Originally published on Mic.com

Leah, 25, from Arizona, was hesitant when she first began developing feelings for Stephen, a 22-year-old from Northern Ireland she met on the photo-sharing app Fling. Long-distance relationships are hard, she knew, and she worried that she would hold him back in his everyday life. But they decided to give it a try, and six months later, they’re still going strong.

Online dating and tools like FaceTime and Skype, not to mention a tough job market that forces people to move more, have made long-distance relationships more common than ever. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that 3.6 million married Americans are living apart (a 40% increase since 1999), and the former Center for the Study of Long Distance Relationships puts the number of college students in LDRs at 4.4 million.

For couples like Leah and Stephen, it can really work. “The biggest positive surprise has been that we have made this work for so long already,” Leah told Mic, “and that I have discovered what love really is.”

It sounds cheesy, but it’s true: The challenges of LDRs end up revealing what really matters in a relationship, long-distance or otherwise. Here are the things you learn after living with your love hundreds of miles away.

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Originally published on Mic.com

If you’ve been single and ready to mingle for any length of time, you’ve probably picked up bits of “advice,” all of which add up to a confusing, outdated set of guidelines that tell us what to say and do (or not) in order to land a spouse (the assumed goal, of course). 

How long should you wait to text him back? Four hours minimum. When can you sleep together? After no fewer than three dates. Should you move in together? Of course not — why would he buy the cow when he can get the milk for free?

This advice has never really been proven, of course, yet somehow we still hear it from parents, grandparents, friends and even ourselves in moments of self-doubt. The truisms have been so bought into that many have been immortalized into a book called (what else?) The Rules.

These platitudes are more than annoying to hear — they’re harmful and deeply offensive. They not only put the blame on single people, but they also assume men and women play different roles in this game called love (not to mention that dating is only happening between men and women). But it’s 2015. We know better. It’s time to kill these nine “rules” once and for all.

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