I am in a long distance relationship and I love this man, I really fucking love him so much and I’m scared of what parts of me I might give up to make this relationship work… I’m scared there are internships I won’t take because I want to be near him, but I can’t do that, I can’t change my ambitions because of a man, even this man… I’m also afraid of ending this so that I don’t feel held back from my ambitions, only to have terrible sex with men I barely find attractive only to feel empty and miss any shred of him. What if I do everything I ever want to in my career only to miss this one person I love, or more accurately, what if I end this and spend the next years of my PhD lonely, missing him, filling that void with sort of hot guys from Tinder whose personalities ultimately bore and depress me… Reasonably I see myself not wanting to feel so lonely all the time, to want to have a partner in the same city as me, but also, I rarely like someone for long enough to want to see them consecutively, so what are the odds I end this and am able to fall for someone again… I have someone I respect and whose personality clicks better than anything has ever clicked before, he may be far away for now, but isn’t something better than the alternative? He is not physically here, but he is someone to plan trips with, someone to call before I go to sleep, to text all day, the person I want to share funny things with or interesting news.

I need to find a way to be okay alone, to not feel so vulnerable, to not cry alone at night when I’ve had too much to drink, to not let the sadness and loneliness get in the way of my work and of living my life, forging new friendships and all that. I think its worth it, and even if its not I can’t bring myself to imagine the void of not having him at all and that dependence is fucking terrifying. I need to create some space between us, or this neediness I constantly feel will add more strain to the relationship. I just don’t know how to do it… for now I’m going to not announce every time I’m horny for him (because that’s also been a daily thing, thank goodness for porn and vibrators), and give him the space to text me first, also give myself the space to not rely on him so much emotionally. I also need to stop binging so much netflix/hbo etc., … but thats a whole other can of problems.