Finding things to keep an LDR fresh and exciting can be frustrating and at times tedious. But I have come up with a few ideas and tips that Jane and I use when looking for things to do together whilst apart.

I'm here to let you know about a few things Jane and I do ourselves to keep us busy and entertained.

It's hard to always keep busy though. You might not be in the mood to do something. Or you might not have the time to something because of the time zone differences. And sometimes even talking is more than enough.

But what if you want to do more than talk? Here's some suggestions:

Watch a TV show or a film together.

This is something Jane and I do often. Not too long ago we started watching New Girl, which is hilarious. We've also watched a British comedy called Bad Education and I can't start about the amount of films we've seen together.

It's really easy to do. Just find a show or show to watch that both you and your significant other are interested in, buffer your file and do a little 3, 2, 1 countdown and start watching. It'll keep you busy for a good amount of time for an extended period. It might take you a week to watch a show or maybe 3 months, as long as it keeps you busy.

A few days ago, I received a really cute package from LeafCutter Designs; their deluxe tiny mail kit (also known as the world’s smallest post service). I was super excited to try this product out as it’s one of those products that is really unique and it brings a little bit of pizazz to packages and letters to your loved ones - in my case, Davy.

When I first opened the package, I was stunned at how compact everything was. Usually DIY kits are far larger than advertised, but it LITERALLY is a tiny mail kit. It made me giggle at how small the stationary sheets were. I was expecting to have to use tweezers to handle it but thankfully my fingers were careful (and small) enough handling everything. The kit comes with different coloured stationary sheets, very fun-size postage stickers, various mini envelopes (plus not-so-tiny translucent envelopes for your minuscule envelopes to go into), brown paper and string for craft boxes and last but not least: some very cute special delivery/air mail stamps and ink. You also get a special edition of ‘the small times’ especially made for the tiny mail kit, along with a LeafCutter Designs magnifying glass! I did notice there was a DIY cut out mailbox, which I’m planning to make with Davy when we have our next visit!

Every relationship has its own goals. Whether you’re in a long distance relationship or a close distance one, it’s important to have a goal or maybe an idea for your future hopes. A long term relationship isn’t worth having if neither of you are willing to put the effort or commitment into it.

So if you find yourself in a long distance relationship, there is a 95% chance that you’re in it for the long haul and it isn’t just something you’re experimenting with compared to close distance ones whereas people are more relaxed and just go with the flow. Many of us (I say many of us but I mean like all of us) who are actually in a long distance relationship want commitment and want something permanent out of it and that’s usually closing the distance and settling down into a life together. Davy and I are no different. We’ll be discussing our future plans and how we intend to go about them.

So where and how does a couple start thinking about their future together?

First of all, you need to make sure that you’re on the same page as a couple. Both of us discussed what we intended to get out of the relationship. We were both pretty young still, and uncertain with what we wanted to even do with our lives. But we knew that we wanted to be together and to make distance work - as tough as it would be. We had random conversations where small hints of our individual goals for the relationship were casually slipped out. Whether it was by Davy making cheeky comments regarding marriage and an idea of having all the big TV news stations at our wedding (thank goodness that idea could never come to fruition because we’d much rather a more intimate ceremony) just to show our love off to the world, or by me just bluntly asking him the direction our relationship was heading.

image created by ldrblogs.com

Love letters are a perfect way to make your significant other feel loved and appreciated. And there’s never a bad time to send or write one. You can have the most silliest reasons for writing a love letter - to tell an SO that you miss them or just a simple I love you. Regardless of what your reason is, it’s bound to make you and your significant other grin from ear to ear! After all, it’s the fact you’ve thought carefully about what you want to portray to your love that counts!

We have decided to participate in LDRBN’s Relationship Challenge for September. The idea of the challenge is to encourage and influence people in long distance relationships to write more love letters to each other. Ideally, it’s a short love letter (but how long it actually is, is down to you) and we have asked our followers through our instagram to give it a go! If you do want to participate in the challenge, you can post a picture of your love letter to your significant other or write it as a simple caption on Instagram. Just make sure you use the hashtag #LDRLOVELETTER and that you TAG DAVYANDJANE on your instagram picture. The most important aspect of this is getting as many people involved and inspired to write letters. If you aren’t on instagram, you can write or copy your love letters into the comments section below! We can’t wait to see what you’ve written!

