Lotti is a third-year english student, who’s been in a long-distance relationship since she started Uni. Before that, she worked and went travelling, and has the Instagram to prove it. Lotti’s beau is a science teacher, so between them, have a busy lifestyle, but still find time to see each-other as regularly as they can.

Each week a different piece of a Uni student’s life will be covered, whether it’s workload, relationships, friendships, etc. There is no definitive guide of managing these things, but all we can hope for is finding an imperfect balance.

Q: How long have you been in a relationship?

A: 2 years and… 7 months, 6 months? Two and a half years roughly. The summer before I first started Uni.

Q: How did you feel about a long distance relationship before going to Uni?

A: I thought it would be really hard and to be fair, they are hard. I think with Facetime and all that, it’s a lot easier but all of my friends were in long distance relationships, and they never worked. So I thought it was going to be a lot harder. When it first started, I went travelling for a month and then went straight into Uni, so all we’ve really known is long distance.

Q: How often do you try to see each-other?

A: We try every two weeks but that rarely happens, it’s normally every three weeks, but it has been 6 weeks before. But the average is every 3 weeks.

Q: How do you make time for each-other?

A: We Facetime a lot, even if we don’t really speak, we’ll normally be like, lets Facetime for 5 minutes or whatever but we’ll do that consistently. I know couples that will be like ok, we’ll talk at 6pm tonight for an hour- we don’t do that- we’ll be like I’ll call you and if you pick up, great! And then if not, we’ll still talk regularly.

Q: How about during exam time?

A: (laughs)…That was the 6 week anomaly! There have been times if I can’t come home, he’ll come up even if it’s for a night or just a day, that’s normally how we do it. So even if it’s not three nights- it’s really difficult- but we’ll try to find time, or otherwise we’ll be like this is hard but we’ll get through it and then you have the holidays. Then we spend all of our time together.

Q: How do you deal with conflict if you’re not together?

A: Well I came up with a rule, because I don’t like going to bed on an argument. Sometimes that doesn’t always happen but we normally resolve it. We don’t really have full-blown arguments anyway, it’s just little things, and we’ll resolve it. Depends if I’m hungry, depends what mood he’s in, but we’ll leave each-other for a few hours, and come back to it.

Q: What do you think’s the most difficult thing about doing long distance?

A: I think the most difficult thing is seeing other people in relationships, that can be really hard. Not being able to touch, it sounds weird but you don’t realise how much interaction you need, even if it’s just really small things. Seeing other people do that…I think that’s what I miss the most. I see other couples being coupley and I don’t have that.

Q: What makes it worth it?

A: He’s my best friend. Even if we don’t see each-other for a while, we have so much fun when we’re together, that it makes it all worth it.

Q: What would you say to people unsure about long distance relationships?

A: I would say that it’s really, really difficult so if you’re not 100% committed, don’t bother. There’s no point- let’s not beat around the bush here- it just gets messy, it’s hard, so you have to be in it 100%.