Couple Things with Shawn and Andrew - 04 Distance

Episode Date: January 22, 2020

Today in episode 4 of Couple Things with Shawn and Andrew, we talk about how we made it through our relationship when we were long-distance. When we started asking you guys for your requests on what you wanted us to talk about, this was one of the most asked questions! We spoke with a few of our good friends about how they managed long distance and they give some great advice. Let us know how you guys have managed long distance and what advice you'd give others about managing a long distance relationship.  If you haven't yet, please rate and subscribe to the show to hear more! And if you have suggestions/recommendations for the show, send us your ideas in a video format - we might just choose yours! Email us at [e-mail]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When you're with Amex Platinum, you get access to exclusive dining experiences and an annual travel credit. So the best tapas in town might be in a new town altogether. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at Amex.ca. don't let anyone tell you that long distance relationships can never work they can and they work every single day the whole time thinking oh my gosh i wish josh was here would be so much more fun

i don't know the next i'm going to see you that was really hard What's up everybody? Welcome back to Couple Things with Sean and Andrew. Good to have you back. Thank you for taking time out of your day to spend time with us. This is some of Sean and I's favorite time that we get spent together. Yeah, this usually ends up in an argument. In an argument or in like the best day ever. So there's no middle ground. It's like our therapy, but we have no mediator, which is dangerous. So it's just a wild west out here.

It kind of is. So today's topic was actually submitted by Allison, and here's what she had to say. Hey, East family. So as you can tell, I'm in the military. Both my husband and I are active duty naval officers. So we've spent a lot of time apart, months at a time on opposite sides of the globe. So my episode idea is dealing with distance. Hope you all are well. So first of all, Allison, to you and your husband, thank you for your service. We're forever indebted to you and couldn't be more thankful. Second of all, the topic of long-distance relationships has come up a lot.

Yeah. Every time we've asked you guys on Instagram to submit videos, all of you guys are not all of you because you're not all long-distance, but you know what I mean? A lot of you guys have asked us to talk about long-distance. We did long-distance for a while, and I still feel like our relationship, even though when we're together we spend literally every waking second together, which we should I'd probably do a podcast on that. It's like the opposite of long distance.

It's like attachment. Somebody, please help me. Give me out of here. What's that? What's that movie? That's hilarious. Anyways, I do feel like we lead a relationship where we're basically attached to the hip. But when we aren't, we do kind of lead a long-distance relationship just because we're always

traveling, you with the NFL. I mean, early on when we dated, we were long-distance. I lived in Iowa. You lived in Nashville. I was traveling 75% of the year. Yeah. Here's the thing I feel like we should preface this whole thing with. Your and I story is kind of an extreme example

where the NFL is known for being last minute and spontaneous. But I think there's lessons that can be learned from our story that apply to most longest relationships out there. Preach it, babe. Preach it. Let's set the context of the beginning of our relationship. what that looked like because that was that was the most long distance that we that most time we spent apart yes you know so when we dated i mean we met in california when i was living in los angeles

and you were living in nashville tennessee going to vanderbilt university and then it was a few months later when we really started dating i was still living in iowa and you were living in Nashville. And we, back then, I think we saw each other once a month for probably three or four days. Yeah. We were super fortunate because I had the stricter schedule between us too. You were working in Iowa, but you had the flexibility to come see me. And so I was fortunate in the sense that you made it a priority to come and visit me and make it no longer than one month in between us being able to see each other. So that was huge, I think. I could go on a complete tangent right now because it just like sparked us off. What's the tangent? The priority. So I am going to say this

and then I want to come back to long distance. But I think one of the things that makes long distance work, but makes any relationship work, is I feel like it's so easy to get caught up in with the mentality of like, oh, we don't live in the same place. Oh, it's just not the right timing. This isn't going to work you know it's a sacrifice whatever so it's probably just not meant to be which we have to do the podcast on meant to be in the one because yeah that's a big topic that is but we kind of yes certain things have to be lined up to make relationships work so certain timing needs to be in line but for the most part I don't believe that timing is really a thing because you can always be busy.

