<al consensus on long distance relationships at Carleton is that most don’t
work out, with winter term and over the summer cited as the most common times to split up.
Kaylee Shiao (’17) is currently in a long distance relationship and shared about her experiences. Like many current freshmen, she started her long distance relationship when she first came to Carleton, and has been maintaining
it since last year. Kaylee is originally from northern California, and her partner remained in California for college. This adds the difficulty of a two-hour time difference to the distance of “a billion miles away”. When asked how she sustained the relationship, she answered, “We basically just text all the time. We used
to video chat a lot last year, but it got to be too much of a time commitment. We’re fine with that.” She described the hardest part of the experience as not having someone to be around all the time, a trend that is usually the significant
factor for Carls in keeping up a long distance relationship. “Usually if your friends are busy, you can hang out with your boyfriend, but now you just hang out with yourself.” To wrap up, Kaylee confirmed the general consensus on long distance: “I would say that they generally don’t work, but I think that’s mostly because they find it’s easier to be with someone closer.”
It seems that distance simply magnifies the common standards required for every relationship: trust and communication. Kaylee’s relationship, along with other Carls’ long-distance relationships, puts the idiom “out of sight, out of mind” to the test.