We had known each other 4 years; however, the stars didn’t align until graduation week.
We’ll call him Tyler. We met early in medical school. We danced around our relationship as small group members for medical school quizzes and in social circles. He claims he flirted with me throughout medical school and that all our friends knew, but somehow, I was oblivious and didn’t realize until the last possible minute.
At the time I had graduated, achieving my greatest academic success. I also realized I had finally found my life partner. The match had passed, and I was moving to Philadelphia, and he to Tampa. I convinced myself that being 1,043 miles apart was the first step toward a disastrous relationship, and so I initially refused. The timing was wrong, the distance too far - so I said “no” more times than I can count… until I didn’t.
I finally gave this new relationship a chance, and for the first time in my life, my left-brained-self took a plunge into what became the most beautiful but difficult partnership.
I essentially lived in the hospital all of PGY-1 year. I found it challenging to acclimate to life as a resident. I was new, I had to gain the trust of coworkers and faculty, and I was tasked with learning both on shift and on my own. Added to my list, in between all of these efforts to be a strong resident, I had to learn how to be a good and supportive partner over a thousand miles away from Tyler in our new relationship. All the while, he was also struggling through his first year of residency.
While a new relationship is exciting, the stressors relating to this are numerous. Tyler and I would attempt to schedule vacations together, but the logistics were overwhelming. Coordinating vacation blocks depended on which service we were working on, approval from GME, our own family events, finding flights that we could afford, and praying they did not get delayed or canceled. Reflecting over the past 3 years, we saw each other approximately every 6 weeks, sometimes for a mere 36 hours.
Throughout residency, I felt judged as a female, always trying to plan my days off to see my boyfriend. It is taxing to convince others that I am a dedicated resident while also appearing to be a dedicated partner. I could not physically be there for him, and the constant day-to-night and night-to-day transitions of an EM resident made communication exhausting.
After finally getting to see each other after long stretches of shifts, the decision fatigue would set in. What will we do on the days we’re seeing each other? What will we eat? Where will we go? No matter how excited I was to see him, I was too tired to answer any of these questions.
However, the long stretches we went without seeing each other were worse. I was constantly envious of those around me who were able to go home at the end of a difficult shift and see their significant others. No matter how many patients I saved or lost, I always had to go home alone to my own thoughts.
We have been together for 3 years, and we have just about completed the toughest career-related task and grown as a couple. We have gotten to know each other’s families, and while I think and hope this partnership is long lasting, we don’t really view the past 3 years as a 3-year relationship; when you total the number of uninterrupted hours we have spent together, it has been a lot less than the chronology suggests. I’ve spent time in Tampa while Tyler was at the hospital and he at mine while I’m sleeping after a night shift.
The toughest realization for us was that we didn’t NEED each other, not to become physicians, nor to do well in residency, but that we wanted each other as partners with whom we could share happiness and sorrow.
Distance alone is tough, but distance in the midst of residency training is unimaginably tougher. These years have taught me a lot about the true meaning of a partnership. We reset our definitions of what spending time together means. We learned to support one another from afar. We braved rough seas fantasizing about the light at the end of the tunnel, which is finally here, 3 years later, when we finally get to live together and start our careers as attending physicians.
Do I recommend long distance relationships in residency? No, absolutely not. I think it is immensely difficult to master both residency and a long-distance partnership. For me, in year 1, my career suffered; year 2, my relationship suffered; and in year 3, I suffered in trying to give my all to both.
However, if you are either courageous or crazy enough to try like we did, my advice would be to realize your priorities and accept that they may be dynamic. Some days, your loved ones will demand more of you, some days, your work might. Some days, you may have to ignore one to give your all to the other.
However, something one of our clinical faculty said to me at the beginning of intern year has stuck with me all this time: If something happened to one of us, our coworkers may be upset, but the hospital would keep functioning unhindered. Our loved ones would not.