By Ari Sotiriou MA PGDip psychodynamic psychotherapist
If you are reading this because you and your partner are trying to make a life together across a distance, you already know something that is hard to put into words. It is this. Loving someone is not always enough to dissolve the practical facts of where you each need to be.
Before we go further, you may want to have the worksheet open alongside this piece. You can find it here: Living Apart, Staying Together — Interactive Worksheet. This post is meant to sit beside that worksheet, not in front of it. Read a little, then write a little, then come back and read some more. There is no need to rush either part.
Why this is harder than it looks
Couples often arrive at this kind of difficulty feeling slightly ashamed of how hard they are finding it. They say things like, “Other couples manage long distance, why can’t we?” or “We love each other, so why does this feel so heavy?”
Here is something worth knowing. The difficulty is not a sign that the relationship is weak. It is a sign that two real lives, each with their own history, their own obligations, and their own fears, are trying to find a shared shape. That is genuinely hard work, whether the couple is a man and a woman, two men, or two women. The geography is different in every case. The underlying task is the same.
British psychoanalytic thinking has a great deal to offer here, even though it was developed long before video calls and budget flights. The ideas are old, but they describe something timeless about how people attach to one another, and what happens when that attachment is placed under strain.
The difference between being close and feeling secure
One of the most useful distinctions comes from the study of attachment, a tradition closely linked to the British psychiatrists and psychoanalyst John Bowlby. Bowlby was interested in what he called a secure base. This is not simply physical closeness. It is the felt sense that someone is reliably there for you, even when they are not in the room.
This matters enormously for couples living apart. Many people assume that distance itself is the enemy. Often, it is not. What erodes a relationship is not the number of miles between two people, it is uncertainty about whether the other person is still emotionally available, still committed, still thinking of you, even when they cannot be reached immediately.
This is why Part One of the worksheet asks you to separate your geography from your emotional experience. The two are related, but they are not the same thing. A couple living in the same flat can feel entirely insecure with one another. A couple living in different countries can feel completely safe. The worksheet is asking you to notice which one you are actually dealing with.
Holding, and why it matters when you cannot hold each other
Donald Winnicott, perhaps the most widely read of the British psychoanalysts, wrote about something he called holding. He was originally describing how a parent holds an infant, both physically and emotionally, in a way that allows the infant to feel safe enough to grow.
As adults, we still need a version of this. A good relationship holds us. It gives us a sense that someone is keeping us in mind, that our feelings make sense to somebody else, that we will not fall apart even when life is difficult.
When partners live apart, the physical form of holding disappears for long stretches. There is no shoulder to lean against after a hard day. There is no hand to reach for in the middle of the night. This loss is real, and it deserves to be named rather than minimised.
But Winnicott also wrote about something called the capacity to be alone. He believed that people who have been well held earlier in their lives become able to hold themselves, drawing on the felt memory of being cared for, even when no one is physically present. This is not about becoming independent in a cold sense. It is about carrying the relationship inside you, so that distance does not have to mean disappearance.
Part Three of the worksheet, the section on sacrifice, often brings this loss into focus. If you found that section difficult, that is not a sign you are doing something wrong. It usually means you are in contact with something true.
Containing what is too much to feel alone
Wilfred Bion, another British psychoanalyst, introduced the idea of containment. He was describing how one person can take in another person’s distress, make sense of it, and hand it back in a form that feels more manageable. A good partner does this for us. A good therapist does this too.
Couples living apart often lose access to this kind of containment in the moment it is most needed. A difficult day at work, a worry about money, a hard conversation with a parent, all of these used to be carried together, in real time. Now there may be a delay before you can speak, or the conversation has to happen through a screen, which is not quite the same as being physically present with someone.
This is one of the quiet costs of distance that rarely gets named directly. It is not only the loss of touch or company. It is the loss of having someone nearby who can help a feeling become bearable before it grows too large.
If you noticed, while completing the worksheet, that certain worries feel bigger when you are alone than when you are together, this idea may explain why. It is not a flaw in you. It is what containment is supposed to do, and its absence is keenly felt.
Why Part Four asks you to imagine futures rather than solve a problem
By the time couples reach the section on possible futures, there is often a pull toward urgency. People want an answer. Should we move. Should we wait. Should we give up.
We would gently encourage you to resist that pull, at least for now. The scenarios in the worksheet are not meant to produce an immediate decision. They are meant to help each of you discover what you actually feel about different futures, separately from what you think you are supposed to feel, or what would look most sensible to other people.
This matters because couples sometimes make big decisions to escape the discomfort of uncertainty, rather than because the decision itself is right. A decision made to end uncertainty quickly is not always a decision made from clarity. Give yourself permission to sit with not knowing for a little longer than feels comfortable.
Speaking to the relationship itself
The final part of the worksheet, the letter to the relationship, sometimes puzzles people at first. Why write to something that is not a person?
The reason is simple, even if the exercise feels unusual. Relationships develop their own character over time. They are shaped by both partners, but they are not identical to either partner. When couples can speak to the relationship directly, rather than only to each other, something shifts. It becomes slightly easier to be honest, because you are not asking your partner to manage your feelings in that moment. You are simply naming what is true for you.
Many people find this is where the most important sentence of the whole worksheet appears.
A final word before you begin
This process takes real effort. You are giving up an evening, or several, that could have been spent doing something easier. You are allowing yourself to feel things that may have been quietly stored away because there has not been time, or safety, to feel them properly. This is not a small undertaking, and it deserves to be acknowledged as such.
If something painful surfaces while you are working through the worksheet, that is not a sign that something has gone wrong. It is usually a sign that something true and previously unspoken has finally found a way to be known. You do not need to resolve it alone, and you do not need to resolve it tonight.
If you would like support working through what arises, whether individually or as a couple, you are welcome to arrange a confidential introductory conversation. Sessions are conducted by secure live video, in English, French, or Greek, with a psychodynamic approach that takes seriously both the practical difficulty of distance and the deeper emotional history each partner brings to it.
Take your time with the worksheet. Be patient with whatever comes up. And remember that the fact you are both willing to do this work, together or in parallel, already says something important about what you are trying to protect.
Audio narration produced using ElevenLabs voice technology.
Photo credit: Roman Odintsov S @Pexels.com