In this age, social media has become an integral part of our lives, which makes talking to people who live halfway around the world much easier. Sites like Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram all have direct messaging. This feature helps with messaging another person and forming a friendship or even maybe a relationship.

It does not matter where the other person lives, what matters is if they can keep a conversation up or not. I use Tumblr on almost a daily basis, and I did not know what to expect when I received my first message.

I started using Tumblr four years ago, and I was a little creeped out when people who had no idea who I was started to follow me.

As a child, I was always told never to talk to strangers online and try to meet up with them. So the idea of random people who hid behind their computer screens and were following me was new and scary.

However, there was not much I could do to prevent them from clicking follow on my blog. After I hit 30 followers, I felt pretty famous and wanted it to keep coming. As long as I did not post anything personal, I was safe.

I did not think about sending any messages to anyone, on account of them thinking I was weird, and I couldn’t risk my online popularity. I was also under the assumption that all these people lived around me, or maybe the next state over.

So when I received a message, I thought someone around Chicago wanted to compliment me on the things I reblog on Tumblr. I was wrong, but I was close. The message was from someone who lived in Hungary, and wanted to compliment me on my blog.

It was easy at first, talking to someone almost every day about the things in our lives, and we developed a long distance friendship, we could talk about our lives and we took it upon ourselves to make sure the other was okay.

After a while we just started to discuss the same things, like how we’re feeling or what drama is going on at school, which put things into perspective for me about long distance relationships. They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, but how much could the heart take?

Marcos Ruelas, Div. 673, has seen the benefits and damage a long distance relationship has.

“It’s like living in constant worry if they’re okay or if they’re doing something inappropriate, but it’s much easier if they were around,” Ruelas says.

“But if we’re living in a world with over a billion people, how could we honestly expect our soul mate to be near us?”

According to a website dutifully named Long Distance Relationship Statistics, two out of three relationships end when they do not plan for a long distance relationship.

So how many of the one third long distance relationships actually work out, and what is the secret of those relationships?

“Communication is a major key, don’t leave the other person waiting for a text back,” Ruelas said.

A Wikihow on preserving long distance relationships agrees, explaining that people in a relationship need to maintain normality, which includes visiting as often as possible, staying in contact, and remaining committed to each other.

I read these steps over and over, and the article made it seem so easy to maintain a relationship even when seeing each other is not an option.     Then I thought that a wikihow on preserving a long distance relationship was just sad. How could we just completely trust someone when it is easy to become suspicious? As bad as that may seem, it is only human nature.

I agree that out of all the people in the world, it seems unreal that the person anyone would want to spend the rest of their life with is coincidentally right next door, but take caution in who you decide to go in a long distance relationship with.

It is not easy, but in cases of true love or being friend soulmates with someone who is miles and miles away, it is definitely worth the struggle.