WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Wherefore Art Thou, Romeo?: Relationship Attachment Model (RAM) and Long-Distance Part 2

Episode Date: November 26, 2024

In this episode, Emily and Greg finish discussing the RAM board and use it as a reference in their conversation about long distance relationships. They ask the question, "Can long distance relationships be successful?"

Batman doesn't do ships, as in me. You complete me. I'm George, George McFly. I'm your density. It is not about the nail. No matter when, no matter who, any man has a chance to sweep any woman off her feet. You're listening to Where For Art Thou, Romeo? The show that discusses how to navigate romantic relationships

and how to achieve a meme between the extremes of hookup culture and over-discerned dating. Here's your host, Emily Shudy. Welcome to Wherefore Art Thel Romeo, the show where we talk about how to follow your heart without losing your mind. My name is Emily Shudy, and my co-host is licensed to marriage therapist and also my dad, Greg Shuddy. We're all navigating relationships every day, but sometimes the most intimate are also the most challenging. Our goal is to help you get out of your own head when it comes to your or even your friend's relationship questions and concerns. So today we are continuing our conversation about the RAM board or the relationship attachment model. And then we'll continue on into answering the question, can a long distance relationship be successful?

And how can you know? Like what are some things that you can look for? So first we're going to jump back into where we were with discussing the RAM board. So we talked about the elements of getting to know someone and how that's really foundational to start with in a relationship, and then you learn how to trust them, and then the more you trust them, the more you can rely on them, and then the more you can commit to them. And so the final one we're going to be discussing today is touch. So, Greg, would you take us back into where we were before? The last one, which is where our culture is so out of whack, is do you touch more than you have this connection of knowing, trusting, and all of that? Because the reality is, is your brain is bonding to that person, not, and what also they found in this book is the trust level goes up.

So you've got this high trust. You've got this high physical connection with not a lot of knowledge, not a lot of reliance. And the trust is not built off of what you know. It's built off of a neurochemical that doesn't think about, you know, ramifications. It doesn't care about your morality. It doesn't. It's just. And so that's where, you know, today I think so many people are getting themselves in trouble.

And here's the other stat that I throw out to couples when you're talking about trying to keep this balance is this is this is why so many people, so many people who are abused, especially women in a relationship, they say, well, on average, go back to that relation seven times. That's the average, which means some is more, some or less. They'll go back to that relation on average seven times before they finally get out of the relationship. Why? Because the sexual connection creates a false sense of trust. And when you see something that you didn't know, it's too easy to go, well, they just had a bad day. Well, they're really a good person. And so this whole, we're doing this REM model because it's so important.

to refer back to this. No matter whether we're talking about long-term relationships or we're talking about, you know, when do we start dating? When do we start to? Because it's that keeping that balance. And again, you can do it however you want or you can really go into it trying to protect your heart. Yeah.

Those are really staggering numbers at seven times returning to an abusive situation. I definitely, it was very eye-opening for me when I first learned this model to just see, like understand how much that physical touch aspect does impact the rest. And so, like we said, when we started this, this is a foundation for a relationship. You need to really set the standards and that, that groundwork that you always go back to. Because if you don't, if you don't do that, like just watching that trust, that trust lever just go all the way to the top with the touch, physical touch part, but then seeing that the other three could still be down at the bottom, that's a terrifying idea that that could happen. So actually, I looked up the book

that you said, hooked. So it's, yeah, it's by Joe McElhaney and Frieda. McKissick Bush. Thank you. They're both MDs. So very... It's a great read. In fact, some of the students, I work with college students from Cedarville College, and I always assign them the jerk book and that book, the hook book.

Yeah. And every time they go through it, they're like, it was an easy read and it was so eye-opening. Certainly, certainly. So this is really very interesting and very helpful. basis for going into the other questions that we have to talk about. So I know I mentioned at the beginning of the show that we were going to be talking about the topic of long distance relationships and how far is too far to succeed. These were some questions specifically from students on campus. And the first one is what are the pluses and minuses of having a long distance relationship?

Well, you know, it's one of those, distance doesn't always make the heart grow fonder. And I think the other thing is you're thrown into, so what I mean, there's all different ways that this works. So that's the hard part. You got to look at all the factors and there's no perfect way. So it's one of those, is this a person that I, you know, met and spent a lot of time with? But now I have to be away from them for a short period of time. versus, hey, we met at summer camp and now we're trying to date from long distance. So we don't have as much built here.

