How to Keep an International Romance | Guidable - Your Guide to a Sustainable, Wellbeing-centred Life in Japan

How to Keep an International Romance

By Guidable Writers Sep 15, 2016

Recently the style of love and romance is getting more and more casual.

The younger generation is having a more tolerant and flexible idea about anything, including love and romance. The number of people in Japan dating and getting married to foreigners is increasing quickly. I personally married an American man two years ago. If my grandmother who experienced World War Ⅱ were alive today, and saw my future spouse, she would have probably thought that it’s a forbidden love and protested against our marriage. However times have changed and many international couples do not receive such protest these days. I think many international couples are able to keep their relationship, even if they are living in different countries. Based on my experience, I’d like to write how my husband and I kept our relationship while living in Japan and America for more than 2 years.

 

 

Fortunately, because of the internet, the actual distance of couples is not equal to the psychological distance. That must be one of the luckiest things of this time. We can feel that we are much, much closer because of internet connections through Skype, E-mail, Chat, Line, and many other communication tools that make simultaneous contact possible.

 

We often exchanged email (maybe once a day) on weekdays and had Skype talk on weekends. We usually set up the time when to have Skype talk from Thursday to Friday to think about the time difference between two countries. If it’s in the morning in Japan, it’s night the day before in America. I was often jealous that it’s still Sunday morning in America while still being Sunday night in Japan… Anyway, the important thing is not to take time so much but to take certain time a day that doesn’t annoy your daily life. More importantly, you should enjoy your daily life aside from romance. You should continue practicing a hobby, hanging out with your friends, cooking, shopping, etc and not only focus on being apart from your partner.

 

 

However, keeping in touch through the internet doesn’t always keep the relationship stable and strong. Sometimes you might want to complain about many things. The biggest thing is we can’t actually meet each other so easily. Internet doesn’t shorten the actual distance between you. In our case we often talked about traveling to Japan, America, or outside of these countries during Golden Week, Obon break, or Christmas holidays. That’s fun to imagine, and we can enjoy making a travel itinerary for where we plan to visit. Believing each other and waiting for the time to meet are not easy. But trying to approach your relationship a day at a time will be the best way for you to keep the relationship stable and better!

 

Rumiko

Japan