You can always make an excuse. You can always have something going on. You know, you both might be in the military and living on opposite ends of the earth. But if you make it a priority and if you, like, throw in the commitment side of it of like, I'm going to do this, you can make anything work.

But I kind of disagree with you because I do think timing plays a big part in the sense that you have to be mature enough to realize that, A, this person is worth me, making a priority out of them and be realizing how important it is. Okay.

You know what I'm saying? Okay. So I would agree that you have to be on the same wavelength as far as like I want to do whatever it takes to make this work.

As far as like where you are in your life, like career-wise, money-wise, that stuff, I don't think that matters. It can make it easier though sometimes, you know. This episode is brought to you by Defender.

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as the willingness to sacrifice. Absolutely, which brings us full circle back to where we started this whole conversation. This is going to be like a debate conversation. I can already feel it, which is great. But from day one when I met you, I mean, not day one, because if they've heard our story, it took nine months. So nine months and one day. Thanks to you. And no, there was not a kid involved, by the way.

Some of you guys have been like nine months. Is there a secret child out there? No. Anyway, nine months and one day later, I made the decision. I was like, I'm going to make this work. I'm going to do anything I can to give our relationship the best shot. And for me, that meant, you know, whenever I did have free time, figuring out a way to come to Nashville or to be where you were.

And whether that meant, I mean, how many times did I drive 13 hours from Iowa to Nashville? Wow. You know, to see you. And even if it meant only seeing you for one day over the course of, of two months, I knew that was a priority of mine because I wanted to give our relationship the best shot. And I think a lot of people get caught up in thinking, if I'm only going to be able to see you one day in two months, maybe it's not even worth it. And I think I just went into the relationship with that opposite mentality of, no, it is worth it. It's worth that shot.

Wow. You really love me, huh? I did. It is interesting, though, when you think about the sacrifices that I think need to be made or can be made where when we met before you go Sydney you were in a hectic time in your career right and you didn't have that perspective of wanting to make me your priority but then fast forward and when you did decide after that nine months that you wanted to make our relationship of priority you put your career on hold right so there is kind of like one or the other for you it was either you're all in on your career or you're all in our in our relationship I'm not saying, again, this is a convoluted topic because I did not expect that from Sean as the female. Like, I was just in a spot where I had a coach that expected me to be at practice every day at 2 p.m.

You didn't have that. No, absolutely. And I agree with it. I'm just trying to put it into a perspective for people listening of, like, it would be so easy for someone listening to be like, oh, well, I can't put my career on hold. Right. And I agree with that. I agree that a lot of people can't. I was in a place where I could, which was amazing.

But I do think there are things you can do whatever situation you are in to sacrifice for one another and to prioritize one another to make long distance work, if that makes sense. So, I mean, thinking about it, thinking about where we both were in life, we were on opposite ends of the spectrum. you were in college, you had, you know, something every hour of the day starting from 4 a.m. practice. I wasn't working. I was, you know, self-sufficient because of the Olympics. I, you know, had the means to just take care of myself. And we just were living completely different lives, which right then and there would be so easy for us to say, this timing doesn't work.

like you're not and I'm not like on the same level but we both had the mentality and we were in the the mind space of do whatever it takes yeah I'm curious though the desire for you to sacrifice all that you did um for our relationship if that was a request that came from me uh I don't think it would have ended the same way. If I would have said, Sean, you're the one with the more flexible schedule. You need to become visiting me. Obviously, I'd probably say it more gently than that. But it was a realization that you had on your own.

And I think that's important for, like, again, the self-awareness, which we talk about a lot, of you to say, hey, I am in the more flexible position, and this is a relationship that I really care about. So I'm going to do what I can to make it work. You know what I'm saying? Absolutely. And I agree with that. had you requested it or expected it, I probably would have ran. Yeah.

