Embrace Your Fate: How to Make the Challenging Decision if a Long Distance Relationship is Right for You

Spoiler: It’s gut wrenching

Wow what a Time it has been.

My life is completely different at the beginning of 2025 than at the end of 2023 when I last posted.

In 2023, I completely threw myself into my special series A Race Around the World: Based on the True Story of Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland. It is a 17-episode narrative history podcast that chronicles the true story of the two women who raced each other around the world in under 80 days in 1889.

Close-up of a microphone with a blurred computer screen in the background, ideal for podcast themes.

It sucked the bone marrow out of me.

I spent months pouring over their writings, researching, tracking, editing, scoring, and mixing that show. I became so intimately acquainted with both Nellie and Elizabeth that I felt that I was closer with them than my own friends- for I did spend so much of my day with both of them. I fell in love with both of these women so hard that there are days that I miss them both like a friend who has become long distance.

Podcast Boom to Bust: Personal Examination of the Podcasting Industry Bursting

Tethered and hunched over my computer for months, I focused on it completely, and part of that was I only had a little freelance work. 2023 was a rough year in the podcasting world where nearly 20,000 people lost their jobs in a cottage industry. The bubble burst. So now, I fortunately/ unfortunately had the time ( and the credit card allowance) to give everything to A Race Around the World

So, when I uploaded my final episode in December of 2023, I had never been so broke and afraid and creatively satisfied. 

And right when that was coming to a close, Sam sat me down on the couch. 

My fiance ( now husband) Sam also works in podcasting. He was also a freelance podcast producer and story editor, and had worked on shows like Family Ghosts, Snatching Sinatra, The Rumor, and Pack One Bag

He is unbelievably talented. It has been such an incredible bonus ( or what we call “ part of the expansion pack”) to have someone who understands my creative needs and compulsions. 

The majority of our four-year relationship was spent talking about the state of the podcasting industry, storytelling, podcast ideas, and talking about other shows. It has been the joy of my life to share the side of myself- the part that makes me feel alive and creativity inspired- to be so fiercely understood by my life partner.  We were initially attracted to each other because of our ambition and creativity. So, as I sat on our couch, I was about to see how that is sometimes a double-edged sword. 

The catch of dating someone in your industry is that you both feel the same financial hit when your industry begins to curdle. We were looking down the barrel of 2024 with no income. Needless to say, we were a little panicked. And in that panic, Sam searched for jobs outside of the city where we built our life, outside of the city our friends and family are in or close to.

Sam got a job offer, something both of us were desperate for at the time. 2024 was rearing its head and neither of us had any real form of income. 

And of all the places he landed on, he asked if I would move with him. 

Not Paris. 

Not Los Angeles. 

Not Mexico City or Prague or any of the cities I had fallen in love with during my own travels. 

But Phoenix. 

Arizona. 

A place I had no connection to, had never been to, and had no particular calling to explore. 

But this was Sam’s dream job. He would be a radio host, the culture reporter, for Phoenix: the voice for the Valley of the Sun. 

And I saw it in his eyes that he wanted this. 

We weren’t even married yet and fate had decided to give us this test. 

I wanted this for him. He had worked so hard, and it was an incredible offer…but Phoenix? 

At first, I was apprehensive. I didn’t want to give up our apartment in Brooklyn or leave the community I had built here and the life we had made together. My roots are in New York. My family is in the Hudson Valley and my friends and community are all in the city. 

Also, I am a girl of the woods and winter.  How could I live in a desert with constant sun and lack of shade? I bristled a little. I didn’t want to be a woman who just followed her husband around the world because he got a job. Who didn’t have agency over her own life. Who just got married and settled down and had a quieter life. 

But before I could really envision myself packing up and moving to the desert, the unthinkable happened. 

I got a job offer. 

Here in New York. 

At an all women’s podcasting company. 

The dream. 

And we were required to be in the office at least three times a week. 

And after spending so much time as a freelancer, I craved co-workers and working someplace outside of my apartment. 

This was what I wanted and what I had worked so hard for. After being a feral freelancer for so long, I craved the structure and the safety of healthcare and a consistent income. To kiss my husband goodbye in the morning and be off to work. 

So when the offer came in, I took it. And Sam championed me the whole time. He wanted this for me as much as I wanted this. But if I did take it, it would come at a huge cost, one much steeper than I realized in the moment. 

The offer cut it close. Sam’s start date was March 18th. I got the offer on February 22nd. We had no time to waste. 

We made what seemed like the obvious choice. Both of our jobs were surprisingly location dependent after being free wheeling freelancers for the last three years. And we took advantage of that- working remotely in the southwest, Mexico City, Los Angeles, DC, the Hudson Valley- we spent our freedom well. But now, for whatever reason, if we wanted these creative opportunities we would have to become location dependent. 

We sat around the table as we hashed it out. The same table we sat at every night during the latter half of the pandemic. During Covid, for a year and a half, we were always within 12 feet of each other. It felt like every week whizzed by- a flip book of sorts- where Sam and I sat down at our table every night doing the same thing but only our clothing and meals changed. 

Now we were discussing him not being on the other side of the table at all. We needed an income and we needed to pursue our dreams even if that meant supporting each other from afar. The decision was so lackadaisical that I am pissed at how naive I was over this life-altering conversation. 

Of course we would do long distance. 

That was the simple choice. The obvious choice. Our relationship was strong. We had built a solid foundation; it could withstand this challenge. I’m an introvert so honestly it might be pretty nice to have the place to myself. A year out, I look at myself with such disdain.

How to decide if long distance is right for you

It’s been a year since we decided to be long distance. And what felt like the simplest decision in the moment had turned out to be a year of agony. I didn’t realize how hard it would be to completely unravel the life we had built together. 

The first morning I woke up alone, I habitually rolled over, expecting to feel his warm body curled up and ready for me to nuzzle into it. My favorite place on earth is the nook in his left shoulder. Like a puzzle piece, my head fits perfectly in it. What I found in my reach instead were the cold books I left overnight and the distinct feeling of absence. 

I wept so ugly I’m glad I was alone. 

There is so much about being in a long distance relationship I didn’t clock. 

The loneliness. 

The financial strain. 

The feeling like our life together was put on hold. 

When I tell strangers or acquaintances about being in a long distance relationship, they look at me with such a look of pity. It sickens me. But it is the biggest part of my life right now. The elephant isn’t just in the room but it is so big it is pushing up against the windows and doors. I am so annoyed that this is my life. 

Many people’s first taste of a long distance relationship is in college– an attempt to keep together what you had in high school or study abroad. But doing it in your 30s and 40s, when you have established an adult life together, is something completely different. Neither of us thought critically about how long distance relationships really worked. 

There are moments where I felt like this was inevitable. We are of the creative class. We work in media. People in our field do long distance all the time. 

Being in a long distance relationship puts a strain on your life. And there are things I wish I knew before we did long distance. 

But in the strangest twist of fate, not unlike Nellie Bly’s and Elizabeth Bisland’s, I could call in their adventurous spirit, the brave women whose adventures consumed my life. Just like them, I found myself facing a new uncharted journey, feeling the lurch of my stomach as I leaped into the unknown. 

This could be good! I am forced to travel more and explore an area that is rich in history and culture.  I am, if anything, a glass-half-full girlie. 

So for next year, I am going to be focusing completely on Arizona travel and Arizona travel guides and how to do long distance. 

As hard as it has been, I do feel that being an intrepid solo female traveler prepared me to be in a long distance relationship. 

But first, I want to tell you about our road trip across the United States from New York to Arizona.


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