JOURNAL
1,000 Days Apart —How We Stayed CloseAcross the Distance
We met in a coffee shop during our last year of college. He was at the table next to mine, pretending to read but mostly just watching me highlight the same paragraph for the third time.
Two months later, he got a job offer in New York. I stayed in Chicago. We looked at each other across a pizza box and both said “we can do long distance” at the exact same moment — which felt like a sign.
It wasn’t always easy. Some nights it felt like the most obvious sign in the world. Other nights, it felt like the most naive thing two people had ever agreed to.
What No One Tells You About Long Distance
Everyone tells you it’s hard. What they don’t tell you is which part is hard. It’s not the big moments — the missed birthdays, the holidays apart. You prepare for those. You book flights, you send care packages, you video call with candles lit.
It’s the ordinary nights that undo you. A Tuesday at 11pm when you’re tired and a little lonely and you just want someone to be there. Not talking, not doing anything — just there.
Two-hour video calls every night. Everything feels new and worth telling.
Silences crept in — not cold ones, just the silence of two people running out of updates.
First real fight. He was busy; I was needy; neither of us was wrong. We almost didn’t make it through that month.
We found something that changed the dynamic entirely. A small thing, actually.
The Night He Sent Me a Link
It was late — maybe midnight my time, 1am his. We were on a call, the comfortable kind where neither of us was saying much, just existing together across a laptop screen. Then his text came through. Just a link. No context.
I clicked it. Then I laughed out loud. Then I got quiet.
It was a smart remote-controlled device — the kind designed specifically for couples in long-distance relationships. He’d clearly been researching for a while. “I found this,” he wrote. “I know it’s a lot. But I miss being able to actually reach you.”
“I don’t want you to carry those quiet nights alone. I want to be there — even when I physically can’t be.”
— His exact words, and yes, I screenshot them.
We talked about it for an hour. Then we ordered it. The product was Monster Pub, a Chinese-designed smart intimate device that’s become one of the most-recommended picks in long-distance relationship communities — and honestly, after a year of using it, I understand exactly why.
Monster Pub is one of the most thoughtfully designed app-connected intimate devices on the market — and it’s built from the ground up for long-distance couples. Your partner controls it via a shared link through any messaging app, with no separate account required. The app translates your partner’s touch gestures on their phone screen directly into sensation patterns, creating an unexpectedly intimate feedback loop across any distance.
🏆 iF Design Award
LDR Community Favorite
What Actually Changed
The first time we used it, we were both nervous in that way that makes you giggle at nothing. He was in his apartment; I was in mine. The video call was open. He said, “okay, I’m going to try something.”
And I understood, immediately, why people call these things game-changers.
It’s not a replacement for physical closeness. Nothing is, and I’d be lying if I pretended otherwise. But it gave us something we hadn’t had before: a real, bidirectional sense of presence. When he moved his thumb across his phone screen, I felt it. He was genuinely, physically reaching me — from 800 miles away.
What surprised me most was how it shifted the emotional texture of our calls. We laughed more. There was this playfulness that had slowly drained out of us somewhere around month six, and it came back. We started looking forward to evenings together again — not just as a check-in, but as an actual event.
I want to be careful not to oversell this. A device doesn’t fix a relationship. If the trust isn’t there, if the communication isn’t working, no gadget closes that gap. But we had the foundation. We just needed something to remind us that distance is a logistics problem, not a love problem.
Days apart, and still choosing each other every morning. That’s the whole story, really.
To Anyone Still in It
If you’re reading this at 11pm, a little lonely, wondering if it’s worth it — I see you. I’ve been exactly there. The answer isn’t always yes, and I won’t pretend it is. Long distance is genuinely hard, and it’s okay to decide it isn’t right for you.
But if you want to keep going, find your version of what we found. It might be a ritual — a good morning voice note, a show you watch “together.” It might be something more intimate. Whatever it is, the point is that you’re actively choosing to close the distance, in whatever ways you can.
He moves to Chicago in six months. We’re already looking at apartments. I still can’t quite believe we’re actually going to live in the same city.
1,000 days. And we’re still here.
