By Mark Ryan, BACP Accredited Psychotherapist and NCPS Accredited Relationship Therapist
Long distance relationships ask a lot of the people in them at the best of times. Summer asks a little more. The season carries its own set of pressures for couples who do not share the same city or country. There is the social media feed full of other couples on holiday together, the events you would like to attend but cannot quite justify the travel for, and the long evenings that feel designed for two people in the same place. None of this is a reason to panic about the relationship. It does help to understand why summer tends to bring things to the surface in long distance relationships, and what helps.
Why Summer Feels Different When You Are Long Distance
One of the more surprising findings in relationship research is that people in long distance relationships report relationship quality as high as, or higher than, couples who live in the same place. In a nationally representative US sample of 870 people, those in long distance relationships generally reported higher relationship quality and dedication, and lower feelings of being trapped. They also expected to be less likely to break up. By the follow up, though, they were just as likely to have split as the couples who lived close by (Kelmer et al., 2013). So distance does not make a relationship better or worse. It changes what the people in it have to do.
In my experience, that helps explain why long distance relationships can hold real emotional depth over long periods. Couples who live apart tend to talk deliberately and with full attention, and the couple who speaks for an hour every other evening can be more connected than the couple sharing a flat who have stopped talking.
Summer disrupts this balance in particular ways. The pace of life speeds up and social calendars fill. The careful contact that kept things working gets squeezed between other things. The comparison effect also grows, because summer is when proximity feels most conspicuous and being in separate places is hardest to ignore. That is not evidence the relationship is wrong. It is evidence that summer is a harder time of year for long distance couples, and that being prepared for it makes a real difference.
The Communication Trap
Not all contact is equal, and this is especially useful to know during summer. A survey of 647 emerging adults, just over a third of them in long distance relationships, found that more frequent and more responsive texting predicted greater relationship satisfaction for long distance partners, but not for couples who lived close together (Holtzman et al., 2021). For a long distance couple, a text can carry more weight than it would otherwise, particularly when it says "I am thinking of you" and not just "what time is your train?"
In my experience the longer calls are where the deeper conversations happen, and the couples who struggle in summer are often the ones whose calls have shrunk to a few minutes of logistics while the texts have turned practical or gone quiet. Both kinds of contact matter. The text keeps the thread warm through the day, and the call lets you land with each other.
The trap that summer creates is a gradual drift from connected contact towards lower effort, less meaningful communication. When both partners are busier, calls get shortened or pushed back. The daily check in becomes a thread of one word replies. Responses get slower. The communication that was holding things together does not disappear, but it thins, and the thinning is easy to miss until one or both of you is feeling the effect.
This is not a character flaw in either person. It is an almost universal pattern under certain conditions, which is why it helps to name it and build a simple structure around it rather than assuming it will not happen to you. The couples who come through a long distance summer well tend to have had an explicit conversation in advance about what contact will look like. It is not a rigid schedule. It is a shared understanding that the contact matters and deserves protecting even when the diary gets fuller.
The Idealisation Gap and When Reunion Feels Different
One aspect of long distance relationships that catches people off guard, particularly after a longer than usual period apart, is the gap between the relationship as it exists in each partner's imagination and the relationship as it exists in person. Across two studies, idealisation and satisfaction with communication were stronger in long distance dating relationships than in close ones, and those relationships were more stable while the partners remained apart. Many of the couples ended things once they became geographically close, and longer absences between visits, along with extreme idealisation, were linked to instability on reunion (Stafford and Merolla, 2007).
That fits what I see. A degree of idealisation sustains a couple through separation, and it is a natural part of missing someone. It is also a slightly smoothed out version of the person, one that does not hold the friction, minor irritations and adjustments that come with being in the same space again. After a summer apart, a reunion that was supposed to feel easy can feel effortful for the first few days. The rhythms are off. Small things grate in ways they did not before. This is often misread as a sign that something has gone wrong, when it more often reflects a readjustment from the imagined relationship to the real and textured one. Knowing this in advance does not make the readjustment disappear, but it makes it less alarming. It is also a good reason to plan visits throughout the summer and avoid leaving one very long stretch apart.
This is one of the places where comparing yourself with couples who are physically together can do damage. It is easy to look at couples who spend the summer in the same city and assume their relationship must be simpler or more solid, when proximity brings its own pressures that are simply less visible to you. When Summer Exposes the Cracks looks at some of the ways summer puts pressure on couples who are together too, and it is a useful reminder that distance is one variable among several.
If the summer has surfaced something harder in your long distance relationship, something that a different schedule or a better call routine is not going to resolve, it might help to talk it through with someone. I offer a free 30 minute introductory consultation for couples, held by video call, as a low pressure starting point.
The idealisation that sustains a long-distance couple through separation is real, functional, and largely healthy
When the Distance Itself Has Become the Problem
There is a version of a long distance relationship that works well for years, and a version that works until it stops. The point at which long distance becomes unsustainable is rarely a single dramatic event. It is usually a slow build of the feeling that the relationship is being maintained rather than lived, that you are connected to the other person but not growing alongside them, and that the distance has stopped being a circumstance and started being a wall.
