Lori is right that at a distance it s easy to minimize your faults, and there s plenty of time to come up with the perfect answer to every question. That doesn t work in real life. Even if you ve been communicating well by long distance, it takes time to develop that in person. Amber makes an important point. One of the seven major causes of faulty mate selection listed in Finding the Love of Your Life is the failure to see the person in a wide enough variety of circumstances.
Statistics show that relationships of two years or more have a much higher marital success rate.
Dr. Warren said after pursuing a long distance relationship of at least a year and a half, he recommends six months of regular in-person interaction before taking the marriage leap. He and his wife, Marylyn, followed that guideline and a forty-year successful marriage resulted. If you aren t good at keeping up with correspondence, admit it up front. Agree that if one of you starts to lose interest in the relationship, you ll say so. We re disappointed when we have unreasonable or false expectations and assume the other person can read our mind.