Being in a long distance relationship myself, I know that we receive a lot of criticism about our choice to love someone hundreds or thousands of miles away.

I’ve been told that my boyfriend of 4 years at the time was obviously cheating on me and that I needed to get with a “real man that doesn’t hide behind the computer” (because that makes a lot of sense!) I’ve also been told that I must have horrible self confidence or that I was desperate to enter into a relationship like this.

As hurtful as those statements were, I now find them to be pretty comical. At the time they didn’t bother me that much and I remember going back to my boyfriend and telling him about how ignorant people could be. We’d both laugh about it together since we knew that what we had was real. It didn’t shake us at all.

It still shocks me that people can be so blatantly rude about things as personal as relationships even when their opinions were never asked for. Over time I quietly decided to not mention that I was in a long distance relationship just based on the frequency of how often it happened.

It got to the point where men would view me as a personal ‘challenge’ because my boyfriend was so far away. According to them it made me easy because I was almost certainly “sex-deprived” and “needy” which for some reason meant their chances of being with me were higher. Can you believe that people would actually say things like that to me? I couldn’t.

As startling as all of that sounds, I’m sad to say that it’s pretty common. Both for men and women in long distance relationships. But believe it or not, there is a positive that comes out of this. Hearing comments like these really strengthened my resolve to stay with the person I love. It made me realize that I don’t care what other people think about my relationship -It’s mine and I am happy with it.

Not all LDRs have that same resolve. Some people are really affected by the things that their friends say about their relationship, or even their family. It makes sense, since those are the people you care about most. Their opinion does matter to you. But the truth is, how you stand up to those challenges really defines whether your relationship will make it or not.

So, I decided to write a list of reasons why others’ approval of your relationship shouldn’t matter. I hope this list will help other LDRs to stick it out despite any negativity around them, because we don’t need anyone’s permission to love.