How far away can your partner be?

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I just read that someone seems to think an hour drive is a long distance between partners. It's interesting to me because in my capital city lots of people take that long to get to work each day, so it doesn't seem like a big deal.

What sort of distances / travel times do you deem acceptable between you and your partner or someone you are dating?

(For me, a few hours away is fine (a few hundred kilometres). Closer is better but I live in a country town where I'm not likely to ever meet anyone I'm attracted to.)

Hour drive to another city or within the city? For my area it doesn’t take hour to drive anywhere, so you’d be going to another city. I don’t own a car so living the city is no go for Me. I sometimes match with people from Portland but that might as well be England.

Living the city - you mean leaving the city? So you are saying you'd only date within your city (at this point as you have no car, even if she has one)?

(Hour drive within the city, for those who live in the outskirts. There's huge urban sprawl with a comparatively tiny CBD. For me, it's an hour drive to any of the nearest bigger towns with decent shopping etc. But that's another topic.)

Where someone is doesn't really inform my opinion of them.

I'm meaning more in practical terms. One might like someone 2000kms away but might not be willing to date them for practical reasons. So I take it your answer is "any distance"?

Both my exes & current girlfriend lived in another state. I lived in Louisiana & all my exes live in Texas as the country song goes. My 2nd ex was further away which was a day's drive away factoring stops to get gas, stretch your legs, get something to eat ect. My current girlfriend lived in Vermont which is a two day ride away by Greyhound. It'll be faster to travel by plane but neither of us had the money to do that. The train would take two days as well & cost about the same as flying would. I moved in with her after knowing each other for a bout 6 months & traveling to Vermont about 3x. I would of went the mail-order bride route & met a woman in another country if I had the money & resources. It would of been a hell of a lot better than being single for 8 years.

If you love someone, distance shouldn’t matter. It would probably be a priority, though, to move closer to each other or move in together.

It depends whether he wants to meet up often. If he was ok to chat online and meet occasionally while we got to know each other then anywhere in the UK, and I would consider anywhere in the world. If he felt that we had to meet every weekend then even if he was in the nearest city the cost of the trains would really mount up, and I think my mentioning that would easily be interpreted as a lack of interest or not really wanting to see them, or worse as a hint that they should by my ticket. God aren't relationships bl**dy complicated

I would normally say around an hour away would be my max, unless of course, I found someone that I really like, then I would try to make something work with them.

I do know someone near me that met a girl from Australia, and she ended up moving here, and getting married to him. As far as I know, they are still happily married, with a couple of kids...so I guess nothing is impossible.

How I see it - it's an all or nothing scenario. Some might disagree and attribute their own arbitrary limits, which is fine.

You're either a) choosing only to date as local as you are prepared to travel, or b) opening up the dating pool to the globe.

For me it’s just about the means you have to travel. If I have a lot of money, I don’t mind traveling an hour to go out with someone.

My wife and I suck at doing distance. She’s drop-dead gorgeous and guys NEVER left her alone in college. And we’re both human and we have urges. So when she was here and I was 1500 miles away, I ended up encouraging her to have sex with other men. I knew it would have been too much to expect her to wait for me for so long when I couldn’t be there for her and give her what she needed. I didn’t like it, but I couldn’t change it. And she understood I had a side chick during that time.

Some people are cut out for it, some are not. My wife and I just weren’t made for fidelity. We faced some challenges not long after we got married. When I was still doing theater, I always got tapped to play someone’s love interest. I quit theater after “Playing Juliet/Casting Othello.” But we had other problems, too, and my wife took a job that involved traveling and occasional overnights. I know that she’d considered cheating at one point. And then she was hanging out with a woman who was a poor influence, someone with a history of cheating and divorce. So she was constantly telling my wife to get a divorce. I can’t even sneeze and this woman thinks my wife needs to get a divorce.

But...as long as we’ve stayed close, worked together, and cut out a lot of unnecessary stress, our relationship has been magical.

In my opinion, lack of a physical relationship is lack of a relationship. I wouldn’t mind, say, having a girl_friend in every town I ever pass through that I could call up any time for dinner if I happen to be around. But to be more than that? We’d have to work out which one of us has fewer ties and obligations to one location and would be willing to move. I could tolerate traveling one hour twice a month and that’s the best I could offer. Do I trust her to stay true? I dunno...maybe, maybe not. I certainly don’t trust myself given my history.

Oh, and to clarify: by “physical” I mean actually in someone’s presence, not necessarily in an intimate sense. If my gf can’t ever be in the same room with me, saying it’s a relationship is a stretch. I’ve had purely online “relationships” before, and we knew better than to ask what the other person is doing IRL. I could pretend that we were exclusive online, but I have little doubt my online “gf’s” were doing the whole cybersex thing with someone else. I’ve probably been catfished before it was even a thing, but I was doing the exact same thing. So it didn’t matter.

I once dated a girl IRL in an intense relationship over a 2 hour distance. I had it BAD, too. I knew good and well she had a reputation for being fickle, and somehow I had it in my mind I was going to be THE ONE that changed literally everything, move heaven and earth to win this girl. I was actually surprised when she called me up one day and said she told some other guy she loved him.

That’s just how it goes. Your relationship is only as real as the closeness between you.

I won’t say it can’t be done, and it’s not fair for me to say it can’t work for anyone just because I had bad experiences. But it is most certainly challenging and not everyone is cut out for it. I would very carefully weigh the decision to date over distances. If you have what it takes, by all means prove me wrong. Don’t let yourself be overly disappointed when it doesn’t work out.

Yes I meant leaving. Yes again. From what I’ve gathered it wouldn’t matter as she’d see her always having to drive to me as me being a mooch and not a real man.
Would you be willing to be the one always driving to a guy? Always being the one to drive him around with you, or would you become upset and think he’s just mooching off you and hang you as a taxi? That’s how I’ve seen women here and onlin expr ss the idea of dating poor men without cars. So I won’t accept rides, I won’t stay at their place, accept gifts food, etc

I think you’re seeing it from a woman’s view where most guys would be fine driving to a woman all th time, giving her rides and all the above. I certainly would be fine doing so.
From what I’ve seen men don’t see women poorer then them as mooches like women see men who make less then them. I haven seen a seemly universal desire from men to only date women who make as much as them or more.
So it would seem any such woman would come to resent and hate me because she’s always having to travel to me and not the other way

I would be willing to always drive to a guy. I’d also be fine if I made more than my partner (that would not be possible right now, though). If you connect with the right person, she won’t care.

Pretty much. I don't consider Earth all that big really.

I don't care.

Yes, I'm seeing it from a woman's view, because I'm a woman. And my view is I don't mind driving a guy or girl around. I've dated people without cars. E.g. I've been in a relationship with a guy 4-5 hours away by car or train, who had no car. If he visited me he caught the train to the nearest station and I drove an hour to pick him up from there to save him catching the bus (and to spend an extra hour together).

If they can drive, though, but just don't have a car, then sharing the driving in my car seems fair while we are hanging out together. Whatever works.