Below is Davy and I’s love letters to each other. 

To my Davybaby,
It's been a few days since you've been back in the stinky Netherlands (poor you), but I just want you to know that I am so grateful for your support and understanding. Especially during my crazy, emotional and sobbing outbursts these last few days, you have been amazing and you must know that I appreciate and love you with all my heart and more. You are the love of my life, baby!
Lots and lots of love
from your one and only
Janeybum
<3

My baby, My Janey
I love you so much!
You're everything to me. It's been 4 days since our visit but it feels like forever :(
But before you know it, the distance will be closed!
From Davy <3
xxxxx
xxxxx
xxxxx
xx

Join LDRBN!

(don't forget to add Jane as a reference if you do sign up)

So, for today’s post we’re going to be discussing some monthly goals. It’s somewhat of a prompt started over at LDRBN, where you choose three goals for that month and then next month you see if you’ve completed them. Now, because I know this isn’t Davy’s kind of thing (add the fact that he is super busy working), these goals will be mainly my own personal ones or ones we’ve come up with as a couple. 

In the back of our minds, we promised to try post more often on here. And that’s what we have been able to achieve even when our creative tank has been running low, we’ve really stepped up our own personal bar and hit some blogging heights for ourselves. We’re roughly hitting between 800-1,000 views a month which is pretty amazing to be honest. The blog has grown so much since we started. Although we know our monthly views could be higher, there was a time when we only had 500 views for the first year or so. Now we’ve had 8,700! Crazy! Imagine what our views will look like by the end of the year!

1. Practising Conversational Dutch More (Together / Online)

For me, this is something I need to do. I’ve learnt a lot in the year and a half since my Dutch journey began. I’ve gone from a girl that cried at trying to pronounce ‘lachen’ for the first time, to someone who can just do it at ease. Pronunciation is the easy part for me, I can recognise vowel sounds with new words and hit them with the first time. My ‘ui’ is still awkward, but that’s to be expected. I’d also love to be able to hold a conversation without panicking, internally. I know I can string sentences together, but it’s a confidence issue as all language learners experience. Whether I practise conversations through typing or out loud, the most important thing is to practise. Personally I feel like I need to have conversations out loud to improve. 

As I am writing this, Davy is on his way back to The Netherlands. We have just had our eighth visit, but the first time we’ve ever been able to share my birthday as a physical couple. I’m so blessed to be able to say that I have had the opportunity to spend my birthday with such an amazing man and human being.

I’m guessing you are wondering all about it hmm? So why don’t I tell you?

Well, it started off a tiny bit dramatic. Davy’s journey for the most part had gone smooth. I expected it to be a little bit turbulent with the times, because as you all probably know about the problems at Calais and Dover with migrants. Surprisingly enough, getting through border control etc went perfectly smooth. It was the last leg of the journey to me that was the frustrating part. Because his coach came in just a few minutes later than expected, Davy had to make a dash to the train station to catch his train to my town. This meant by the time he got to the station, the train he usually gets had just left the platform. Literally. So by the time he arrived in St Austell, it was 5.30pm, instead of 4.10pm - but the most important thing of all was being able to finally hold each other again!

When we got indoors, the usual post picking Davy up from the station routine began! We gave each other as many kisses and cuddles that we could fit in before he went into the shower to freshen up after travelling for nearly 24hrs straight. Then we had pie and mash (with liquor - not alcoholic…it’s a typical British thing, also known as green gravy or as I like to call it bogey gravy because it looks like bogeys haha) for dinner before curling up in each other’s arms for the rest of the evening. We headed to bed slightly earlier than usual as Davy was knackered and we had a 8-9wk old Bengal kitten to pick up in Devon the next day!

No matter who you are, where you’re from and what you did - you’re bound to have differences (check that reference out bwahaha). Davy and I are fortunate enough to come from the same continent; Europe. He speaks fluent English even though it’s not his native language. But even when we have little cultural differences between us, there have been some that have had us both going ‘what?’ to each other. Thankfully, there haven’t been too many culture shocks so far in our relationship. But I’m bound to come across some when I eventually visit the Netherlands. I’m thinking about maybe around our 5th year anniversary in Oct 2016 as the financial situation might be better and it’s an entire year from now (but it’s not set in stone). I know it’s been a long time coming but a lot of personal stuff has happened that has always prevented me from going so, it’s tricky. Not to mention, the only airport we have in Cornwall (Newquay) is finally expanding their horizons and teaming up with Emirates in conjunction with Flybe to link to 84 countries! So who knows what the future holds? :)

Anyway, back to the cultural differences between us. I’m going to list some things that I think separates us somewhat marginally by culture.

