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Dr Michelle Answers: How Do I Survive A Long Distance Relationship?

Black Ballad is celebrating Love Month, and each week in February Dr Michelle Nyangereka, a counselling psychologist, chartered member of The British Psychological Society (BPS) and a registered Practitioner Psychologist with the Health Care Professions Council, will be answering your relationship dilemmas. Grouped around a theme, the problems represent Black Ballad readers’ common concerns.

This week’s question:

“Do you have any advice for embarking on a new relationship that by its very nature will be long distance?”


After nearly two years of a pandemic with social and travel restrictions inhibiting our ability to connect IRL, the world has become both bigger and smaller. On the one hand we have become dependent on communicating URL, expanding our digital horizons more than ever – making transatlantic, bi-coastal, cross-border, pole to pole loving with a lover in every USB port a possibility. On the other hand, many of our lives have been restricted to a radius of a few miles with a handful of the same people day after day. The obvious appeal of escapist fantasies of love adventures with someone, anyone that isn’t in our immediate circle can become particularly alluring.