And vice versa. I think if I would have expected you or requested from you to like, you know, sacrifice football or sacrifice your education or whatever, you would have run as well. But I think, I mean, we've always talked about that. Expectations is a huge thing. if you don't come into a relationship accepting that person for who they are and what they are and the place that they're in then it's not a relationship that's going to work so let's go back to allison yeah who both of them are an active duty military exactly so if if you come into that relationship expecting one or the other person to be like you know i'm in the military the only way

I'm going to be able to see you. The only way we might be able to have a family is if one of you quit or resigns. That's not a relationship that can work because you're not accepting each other for who they are. I've gotten that a lot with the NFL. You know, the lifestyle of a long snapper in the NFL is we bounce around a lot. Yeah. And I can't tell you how many people will be like, well, how do you put up with it? And I would just kind of chuckle and be like, what do you mean put up with it?

It's his dream, it's his career, it's his life. I married, I married that. I chose that. And it's my job as your wife, as your significant other, whether you're dating or married, to support you in your dream and vice versa. I think we were super fortunate. And I'm really thankful for this, that throughout our whole relationship, we've had this foundation of trust where there was never a question that Sean's not doing everything she can to make this relationship work or to make it the best relationship that could possibly be.

And there was, I don't think you had a question in your mind that I was doing the same, right? And so I just think that affected so many, it set us up for success in the sense that, there were not there weren't those expectations of Sean could be doing more and I could be seeing her more and there was just like this mutual support of oh you know what Sean needs to go away for four weeks to film this TV show or i.e. to work I support that this is her just like you were saying this is what she wants to do I can make the sack I can make my personal sacrifice of the selfishness that I have of wanting to see her to support that dream of hers.

Well, and I think that's really hard with relationships is, well, okay, talk about communication. So Jordan and Chris talk about communication a lot. Yeah. I think the best thing you can do for long-distance relationships of any kind, whatever situation you're in, is having such great open communication. of this opportunity came up.

I'm really interested in it. I want to know how it makes you feel. I want to know what you think of it. How can we make this work? Yeah. I feel like so many times people within long-distance relationships, something will come up and you either, you know, A, don't feel the need to tell your significant other

who's living on the other side of the globe just because it's kind of like, oh, I shouldn't, there's no reason. I don't want to burden them with this. Or be, you kind of make a decision on your own without them, which is very likely. I mean, again, you're not living in the same place. It's so easy to just be like, oh, I'm just going to decide this on my own. But I think the best thing for long-distance relationships is almost to over-communicate

and make your significant other involved in everything. Again, I think I disagree with you. In some sense. Well, no, here's the thing, because... How do we make long distance? I agree with you that there are crucial things that need to be communicated about, but you and I both know couples who destroy the relationship and undermine it by texting 24-7. You know what I'm saying?

And then you're a slave to your phone, and it just becomes this nasty, frustrating... One person is typically more into the time. texting than the other. You know what I'm saying? I hate that and again I'm super fortunate that you were busy enough for us not to be in that situation where it was like I'm texting you 5,000 times a day and including you in every meal I have and and that's obnoxious. I just realized I'm trying to interrupt you a lot and I totally apologize. That's why I laugh. You're passionate about this? I am. Go ahead. So the relationship I came from before you we had that type of relationship of like texted each other every waking second

of the day and it doesn't work that does not work because based on your mood or their mood or just whatever you interpret things wrong if they don't respond immediately then you're like oh what's wrong what's like all of it when we started dating it was one of the first things you said to me i don't know if you remember that but you're like i'm not going to text you it's not something i do don't expect it it's just like it's just my way and i remember being almost offended at first because again I had come from such polar opposite but it ended up working out so well because I wasn't constantly looking at my phone all day saying oh is he thinking of me is he wanting to talk to me we would have one phone call long phone call

or face time at the end of every day where I was so excited to tell you about everything yeah and I wasn't like oh well why did you text me this and use a period or It just gets so ugly. Exactly. And it became such this beautiful thing of like every night I knew we were going to debrief our day. I was going to tell you about the opportunities that came in. We were going to talk through them.

