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When you tell your friends, excitedly, that you’ve met someone, you see their faces light up. When you tell them he lives in another city, or state, their faces drop. People can worry that geographical differences won’t bode well for love, but some studies have actually found that living in a different place than your partner can contribute to relationship satisfaction. Long-distance dating is also incredibly common, with one study finding that a quarter of online daters have gotten involved with someone who lived far away. With many dating apps even implementing new features that let you specifically search for people anywhere in the world – like Tinder’s Passport – finding long-distance love is even becoming the thing to do.
Ultimately, who is anyone besides you to judge the validity or happiness of your relationship? It’s hard to find someone with whom you click. Making a connection is rare. So when you do, maybe it’s worth some plane tickets and vacation days. If you do have some miles between you and your lover, you will need all the help you can get to keep that connection alive. Fortunately, because long-distance dating is so common, many innovative apps have hit the market for the very purpose of helping geographically distant pairs. Thanks to technology, you can feel like your partner is basically in the room with you, no matter where he is. Some of these apps can even be fun for partners who do live in the same city, but want to strengthen their bond. Here are apps that help keep your long-distance love alive.
Between
Between is like a private digital love journal for you and your partner. On it, you can make customized selfie GIPHs and emoticons to add a little special touch to your messages. It will store precious memories like love notes, photos, and videos. The calendar feature lets you share calendars, so you feel connected and has a fun countdown feature that counts the days until the next time you’ll be together – which can be especially encouraging for long-distance couples. Everything is encrypted and secure in the app. You can make free calls using the app, and even when you change devices, your account will store your data, and you can access it all on your new phone.