One of the things that John Van App in his book talks about that's so important is spending time, togetherness, and talk. And the reason for those is how do I really get to know someone? So time, people can spend a lot of time and talk. on the phone and that's the way a lot of times that happens or maybe they do Zoom today which is I tell you it's a lot better than it used to be because you can actually see someone face to face but the hard part is building a relationship without that togetherness because that's where you start to see more of the habits because habits play out when you're you know it's one thing to

call each other when you're at at the best and you have an hour talk and you get all and it's like, oh, that was great. Yeah. It's so much fun. But when you're together for, or you catch them when they're tired, you catch them when they're, you know, they've had a horrible day when in different situations. You see them in stressful situations. You see them in awkward situations.

And all of that starts to give you more of that what you know about this person. And the biggest thing is really figuring out. their habits. Yeah, yeah. What makes them tick. I know we have talked about this in the past about how a person can hide things about themselves for three to six months, am I right? Yeah.

So those different traits that you see in them might not be the same in three to six months because they're able to kind of put on their best face for a while. And that's true of anyone. I mean, even healthy people. And so that's why it's important to take that time that we talked about. Well, and let's paint this out even further now that we've thrown out the RAM here. So I'm just starting to get to know you. We've got this long-distance relationship.

We're talking. And I'm not spending a lot of time seeing your quirks. But we get together now and then. And I start to see a few of these. But now, after six months, even when we're together, we throw in a little bit of, you know, sexual connection with one another. And now it's like, I start to see these quirks. And I'm going, you know, he just had a bad day. She just had a bad day.

Well, we excuse it away. Yeah. And before we know it, we get into this relationship for a year. And we've overlooked these things. we haven't really dug in and spent the time getting to know. And now it becomes one of those harder to break up because I've invested so much than just to see if we can work it out. You see where I'm going with this? And again, not to not to paint doom and gloom on it, but to really get people thinking about how do we walk through this the best that we can.

So back to long distance, it has those struggles where if we're not investing a lot of time, in this. And that's, you know, a lot of time is you got to kind of define that a little bit too. There's things you could be overlooking. But then you throw in the added, you go off to college and you're now in a, you know, pool of a lot of other people that are like, wow, they're kind of attractive. Oh, wow. Wait a minute, I can't do that. Yes. Well, I also just think about how challenging it is even FaceTime or or Zoom or text or

calling on the phone it's just I personally find it challenging to connect with people even people that I've known my whole life like my family sometimes I just don't think of all the things that I wanted to tell

them or talk to them about and so oftentimes that togetherness sparks Sparks just a memory that I had that I wanted to share or something funny that happened. And so sometimes those talk conversations just over the phone can lack that more depth of conversation and connection. Yeah. So I don't want to paint that it's impossible. It's doomed.

It's not. It just is going to take a lot more intentionality. It's going to take a lot more time. And you're going to have to have part. of this relationship before you decide to move towards something more permanent or getting married to where you are in the same location to really spend some of that time. You know, I remember John Van F. when I was being trained by him, he said, if my daughter was ever dating someone, you know, the other thing is, is we invited their family over. We spent time

with them because you got to get to know a whole system of things and their background. And that's all important that getting to know is not just. just spending time. It's seeing them, seeing them with their family, seeing them with other people, seeing how they... So it just means you've got to be more intentional and really put a lot more effort into it. But here's the thing to remember. The more you can work on before marriage, the less you're going to have to deal with, well, I shouldn't say it's not exactly that way. you're always going to work on a lot the rest of your life. But some of the big issues that you could try to work on and really deal with before marriage will help having less of those into marriage.

Does that make sense? Yeah. So before you have a bunch of kids and all of the busyness of that family life, you're able to kind of address some of those problems beforehand. Yeah. And not just think they'll go away or hill chain. shirt, no. A lot of these things will go into marriage with you. Yeah, I mean, I know that's something that we've talked about with just having some of my siblings who have done long-distance relationships and just like how that is challenging. And what you were saying about, like, we can't

just necessarily expect that certain things are going to change. And I know my one brother couldn't just expect that his fiance was going to move to Ohio. Even though we keep trying to pressure him. Yes, yes, of course. Because we want to be close to our families. But also it's

important that sometimes the locality of your relationship, the faith of the individuals in the relationship can't necessarily you can't expect that to change just for the sake of the relationship. And so

I think that that's an important element regarding that that long distance. You can't expect them to change certain things. No, and I think that it goes back to my original point, and this could be a whole discussion in and of itself, is I've always said to people, don't try and find the perfect person, try to find the person who's trying to be perfect. And I know that's nobody's ever going to be perfect, but, you know, and it's the same thing with ourselves. Are we trying to become better? Do our relationships help us become better? Or do they, you know, do they always get complicated because, you know, we're trying to always pull from the other person to meet a need? Versus how do we give to one another? How do we love one another?

