When loneliness struck, I visited my friend Annie. An Army wife and former soldier, she understood the pain and the gain of long-distance love. Annie served in Iraq in 2005, separated from her husband, Michael, a captain in the Army who also served in Iraq. After they returned home, she ended her military career, but their long-distance chapter continued. Ordered to Washington, D.C., Michael moved ahead of a pregnant Annie, who stayed at their home in Georgia for months. Their new mission was to keep their guns blazing for each other with quickies all along the East Coast. After that first round of separation, they lived and loved for two years under the same roof in Alexandria, Virginia. The couple recently separated again in May when Michael redeployed to Iraq for more than a year. "I don't think it affects our marriage in a bad way at all," she said. "In fact, I think it makes us closer." Despite data to the contrary, people want to believe that long-distance relationships systematically fail, but a study by the Rand Corporation, a research firm based in Santa Monica, Calif., concluded that deployed military couples divorced each other at a lesser rate than military couples living together. If couples fighting a war can hold things together, surely civilian long-distance lovers have a shot at keeping love alive. Others draw the same conclusion. In July 2005, my friends Ranjit and Brigit met in Moscow, where Brigit studied Russian and Ranjit worked in the telecommunications industry. Love blossomed between the Indian-American businessman and the German saleswoman.
Three years, and multiple cross-continental quickies later, the couple exchanged vows in Ansbach, Germany last summer among an international group of friends (some of whom took advantage of the occasion for their own quickies). At the reception, Ranjit pointed guests to their assigned tables, which were named after all the cities where the couple had had "dates." For Brian and me, our dates to Lebanon, Morocco, London, South Africa and Cameroon propelled us through long and short periods of our separation. With limited togetherness, we fought less, and when we did fight, we made up faster. Interacting less means having fun matters more. More than two and a half years into our long-distance marriage, our passion for each other reminded us of our early days of dating. The combined months of webcam calls and smelling his pillowcase at night stirred an intense sense of longing in me. At that point, just the thought of reaching up and kissing Brian's actual lips sent flutters through my stomach. So when he called shortly after my third mission to Cameroon to say our quickies were over, my heart sank. Then he explained that his job demands now required that we all move to Douala to live permanently. Sitting alone in our kitchen in Alexandria, my pulse quickened as I daydreamed about our future: love under one roof. n°
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