musings on a long distance relationship

It was fine (but not really) when we were young and didn't live together and didn't fall asleep talking every night.

Now, when J leaves for 4-8 days, I don't remember how we made it work when we only saw each other every three weeks.

Now, it just makes me jumpy at any little noise outside, and I stay up way too late because no-one reminds me to go to bed, and I eat weirdly (half a loaf of fresh sandwich bread is delicious, but hardly nutritious), and I watch strange movies that at once make me happy I'm not in a weird dysfunctional relationship but also make me sad that J's not around. (Also, he would hate those movies so I probably wouldn't be watching them to begin with... or he'd watch it with me and ask questions at all the wrong times, and I would huff at him to be quiet.)

Long distance is different when you're the one doing the exploring. I definitely missed J when I was in Texas, but it was very different from when he was in Madison. (Also, the fact that J didn't have a cell-phone when he was a freshman definitely made things way harder.)

The only way long distance would work now is if we were both in new cities. And it wouldn't work much longer than 3-4 months.

As both of us are looking to the future and future careers, it doesn't seem implausible that we may need to spend some time living in different places. Of course, this would be a last resort, but I'm sure we could make it work if we absolutely had to. On the other hand, it's hard to know what those circumstances would be... how much money would it take to convince us to live in different cities?  And if we did live in different cities, how often would be see each other? Would we have to fly, or drive?

We would have to consider each salary divided by the number of hours required by either job, plus any time required for commuting, to compute each true hourly compensation.  Then consider the costs of maintaining two apartments, probably two cars, and the cost of visits between the two cities.

When computing it in this way, it goes without saying that both of us would have to make big chunks of money in order for it to be feasible economically. And this does nothing to include the emotional costs.

I'm guessing this scenario is not very likely, after all.

Besides, I'd rather be poor with J than rich without him.
(Yes, that's corny, but very true.)