 Well, hello and welcome to Understand Men Now. I'm your host, Jonathan Asley of johnathanasley.com, and I'm so excited to be shooting this video for you today. Our topic, long distance relationships mostly fail, but women still buy into the fantasy. Really quickly, before we get started, if you're new to my YouTube channel, hit the subscribe button, hit the bell, so you can be notified of new content. And if you're after this video, you go, God, this guy makes sense. I want to schedule a call to see if working with the coach is right for me. Hit that link below that says free discovery call. Okay, long distance relationships. Ladies, I am pulling my hair out, witnessing you get so attached to a long distance relationship. And it goes against everything that human beings need to actually form a bond together. It goes against what most human beings need to form a bond together, because you need at a minimum of a hundred hours of face to face time, just to hit that first level of a relationship. And it's, and here's the thing, the hundred hours has to be spread out over time. When a long distance relationship, oftentimes as you're getting together, you know, for a short period of time, you're in a bubble, which is a total fantasy, and then you're apart. And here's where women get tripped up and men do the same thing too. Is they spend a lot of time with their thumbs communicating with one another through text messaging, believing that it's actually forming and building a relationship. And I'm here to say, our thumbs do not build a relationship. This isn't like the movie Pride and Prejudice, where you wrote letters to one another, and that's not the movie, but I'm using that as an example. And you sent the letter by horse and you communicated with one another and you didn't see each other for months and months at a time. That's not how this works. It doesn't work like that today. That was an old time and it doesn't work that way. We don't fall in love through written communication. We fall in love through face to face. But the challenge with most women is that they buy into because a man is giving you just a little bit of attention that this is a significant relationship. And if you're not familiar with the work, mating and captivity by Esther Perrell, do yourself a favor, Google Esther Perrell, watch your videos, and learn about something called stable ambiguity. Stable ambiguity. And stable ambiguity is basically is when two humans basically do the bare minimum to keep the relationship going, but they're not developing the roots to a successful, happy, healthy relationship. And it's hard to develop roots to a healthy, happy relationship if you're far apart. And here's the thing. Long distance doesn't have to be thousands of miles or hundreds of miles. Long distance, literally in these days, could be 20 miles from each other. If you're not spending regular face to face time together, it's going to be very challenging, again, to build the roots to a healthy, happy relationship. And I see this all too. Now, by the way, I know it's cove. If you're watching this video during COVID time, I get it. How do you build that face to face time? It's going to be challenging. And I'm here to say, the thumbs communication is not building the relationship. You're not, it's virtually impossible to build trust. Trust is needed to build a healthy, happy relationship. The only way to build trust is through the doing things together, for being there for one another. Hey, I need a ride to any, well, I was going to use the airport, but you do that in long distance relationships. But it's like, hey, I need something for the grocery store. Can you get it? I've got an issue with a family member. Can you come and hug and support me? Those are the things that build trust with one another. It's hard to build trust with your thumbs. This is why if you've bought into the fantasy of long distance relationship, then you should buy into the fantasy of loving on yourself. This is my book, What the Heck Is Self Love Anyway? Because the reality is, is if you're choosing a long distance relationship that doesn't have genuine merit, and a long distance relationship needs a game plan, needs a game plan of how you're going to make this relationship work. And if you're stepping into a long distance relationship, buying into the bubble of spending time together without a game plan of how are you gonna merge lives together, then it's gonna be problematic. I recently shot a couple of videos of the five steps for a man to stay in love and the five questions to ask a man before you give your heart. Well, you've gotta watch those two videos before you even consider a long distance relationship because when you understand the mechanics of a healthy, happy relationship, you have a better chance for relationship success. This is one of the reasons why I talk about the book Eight Dates by Dr. John Gottman all the time. Because when you understand the mechanics of a healthy, happy relationship, you'll understand that long distance is so problematic. And yet it's such a beautiful fantasy to fall in love with. Hey, listen, I'm not here to say that long distance relationships can't work. They can work. They work when two people have a game plan together. They're on the 50 yard line and going, hey, let's figure out how we're eventually gonna blend lives with one another. How are we gonna eventually blend lives? And if you're just spending time enjoying each other's company and enjoying stable ambiguity, hey, that's your choice. I'm all more power to you. But if you want a deeper rooted relationship, then you better figure out a game plan. Because if you don't, it's just a fantasy. I think you get my point. By the way, you might notice when I shoot my videos, I always change these pictures. I always change these pictures. I've got about 50 of these that I change all the time. That's picture of my mom and dad. That's my picture of my two boys and I'm in the middle and I'm wearing a blue shirt to match this. So it brightens this up. All right, I think you get my gist on what I think about long distance relationships. There's a lot we can talk about long distance relationships. In fact, if you have questions, please post a comment below. Let's get a conversation going about this because long distance relationships can potentially work, but they have a very low chance and most of the time you ladies buy into the fantasy. And that's what I want you to encourage you not to fall into the fantasy of a long distance relationship. All right, I'm gonna wrap up this video as I always do, giving myself a big gigantic Jonathan Bear hug of self love. I'm gonna give you a hug of love. I'm gonna ask you to turn to your friends and give them a hug of love because hugs are a great source of love and we can all use more love in our lives. Thanks so much and wishing you a fabulous day. Bye bye now.