Long distance relationships fail and succeed for reasons that have little to do with commitment. What distance removes is the ordinary, unremarkable contact that most relationships run on.
Incidental contact is the missing ingredient
Cohabiting partners exchange large amounts of low-stakes information: what happened at work, what is in the refrigerator, an expression noticed across a room.
None of it seems important, and collectively it is how partners stay current with each other's internal state without anyone reporting.
At a distance this has to be replaced by deliberate telling, which is effortful and selects for events worth mentioning rather than the ordinary texture of a day.
Scheduled calls raise the stakes of each one
When contact is limited to arranged conversations, each acquires weight. A call that goes badly because someone is tired becomes evidence rather than a normal evening.
The pressure to make limited time meaningful discourages raising minor irritations, which then accumulate rather than being discharged as they arise.
Couples who add low-effort, ambient contact alongside scheduled calls tend to report less of this, because it restores some of what proximity provided.
Ambiguity fills the gaps that observation used to close
A delayed reply has many explanations, and at a distance none of them can be checked by looking across the room.
Interpretation therefore does more work, and it draws on whatever the interpreter is currently feeling, which is often insecurity about the arrangement itself.
Explicit agreements about response expectations sound unromantic and remove a substantial share of this friction.
Visits carry compressed expectations
In-person time is scarce and expensive, so both partners arrive hoping for an unusually good weekend, which is a difficult standard for ordinary life to meet.
Practical matters get deferred to visits and then compete with the desire to enjoy them, so the harder conversations are postponed repeatedly.
Treating some visit time as ordinary, including errands and separate activity, generally works better than scheduling every hour.
An end date changes the psychology
Distance that is understood as temporary, with a known point at which it resolves, is experienced differently from distance with no defined horizon.
A concrete plan gives the arrangement a purpose, and it turns present difficulty into an investment rather than an indefinite condition.
Where no end point is possible, the honest conversation is about whether the arrangement is acceptable permanently, which is a different question from whether it is bearable now.