after a great deal of miscommunication. At the conclusion of a great number of romantic comedies, this statement is made at an airport. That's what makes up for the time spent away, and that's one of the reasons I find myself missing it.

After the birth of our daughter in 2018, I found that I did not have as many occasions on which I missed my husband. Because the majority of his work and business trips lasted less than a week, I was able to order takeout and watch television without having to worry about him interrupting me.

When my kid turned one, I finally started to give those brief separations some serious thought. She would crawl up to the front door on a daily basis and rub her nose against the glass as she waited for my husband to arrive home from work. The joy that she was clearly experiencing served as a visual reminder of how I used to feel. As I watched her, a memory came to me of how the hellos and goodbyes we exchanged kept us going until we could be together again.

In the present, however, the opposite is true. We are about to enter our fourth year of primarily living together as opposed to spending the previous four years primarily apart from one another. My husband started working from home in March of the year 2020. It appears like he has no intention of going to work today. Only two brief business visits have been recorded for him. This degree of proximity is the exact opposite of the distances that used to divide us, which included mountains, states, and oceans (during the time that I spent studying abroad for the summer).

Now that we are married grownups attempting to navigate life with young children during an ongoing worldwide pandemic, the distances we traverse are primarily figurative. We consider going to places like Target or the supermarket to be the equivalent as travelling. Instead, becoming a parent is a "journey" in and of itself. the "journey" of spending one's life with another person. The majority of this form of "travel," in fact, consists of closing ideological divides. My heart does not race or my knees buckle when I listen to people argue over things like how to punish a three-year-old, potty training, or the division of labour.

In a more idealised version of our story, I would say that the commitment of those four years that we spent in a long-distance relationship prepared me for the difficulties that would come with getting married. However, I don't believe that to be the case. It is not the tenacity that binds us together; rather, it is the romanticism of those hellos and goodbyes that serve as touchstones for our common past.

The fact that we went to such great lengths to find each other is evidence that the destination is always worth the trip. Even now, we continue to be each other's final destination. There is still no one else that I would prefer to say goodbye to at the train station or drive to the airport with or sit across from on the couch and quarrel with about who's turn it is to do the dishes before bedtime. It would seem that going to great lengths, both literally and figuratively, in order to discover one another is one of the most romantic things that can be done. If I need a reminder, all I have to do is think about a shadowy train disappearing into an even darker sky; I'm already looking forward to the train's return.