And it was just such a great way for us to communicate all of it. So we're talking a lot about the positives of the potential positive effects of a long-dist relationship. Ours was not always that pretty. We could touch on that in a second. But I wanted to read some stats. that I pulled up about long-distance relationships in the United States. So 14 million couples define themselves as having a long-distance relationship, which is a lot. Three point-75 million married couples are in a long-distance relationship.

That's crazy. Married couples. We could do it. Nearly one-third of all long-distance relationships are college relationships, which makes sense when you think about transitioning from high school to college. or even college to career yeah 75% of all engaged couples have been in a long-distance relationship and 10% of all marriages in the in the United States started out as long-distance relationship so that's kind of the general stats here are some more four and a half months is the average time

before a long-distance relationship breaks down okay 40% of all of all long-distance relationships end with a breakup and 70% of all failed long-distance relationships failed due to unplanned changes, which to your point are, those unplanned changes are probably like, followed or prefaced by a bread crumb of, I'm sorry, bread crumb. A trail of bread crumbs, where one person is just not informing the other person of these upcoming changes, right? Obviously, not everything can be planned, but. I think very rarely does something happen.

overnight. Out of the blue. I mean, unless it's the NFL. Yeah. And so, yes, I think if you have that open relationship in the sense of communication where you're talking through, oh, I got a hint of this at work today, that like an opportunity could take me across the globe or to a different city or whatever, I think if you start, you just have that communication with someone, it prepares you and gets you ready for those

things. But I don't know. I would say the NFL lifestyle is one of the greatest blessings we've ever gone through because it's a career that forces you to have to live on your toes and to just be okay with stuff. I mean, in the NFL, to give you. to give you guys the idea, we would be on vacation in Trinidad and Tobago. That was epic.

And we would get a call at 11 p.m. at night saying you have a tryout at 6 a.m. in New York City tomorrow. Or you're signed to Kansas City Chiefs and you have to report at 6 a.m. tomorrow. and that's up and moving our entire life within hours and I think again if you if you have that foundation your relationship of I'm going to support my significant other their dreams their careers their aspirations I'm not going to hold back who it is they want to be as a human being if you both have that mentality then it just works because for me it was a no-brainer It was like, oh, his dream is taking into Kansas City. Awesome.

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have been tough five years had you had you expected us to be in one place all the time you know what I'm saying so I'm just thankful thank you so am I but I'm trying to relate it to like the average 9 to 5 job and I feel like so many people put restraints on themselves and their relationships because they have this vision growing up as a kid of I'm going to go and this is just an example but I'm going to go to high school I'm going to go to college I'm going to find my spouse in college we're going to get married we're going to have these jobs we're going to stay in these jobs in this city and raise our family and have two kids and name them this and they're going to go here.

I feel like so many people restrict their relationships by thinking that if anything happens outside of that vision, it's wrong or it's going against what they're supposed to be doing when I believe your vision could be 100% wrong and you're actually not doing what you're supposed to be. And so for us, I had visions. I had plans of like, we're going to live here and do this and whatever. But in an instant, it has changed a thousand times for us. Yeah.

And we've ended up in careers that we never planned, living in places we've never planned, but it's been so incredible. So to summarize that ramble that I just went on, I think if you can just just go with the flow as hard as it is enjoy the spontaneous is what i'm getting from you that's a fun part of life i feel like yeah if you have a random opportunity to go to new york but your husband or your wife has this job that they feel passionate about in their city i would challenge that significant other to be like you know what i'll look for a new job in new york city let's run with it a lot of times things are complicated but i get that yeah things have been complicated with us

Every time. Every time. Yeah. No, I don't disagree. But you make it work. We were fortunate to talk with a couple other couples who had experienced long-distance relationships. Summer's here, and you can now get almost anything you need for your sunny days delivered