THEIR BLUNTNESS 

The Dutch are very blunt and straight to the point. Whereas us Brits try to avoid conflict and we’d rather go silent and be awkward, the Dutch can just blurt things out without really thinking how the other one might feel. There have been some awkward moments in our relationship when this has happened. Since being with Davy, I have noticed that I am a bit more blunt these days. Before, I used to just run away and hide and keep my evil thoughts to myself but now I’ll easily just tell someone if they’re pissing me off without batting an eyelid. Still, whenever we go out and people bump into me I can’t help but revert to my typical British being and apologise for it haha.

About five years ago, Davy and I first met online. I was nearly eighteen, and he was about to turn seventeen. At first, we didn’t really speak. Davy did his thing, and I did mine. We don’t really like to speak about the website where we met as it ended up causing a ton of pain from getting cyber-bullied on it so for now, I’m just going to say it was a website where you could show people what game you’re playing. I don’t want to mention the website because just hearing the name of it brings back all the bullying (and the anger that bubbles up because of how horrible people can make you feel) so I’m just going to refer to it as just a ‘chat room’ if that’s okay with people. Now that’s out of the way. Davy would come into my chat room regularly, and he would listen to me as I went about whatever I was doing at the time. At first, he thought I was pretty reserved and abrasive because my twin sister also frequented the website and I became pretty protective of people who would make fun of her spelling because of her disabilities so some people thought of me as a bitch. I wasn’t. I’m just very protective and I have a tough exterior to people I don’t know or I feel like I can’t trust.

One day, I suggested whilst on microphone to the chat room, that Davy should get Skype. He wasn’t so keen on the idea, but somehow I managed to convince him to make one. I’m not sure how long it was before we started speaking but, if you really want to impress the man that will end up being the love of your life one day then I recommend you start off the conversation like this ;)

[6/29/2010 3:37:53 PM] Jane Emily: Davyy, I am bored.

[6/29/2010 3:38:18 PM] Davy: You're not alone :O

I can remember our first ever visit.  In fact I can remember all of our visits. The gruesome time having to wait see each other, the long travel, and the added stress from everything going well.

I wouldn´t say it´s my favourite memory, but I remember when I first came over back in 2012. It’s also quite funny. I travelled via MegaBus from Amsterdam to Plymouth with a layover in London. I had to wait 4 hours to get on the bus to Plymouth. From 6 something PM to 10.30 PM I think it was. That was already horrible. Before even reaching London, I had to go on a boat of any kind for the first time in my life, queue nausea. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any sort of medication or what not to fight it, so I just had to wait until the terror was over.

But if those two things weren’t bad enough, it got worse! In those days I had a really horrible, low battery mobile phone. So before I even reached Plymouth, my phone was already nearly dead! I arrive in Plymouth, no clue where to go. I asked people including city coach drivers how to get to the train station but they were clueless! How is that even possible? You’d reckon that a coach driver knows how to get to places right? They drive coaches for a living! Through the city!

Happiness should and will always be a key aspect in a relationship. It’s what makes you feel like your relationship is worth going the extra mile for (pun intended), that your other half is the one you know is made for you, and it’s definitely an important thing to remember when you’ve had some ups and downs alongside the distance.

For us, we know that we make each other happy. We don’t need anyone to approve of our relationship or to approve of the person we’re with because they don’t know us a couple. They don’t see or hear the little giggles, the promises to tickle each other when they’re being cheeky or just being able to gaze into each other’s eyes whether it’s on Skype or in person. We don’t need materialistic things to be happy, sure it’s nice (especially when you want to show your appreciation with a physical object) but it’s not necessary. At least for us. Happiness is, for us, the little moments, the moments when we can just laugh our heads off without having a reason to other than being completely random, for knowing that you’ve finally found your soul mate. It doesn’t matter what has gone on, if there’s been a disagreement or a slight bit of tension, as long as you have those crying-with-laughter moments afterwards that help you move forward from the not-so-great moments.