When Elizabeth Whitmore, 19, moved to England for a year, leaving her boyfriend in Washington, D.C., she relied on the postal service to sustain her relationship. “It was a good way to communicate because you really had to think about what you were saying,” she says. “We would write three- and four-page letters, sometimes erotic. And when he went on tour around the United States, he sent me 180 post cards. It was fun and personal.” Getting personal is exactly what keeps couples together. While generic gifts such as flowers and chocolate are nice, handmade gifts that come from the heart make a lasting impression.

Maximize Your Time.
Dealing with the distance is only half the battle; learning how to maximize what limited time you do spend together is the other half. Dr. Brandon says that when couples do reconnect, they should establish some guidelines for quality time together. “If he thinks quality time means taking her out with his friends and showing her off at a club and she thinks quality time is going to an intimate restaurant and then going to bed, there’s going to be a problem,” Brandon says.

To solve this problem, 29-year-old Mary-Beth Ellis and her boyfriend have developed an informal ritual. “The first thing we do is we hug each other, then we go to the couch and start talking,” she says. “We reconnect with each other first.”

It’s certainly not impossible to stay together when many miles separate you—it’s all a matter of keeping connected in new ways. If you’re both willing to communicate when you’re apart and reconnect when you reunite, then your relationship and your sex life will survive wonderfully.

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