How do we care for one another? And grow in that? Because those are the kind of things that you take on in marriage and hopefully you, you know, you work through things a lot easier. Yeah, yeah. This is Whereforethal Romeo, where we are discussing the question, can you do long-distance relationship? I'm your host, Emily Shuddy, and my co-host is licensed marriage therapist, Greg Shuddy here on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. So just to kind of gear us or steer us a little bit back towards this idea. of that long-distance relationship. There's so many aspects of relationships that are very

interconnected. But it seems as if we've determined that it's not necessarily doomed to fail. You can achieve a long-distance relationship, even though it's going to be challenging and you really have to be very intentional about what you do. Are there, could we maybe talk a little bit about some ways that you can be intentional in a long-distance relationship. If you have any tips or ideas about that. Yeah, I mean, one is making time for each other, and that can be hard depending on your state and life, because you guys in college, I mean, a lot of your time is taken up with so many different things. Because what happens if you're not making time to connect and talk with them or you're always putting them off because you've got other things you've got to do.

It just leaves that whole fill in the blank type of thing where it's like, why hasn't he called me? Why doesn't she ever connect with me? Why is it always we only talk? So that can become very damaging. It's like you never call me when. You never do. The other thing is being very honest with people where you're at in the relationship and what

we're going through or what you're struggling with. Because again, I think the hardest part is when you're not with them on a regular basis, you're filling in the blank in your head so often with, what are they thinking? What are they, especially if you're at home and they're at college where there's a bunch of people and they're out having fun. I'll never forget when me and your mom were dating and I was going to grad school and she was back at the University of Dayton. I struggled because I knew she was doing all these different things with her friends and I was over here miserable in grad school because school is not my favorite thing. But I felt alone. And so often I filled my head with these things.

And so me and your mom really had to talk about a lot of things or it just started to turn into this mind game in my head. So they're kind of sharing even the crazy. things that go on in your mind, that maybe the lies that you're starting to tell yourself, making sure that you actually talk about those things with each other. Yeah, and be honest, because I think that's the hard part. We don't want to hurt each other, but I'll tell you what, if you have doubts about the relationship, I'd rather sit down and work through that and say, maybe we need to take a break versus just stringing it along for longer, longer, longer, until you finally go, I'm done with

this, and then the hurt is really deep. and I think being honest with them, but being honest with yourself, you know, if you've got doubts, you need to talk about it. You need to say, okay, what are we going to do with this? Being intentional, meaning that you're going to have to find some times to really, I remember with Joshua, my, you know, your brother, when he was dating, you know, his girlfriend, now his wife out in Oregon, he spent a lot of money to go out there and spend time. And she spent money to come out here and spend a lot of time. So it's going to cost.

You've got to find ways to build those connections. But you also have to do things to really be intentional in showing the care. Because what do I mean by that? That's why I love the five love languages. And you know about those, right? Maybe you can remind me. Okay, five love languages is from Dr. Gary Chapman, and it talks about five languages of love that we all, we have one that or two, or maybe a lot of them that means something to us. So when you do it for me, it feeds that love bank or whatever you want to call it, you know, that.

And physically, it brings down your stress level and creates that bonding. So the first one is giving gifts. Number two is quality time. Three is acts of service. Four is touch. And the fifth is words of affirmation. So knowing those and feeding that in the other person on a regular basis is going to be important too. Because when you're not spending time with each other, you still want to feel special.

That's why in the olden days, and I still encourage today when you're long distance, write letters. Yeah. Not email. I know it's quicker. Not texting right hand written letters because it shows an intentionality and you have time to really delve into your thoughts versus just these little quips of, hey, love you. How are you doing? Yeah.

Yeah. Now, I definitely find when I write letters to friends, I'm able to process things a lot better. So that's a really good idea. So those are just some. There's always probably more. Yeah. Yeah. No,

those are really helpful. So make time for each other. Be intentional. Be honest. And it's going to cost something. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for all of your thoughts on these questions. I just wanted to remind our audience that relationships are a process and it takes time and effort to make them succeed.

We just want to help you balance your head and your heart. This is your friendly reminder. to not be discouraged. Because if you haven't found your Romeo or Juliet, why not make it really long distance go explore Europe? If you have questions that you would like us to address, please email them to E Shuddy, S-C-H-U-T-T-E at Hillsdale.edu, and we will discuss them in future shows. That's all for Wherefore Art Thel Romeo. I'm Emily Shuddy. And I'm Greg Shuddy. On Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7F.