Long-distance relationships are hard. But having one in a pandemic is like playing life at Boss Level. You fight, you cry, you laugh, you miss each other really badly and sometimes you feel like you’re going crazy. Trust me, you’re not alone and you’re not going crazy. 

With all the uncertainty that this pandemic has brought with it, you might have experienced or are still experiencing the 5 stages of Pandemic Relationship Acceptance. PRA for short for those who are going PRAning. Read on to find out which stage you’re in. 

Anxiety and Denial

A year ago, the first cases of COVID-19 were detected and the lockdowns began. Travel bans were imposed and this is when the anxiety and denial begin to set in. If your significant other is in another city, let alone another continent, the worry of not seeing them for god knows when is so real. Pre-booked flights get canceled or postponed, and the surreal feeling and the thought of this-is-not-happening plays over and over like a broken record. You begin to worry about whether your relationship will survive this hurdle. 

Frustration and Anger 

You’re mad. You’re frustrated. You realize that the borders are still closed. You keep asking how we all ended up here in the first place. You become irritable and a bit insecure with the relationship because of the difficulty of not seeing each other for an uncertain period of time. You contemplate whether it’s still worth it. But it’s a two-way relationship and you ask your partner whether they still want to do this with you or not. And this can go on for months and you might even go back to this feeling again and again through the course of this lockdown. 

Bargaining 

This could happen simultaneously with frustration and anger. You begin to ask a higher being or universal force why this happened and what you can do to make things better. You even try bargaining and saying you’ll be a good person from now on or do something out of the ordinary just to get the gods to be on your side again. You think about past vacations you’ve had with your partner and wish you could just replay or time-travel back to that point in time again. 

Sadness and Hopelessness

Many have gone through all of these feelings all at the same time. But these stages aren’t exactly linear. You can feel sadness and hopelessness in the beginning. It can happen along with the other stages too. But when you’re at this stage, you’re thinking of how you can get to your partner faster but then you look at all the requirements for travel and think of the expenses and the hassle. You get sad and might even want to quit. There are days when you just can’t plan things. But this is part of the process. It happens. You get sad, you feel like there’s no way to get through this. But then you are reminded that this is all worth it with every call, text, message, and video call. And you hold on just a bit longer. 

Acceptance and Optimism

Quarantine has eased up and you begin to feel that glimmer of hope. If you’re still in your relationship by now with all the struggles you’ve gone through with your partner over the last year, then congratulations and kudos to both of you! It hasn’t been easy, but now you’ve reached the stage where you’ve accepted that this is how it is. Travel will be difficult and more expensive, but then you realize that the person you’ve been waiting to be with is worth all of this. So you plan your next trips and you slowly find your way back to each other. 

I know all the stages and have gone through them because I’m in a long-distance relationship myself. It took me almost a year to finally reach the stage of acceptance and optimism, and there are some days when I relapse to the previous stages. You might experience them again too.

But when times get really difficult, the right partner will remind you that you can get through anything together. If your partner isn’t doing that, then you might want to ask yourself if you can stand being with someone who’s only there for the sunshine but not the rainstorms. 

When I ask my partner why he’s still here and why he’s still with me despite the distance, he always quotes John F. Kennedy. 

“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do other things not because they are easy; but because they are hard.” 

So always remember that distance is not a hindrance especially when a person means so much. If your significant other thinks that the relationship is worth it, they will do their absolute best to keep you in their lives.