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I'm thinking, oh my gosh, I wish Josh was here would be so much more fun. So I think it's like moments like that for me. I think we figured out like if we could, if we could see each other like once and every two weeks, it was like we didn't go crazy. But if it would like, we would start hitting like that. two and a half three week mark it would like we would get like irritated about dumb stuff when your husband's gone doing deployments or training or all these things they basically were wanting you to be super independent and like you know make sure and like take care of yourself and that stuff so like

when josh comes back or like when andrew comes back you usually have to get rethinking about somebody else and like what they want to do and i know that that sounds kind of selfish and it is really selfish but it's like it's true like I think it's I'm like oh well this is where I'm used to eating I'm used to doing this I'm used to going here I'm used to working on at this time but no there's somebody else that it's like a switch you have to flip on and off and honestly it takes a transition but yeah Andrew and I whenever we did a few years where we were just like on and off all the time and when we were away we figured out our rhythm and then we got together we figured out our rhythm but those transition times were always rough like two or three days it was

like, I don't like this. This is not fun. So just making sure that, like, it wasn't always one-sided because at first, like, just because of our schedules, he would, he would visit me. And I could never go visit him. So just figuring out how to balance that, just planning the trip. Because when we had something to look forward to, it made it a lot easier. But when we had no trip plan, it's like, I don't know the next I'm going to see you.

That was really hard. That was the worst part. but having something to look forward to is probably a big big thing but we spent a lot of time facetiming I mean there I had like a perfect little ledge on my dash that in the car I just plop her up there and she would ride with me to work we would go to the grocery store together we would eat dinner together all on face time the the face time thing was extremely helpful because I felt like we were getting a lot of quality time, but then it got difficult to feel like I was, you know,

being efficient with my own life because I was constantly on FaceTime. Probably the most difficult part was trying to find that balance of how do we get the quality time but still take care of our responsibilities within our own lives. We didn't really text all day. Yeah. We would say good morning and then we would go do like all of our things out of the day and then we'd always FaceTime at night and we didn't really text in between there. Those are the first things Andrew told me when we started dating is like, I'm not going to text you.

I was like, oh, okay. Well, most of the times that we had little disagreements was whenever we were communicating through text because you can misinterpret texts so easily because I read it in whatever tone of voice I'm creating that that she's saying towards me, which, you know, I misinterpreted plenty texts. Oh, yeah. A phone call or FaceTime, I think, is the best way to communicate. in a long-distance relationship. We worked so well together and she was so mature and was so good at communicating

with me, which communication is not typically my strong suit. And she kind of helped me develop better communication skills, like within a relationship. And so I think the long distance and having to work through some of that stuff really helped us with that. Like it didn't go away because I was learning so much about her and myself, like being forced through that community. of long distance. A lot of FaceTime. You're saying Jordan, like, literally use her coaching skills to make you a better thing. Yes, I guess.

Maybe. Andrew Strong suit is not communication either. So we're working on it as well. It's a gold nail thing. Yeah. It is. So the one underlying theme that I think all those couples talked about. It's FaceTime.

It's FaceTime, which is good. I think it's a great way to incorporate, and we did it, your significant other, into your daily routine, without being overwhelming with text messages like I hate so much. Do you remember our date nights over FaceTime? Let's tell the people about them. So, this is going to be cheesy. But we used to have date nights where we would do dinner in a movie, but over FaceTime. So we would start the same exact movie at the same exact time on FaceTime, and I'd be able to see your reaction to the movie, and you'd be able to see mine.

Yeah. We'd sit there and have dinner like you would eat, and we'd chat, and I would eat, and we'd chat. Love is so funny, man. We even fell asleep a couple times with FaceTime on. Yeah. I remember that. Those were the good old days when you love me. But again, I think that falls in.

Shut it. I'm kidding. Those are the days when I liked you. I've always loved you. Wow, good point. I think it just falls back to that point of making your significant other in a long-distance relationship feel involved. The conjuring left rights on September 5th. I come down here when you're in your house.

