The key to romantic love is often controlled by these two criteria
. 1) Having intimate fantasies about the person, and
2) keeping the person in your mind for sufficiently long time.

Also, when you are having intimate fantasies about more than one person, the one who you give more space in your mind, will likely qualify for your romantic love feelings.

Once in a relationship, these two criteria have to be constantly fulfilled. This is where “long distance” makes it almost impossible for a relationship to sustain itself.

When you are living with your partner, you see him/her every day. You both talk every day. So whenever you have anything to share you always have your partner to share it with. There’s no need to think of someone else, more than you think of your partner. Besides, when you are seeing your partner every day, in person, he/she gets deeper place in your mind. Every day when you see your partner in intimacy, the chemicals in the brain intensify the feelings. This way, the feelings don’t get a chance to diminish beyond a point.

You see, that’s the reason why in traditional wisdom of many cultures having friendships with the people of the opposite sex, outside of marriage, is not considered morally good. There’s a science behind it.

Note that I am not implying that every relationship in which the partners live together will last. Of course, it depends on maturity and understanding and all that. But here we are talking about a long distance relationship vis-à-vis a normal one, so I am mentioning the pluses of a normal healthy relationship, which a long distance one, even with best intentions on part of the partners, lacks.



Long distance relationship suffers from the following minuses —

In a long distance relationship there are two groups of factors responsible for ending romantic love (Weakening factors and Diverting factors).

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Weakening factors

These are the factors that are responsible for weakening the image of your partner in your brain.


• It is simple to understand. When you don’t see each other, it would naturally weaken the image of your partner in your brain, with time.
• Even though you may talk to each other everyday (yes, let’s assume everyday) and share thoughts, you can’t share each other’s thoughts and feelings to an extent you would do if you were living together. This also has a gradual impact on weakening the bond; because the bond is all about sharing of personal space.
• Since you don’t meet each other and spend intimate time the way you would if you lived together, you would miss out on the periodic boosts to your feelings for each other, which happens when partners spend great time with each other.
• Not all romantic relationships are based on sharing of thoughts and interests. Quite a few of them are dependent on sexual intimacy between the partners; though, of course, the partners under the effect of romantic love would never realize it. If so is yours, then once the “long distance” takes it away, there’s already little substance left which can hold the relationship for long.

Many more could be listed. I’ll add them as they strike me.


Diverting factors

These are the factors which play a role in diverting your feelings to someone else.


• When you are living away from your partner, you will look for other people to share your thoughts with; for a simple reason that you are a human being who needs expression of his/her thoughts. And the one we share our thoughts with, naturally occupies a space in our mind.
• In your circle you will talk to other people of the opposite sex, of course. Sexual instinct in us is always active, whether we are aware of it or not. So it is unlikely that you will not like mingling with the people of the opposite sex, when you are away from your partner. And while we are talking about only “mingling”, most people don’t see harm in it as long as they don’t make a sexual move.
• But here’s the catch: Most people are not aware that even “mingling” can prove to be fatal. If you came across someone who you find even slightly interesting, your mind will give space to that person in it. It may not involve sexual fantasy, but that’s still enough. In normal circumstances, it probably wouldn’t have mattered; but in a long distance situation, due to the group-one factors I mentioned above, the image of your partner is already weakening; that makes it easier for this person to outlast the time your partner occupies in your mind. Once that happened, bam!
• Most people don’t even see any harm in having sexual fantasies. People have sexual fantasies about other people even while having sex with their partner. So, if you consider it harmless and do it, there are huge chances that this new person of your fantasy will take over your feelings entirely, before you know it.


If you perfectly understand the romantic love mechanism, you would know that all it takes for your brain to create romantic feelings for some person is that you keep the person in your mind more than anyone else, and/or have intimate fantasies about the person. When even one of these criteria is met, the chances are very high that your brain will create/divert your feeling in favor of the person fulfilling the criteria. Your brain chemicals won’t know that you are already in a relationship!

Even the people with strong character and best intensions are subject to these mostly inevitable perils of a long distance situation.

It may sound silly, but it’s not. Try going long distance for a couple of years and you will understand it. Even with best intentions, all these things happen, and that puts an end to romantic feelings. Determination doesn’t work as well as we like to believe it would. Simply because romantic feelings don’t come and go with reason; it often happens without us even noticing it.

However, there’s nothing wrong with keeping optimism alive. But I would say more than optimism, genuine understanding of romantic love mechanism can help. Use www.NaHere.com today to meet new interesting people staying nearest to you. Closeness matters.