Been with DP 6 years but we don't live together. We met online and live 50 miles apart. We're both main carers to our DCs and both live near our exes so we took a decision at the start that it would be impossible to decide which of the DCs would have to leave their other parent / school / friends etc.
I don't regret this decision. It would have been so hard to make the move for either of us. All our DCs are now at or nearly at secondary school and see their other parent through the week.
The problem is that I've reached the end of my tether with the long distance thing. Six years of living out of a suitcase every weekend, driving down after a long week and being a single parent all week long. I decided at the beginning of the year that I'd had enough and it was time to end it.
Then whenever he comes here or I go there, we immediately switch into couple time. We have a laugh, get on well, have lots in common. I spend the whole weekend thinking I'd be mad to end it. It took me a long time to find a good bloke, why would I throw it away. Last weekend we just went to the garden centre and went for a walk. Proper couple stuff, and it was just so lovely.
Then I leave or he does, and I immediately burst into tears because I don't want to be in a LDR any more. I decide I'm definitely going to end it next weekend, I can't do it by phone / text etc it's got to be face to face, and spend the week thinking I'll definitely do it next time I see him, then I get there, he gives me a hug and puts the kettle on and the whole thing goes round in a circle again. He has no idea I'm even thinking of ending it and it would come as a huge shock I'm sure. He talks of when we can move in together in 8 years.
I know I should just end it but I've been trying to do it for months and my heart isn't in it. I keep thinking there must be a way of making it work but I just can't think how.
Has anyone made a long distance relationship last for this long? It will be 14 years in total before we could even think of moving in together. That's frightening now I've written it down!