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I think there's this. subconscious pattern that Sean and I have were the couple hours before one of us leaves and really the couple days after we're back together from a trip we never get along there's just this adjustment period where it's because you go from being a clingy couple where we have our routines together and we know when we go to bed together we know like how to operate together you go from that to having to operate solo and then you get in your own rhythm and you become independent and stubborn and almost guard it a little bit because you don't have your significant other so you kind of become a little bit cold i think that's what when you leave for a trip that's why you're mean at me

mean to me because you're like shutting down like i'm going solo sean mode here absolutely because when I travel I want nothing more than to be able to share it with you yeah so I have this bad habit of like when I leave especially if it's going to be for longer than a few days I do shut off I don't want to feel it I don't want you know which is probably unhealthy I should probably see something for that but it makes it difficult for us and I think that's hard for any long distance relationship. You figure out who you are as individuals without your significant other with you. You figure out how that works.

Which is a really positive thing, though. You can make it a great thing, and there's so many exciting things that happen in that independent growth. But it's always an adjustment when you come back together or you'll leave each other. So let's talk about the lessons that we've learned in our time doing long distance that might help other people. Just a brief summary of what we talked about. I think FaceTime is awesome.

Why? Because you get to see your person. You get to see their face and communicate with them. And it's the closest form to being in person with your significance to another. To expand on that, I think that long-distance relationship can be a really positive thing if you allow the other person and you understand that the other person is going to grow without you. You know what I'm saying? Yeah.

I feel like that's what one thing we did well was like, Sean's going to go have these epic experiences without me. That's awesome. I can support that and be excited for her in that. And then I waited for your FaceTime call. I didn't like, I wasn't needy of like, oh my gosh, Sean, tell me about what happened today. I didn't talk like that. But I think that's one important thing is realize that that gross is going to happen.

I do want to talk about that one phone call, though, that we would encourage instead of like texting a lot here the day or calling throughout the day, that one phone call or however many phone calls you have, to over-communicate. And I say that because we live in a world of social media. I would say one of the biggest challenges for us is seeing snippets of each other's lives without the explanation, if that makes sense. Sure. So it's so easy to have insecurities when you're away from each other, when the world is trying to fill in the gaps of lost time and your brain with those insecurities can jump to crazy places it's just natural so i think one be aware of social media for your significant other and then to over communicate and let them

know like oh i someone posted this picture this is how it happened this is what we were doing this was the event i was at like try to over involve them yes I still make them feel special. Yeah. And I think another thing that can be learned is I feel like relationships all about the story that you're telling yourself and the other person. And when you're in a long-distance relationship, there's so many stories that happen that you can then fill your significant other in

after the fact with. But when I look back on the way our communication evolved and the way we told each other those stories and figured out how to, entertain the other person when they had nothing to do you know what I'm saying like make the other person feel involved in something they they weren't a part of like now as parents I feel like that's a big thing too of of just communicating the small things making them fun and making it making making dull and bland things exciting yeah yeah so anyway Allison thank you so much for submitting that as a topic I think it's an important topic

and I think it's super easy to do long-distance relationships poorly and just kind of establish your own routine without the other person and let the relationship die slowly but I think long-distance relationships also provide a huge opportunity that could result in a lot of And don't let anyone tell you that long-distance relationships can never work. They can, and they work every single day. They can be more difficult, and they can take more effort from both parties, but they can work. And don't let the naysayers tell you different. So anyway, if you guys have ideas for podcast topics that you want us to talk about and share stories that Sean and I have had,

or also interview other couples. You can email those video topics to couple things pod at gmail.com. And we go through each and every one of them. We love hearing from you guys. And if you haven't yet, give this show a rating and subscribe to it on whatever platform you're listening to. We really appreciate it. We appreciate your time.

And we'll see you next week on a couple things. Take out. You know, You know,