THE JOURNAL / THE DAYS BETWEEN
Self-care in a long distance relationship: looking after yourself
Distance can wear down sleep, mood and routine without you noticing. A practical rhythm of daily, weekly and visit-season care for the person doing the waiting.
Long-distance relationships have a way of rearranging your body clock. You stay up for a call that starts at midnight your time. You eat dinner standing up because the video chat runs long. You spend the week before a visit too excited to sleep and the week after too flat to cook. None of this feels dramatic in the moment, but over months it adds up.
Self-care here does not mean bubble baths and scented candles, although those are fine. It means noticing what distance is costing you physically and emotionally, and putting a few things back. Think of it in rhythms: what you do every day, what you do every week, and what you do around visits.
Every day: protect the basics
Sleep comes first
Time zones are the most common way distance damages self-care. If your only overlap is late at night or early in the morning, it is tempting to sacrifice sleep every single day. Try instead to agree on a few "late" calls a week and let the rest be shorter, or asynchronous. A voice message recorded at a sensible hour and listened to over breakfast can feel just as close as a groggy conversation at 1 a.m.
Eat like someone is looking after you
Many people living alone during a relationship drift into snacking for dinner. One simple trick: cook as if your partner were coming over. Set the table, make the real version. Or cook "together" over video once a week, the same recipe in two kitchens.
Move a little
You do not need a training plan. A daily walk, ideally in daylight, does a lot for mood and sleep. If you like, make it a shared habit: you each walk at a time that suits you and send one photo from the route.
Every week: refill on purpose
Daily care keeps you steady. Weekly care is about refilling what the distance drains.
- One thing that is just for you. A film your partner would not like, a long bath, a morning at the library, an afternoon in the park with a book. Unshared on purpose.
- One real-life conversation. With a friend, a parent, someone who can see your face without a screen.
- One small check-in with yourself. Ten minutes on a Sunday to ask: how am I actually doing? What drained me this week? What helped?
The weekly check-in sounds small, but it is how you catch things early: the creeping tiredness, the irritability before calls, the sense that you have stopped doing things you enjoy.
Around visits: plan for the before and the after
Visits are wonderful and also hard on the body. Travel is tiring, emotions run high, and routines disappear for days at a time.
Before
Get ahead of the small stuff: laundry, groceries, any work you can finish early. Arriving exhausted means spending the first day recovering instead of being together.
During
You do not need to fill every hour. A slow morning, a nap, an evening in with takeout can be just as memorable as a busy itinerary. If you are the host, it is fine to keep one or two of your normal routines going.
After
The days after a goodbye are often the hardest stretch of the whole cycle. Plan for them the way you would plan for a cold: keep the first evening gentle, have food in the house, arrange something with a friend for the following day. Some people write down three favorite moments from the visit on the train or plane home, which turns the sadness into something a little warmer.
Signs you are running on empty
It helps to know your own warning lights. Common ones include:
- Dreading calls you used to look forward to.
- Snapping at your partner over small delays or missed messages.
- Skipping plans with friends because you might be needed online.
- Feeling tired all the time, even on days you slept.
- Losing interest in things that usually give you energy.
One or two of these now and then is normal. Several at once, for weeks, usually means something needs to change: the call schedule, your workload, how much time you spend alone. And if low mood, anxiety or exhaustion persist or feel heavy, please talk to a doctor or a mental-health professional. That is a form of self-care too, and an important one.
Self-care is not selfish here
Some people feel that putting themselves first, even for an evening, is unfair to a partner who is also struggling. In practice, the opposite tends to be true. A rested, fed, reasonably happy person is a better partner across a screen than an exhausted one who has given up everything to be available.
It can even be something you do together: share what each of you is doing to look after yourselves this month, cheer each other on, notice when the other one is slipping. Caring for yourself and caring for the relationship are not in competition. Most of the time, they are the same thing.
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