Hey Cami.

Don’t beat yourself up about ‘failing’ – the most important thing of all is trying, that’s the best you can do. When it works, congratulate yourself. When it doesn’t, look at why it didn’t, learn from it for next time and accept it’ll take time. After all, sounds like you’ve had a pretty tough start in life and it’s amazing you were able to open up to this guy at all. So it isn’t really surprising you have limited experience managing your emotions when you’ve never really permitted yourself to feel them before.  It’ll take time and practice but you can. And congratulate yourself too for reaching out on here for help, we all need it at times and it’s a great place to widen your support from just your guy.

If a bad internet connection is a problem, perhaps sometimes back it up by an email where you can think through what you want to say – a modern day love-letter. I still have many of my partner’s old emails to me from tough times, they still make me smile. Think about doing the same to put a smile on your guys face whilst he’s under a pretty stressful time.

Action tends to make people feel more positive and helps with depression, so perhaps add to your list all the things you can do to help things turn out the way you both want them to.  Can you help with dealing with the insurance/refunds for example and help plan out a replacement holiday?  Look at the English test as something that will help you both with getting your visa – it may help with the motivation if you start to see these things as steps towards getting that life together you both want.

Yes, it is tough being away from the one you love but you are both doing it for good reasons.  Recognise it as just a year to get through and plan out yourself what’s next, it’s very encouraging and makes you feel like it will all happen. Do you know where you guys will live once he has finished his year – have you researched the area, thought about how you’ll find employment there, looked into friend groups, that kind of thing. It all helps make those plans seem real as I suspect deep at heart you may be a little worried it isn’t going to work out.

Look after yourself physically and emotionally too, eat well, exercise, try to socialise at work a little since you are so working so hard.

Take care.