Summer tends to speed this feeling up when it is already there, partly because the comparison effect is at its peak and partly because the gap between what you want the relationship to feel like and what it currently feels like is harder to dismiss when you are watching other people live the thing you are missing. That is useful information, not something to wait out. A relationship where the distance has become a barrier to growth is not necessarily one that should end, but it needs a more honest conversation about what the plan is and what each partner is willing to do to move towards it. And if one of you is unhappy and that has not changed, that matters. Staying in something that has stopped working for you is not a kindness to either person.
Couples therapy can offer a structured way to have that conversation, with both partners heard, rather than in the heat of an argument or a moment of frustration. The question of how much longer to sustain an arrangement that no longer quite works is easier to think about when it is not being asked in a moment of acute unhappiness.
LGBTQ+ and Non Monogamous Relationships
For LGBTQ+ couples in long distance relationships, the challenges summer brings can include some that are not primarily about distance. If one or both partners live in places where being openly LGBTQ+ is complicated, summer travel and time apart can mean managing a more public version of yourself than you are used to, or moving through environments that feel less safe or affirming than the city or community you have built together. Pride season can sharpen this, because celebrating in different places can feel isolating when you would like to be side by side. The relationship can become an anchor for the parts of yourself you cannot always express elsewhere, which changes what summer apart means and what kind of contact feels most sustaining.
For couples in consensually non monogamous relationships, summer tends to create a specific version of the logistical complexity that long distance already involves. Agreements and routines built around one geography may not translate easily to another, and time apart can raise questions about how the wider relationship structure is working that did not feel as pressing during the rest of the year. Who is around for a festival weekend, who is travelling, and how each partner hears about the other's plans all need a little more care. The same principles apply, deliberate communication, honest conversation about what is working, and a shared understanding of what the next few months look like, but with more people and more variables in the mix.
What Helps
Protect your contact. Texting that shows attention, and the longer calls where you can talk about things that matter, are both easily squeezed in summer. Treating them as commitments rather than conveniences, as fixed points in the week rather than things that happen when neither of you has anything else on, matters more than it might seem.
Have an explicit conversation about summer before it arrives. What will your contact look like? Are there visits planned, and if so, when? What is the realistic expectation on both sides about response times and availability, and how big a gap between messages or calls is fine before it starts to feel like distance of a different kind? This is not about creating a schedule. It is about making sure both partners are working from the same set of expectations rather than different ones.
Plan the visits as well as the calls. It helps to have the next time you will be in the same place on the calendar before the last one ends, even if it is a short trip. It also helps to expect the first day or two of a reunion to feel slightly awkward, and to say so to each other rather than treating the awkwardness as a verdict. Couples who talk about this in advance tend to ease back into each other's company more gently.
Make the ordinary visible. Send a photo of your lunch, the view from the train, or the ridiculous thing you saw on the way home. Small glimpses of daily life make it easier to feel part of each other's summers, and they give the other person something to ask about. Shared rituals help too, such as watching the same film on a video call or cooking the same recipe in two kitchens.
Name the harder feelings rather than managing them alone. Loneliness, jealousy, resentment at the arrangement and fear that things are shifting are all normal in a long distance relationship under pressure, and they tend to get more difficult the longer they are kept back. A partner who knows you are struggling can do something with that information. A partner who only knows that your messages have become shorter and less frequent is left to interpret it.
Do not treat every hard week as evidence of a structural problem. Summer creates conditions where long distance relationships feel harder. A difficult July is not the same as a relationship that is failing. Why Couples Argue on Holiday is a related read on how seasonal pressure can distort what you think you are seeing in a relationship. It is written about couples who are together and finding it harder than expected, but the dynamic of misreading seasonal friction as structural failure applies either way.
Getting to the Other Side of It
Long distance relationships in summer are harder than at other times of year, and it helps to acknowledge that rather than expecting yourselves to be the exception. The couples who get through summer in reasonable shape are not usually the ones who are undisturbed by the distance. They are the ones who name what is difficult, protect the things that matter, and do not let the gap between contact and presence become a gap in the relationship itself.
I do joint consultations rather than individual intake calls, because this is relationship therapy and the first steps are shared steps for both of you. The free 30 minute introductory consultation is held by video call or in person, whatever is easiest.
About the Author
Mark is a BACP Accredited Psychotherapist and NCPS Accredited Relationship Therapist, and the founder of Rise and Grow Therapy, a private practice offering couples and relationship therapy across Kensington, Pimlico, and Angel, Islington in London, as well as online consultations. His approach draws first on Imago Relationship Therapy, alongside integrative relational, attachment-based, Gottman, and systemic approaches. Mark works with couples of all kinds, including LGBTQ+ couples and those in non-traditional relationship structures such as consensual non-monogamy, as well as with individuals working through relational issues.
References
Holtzman, S., Kushlev, K., Wozny, A., & Godard, R. (2021). Long distance texting: Text messaging is linked with higher relationship satisfaction in long distance relationships. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 38(12), 3543 to 3565. https://doi.org/10.1177/02654075211043296
Kelmer, G., Rhoades, G. K., Stanley, S., & Markman, H. J. (2013). Relationship quality, commitment, and stability in long distance relationships. Family Process, 52(2), 257 to 270. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1545-5300.2012.01418.x
Stafford, L., & Merolla, A. J. (2007). Idealization, reunions, and stability in long distance dating relationships. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 24(1), 37 to 54. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407507072578
