Good news, bad news

So the good news is Richard's company did not get the Chicago bid! Which means for the time being, we continue being long distance along the California coast. And that means we continue in the waiting period of not knowing when this will end, which is not a good place to be.
That is the good news out of the way. No on to the not so good news. This post is dedicated to the topic of communication. This is a huge topic when you are in a LDR, and I will likely be the herald of many more posts on the subject.
Yesterday was a very bad day for me. My mother decided to have a borderline episode on me, and I was not handling it well. I reached out to my partner for support. I tried calling him at noon. At three. At five. At seven. He did not return my calls until 9pm. He stated "Hi, I just got home from soccer." I immediatly was not pleased. I was not happy that when I needed him, he was not there for me. I work in an agency with fourteen other mental health professionals. I do not often seek support from him when I am surrounded by extremely giving, intelligent, insightful and astute people who love helping others. So when I do reach out to him, it is important. I asked him why he waited so long to call me back and he stated that this was the first time he looked at his phone. You are in a LDR and you don't look at your phone until 9pm, when you usually go to bed between 9 and 9:30? I was disappointed and a little appalled. When I brought my feelings to his attention, he stated, "Well I don't care about my phone." Which I heard as "I don't care about you." And that put him immediately on the defensive, and me into another spiral of grief. And he was no longer able to be comforting to me or show me any kind of empathy.
As far as that last statement goes, that is a personal battle we will have to address at another time. But if you are in a LDR it is not going to work without consistent communication. That phone is our lifeline. He is not on Facebook, MySpace, Gmail or any other instant messenger. He does not agree with receiving personal emails to his work email address. He does not check his personal email address at work. So the phone is our only line of communication. So for this to work, he needs to look at it, answer it, dial from it! He needs to be an active participant. A LDR will not work with only one participant. So his rebuttal, "what did people do before cell phones?" I don't know, and frankly, I don't care. I am lucky enough to be in a LDR in the age of instant communication. Honestly, people in LDRs before instant communication probably did just great with their Courier pigeons and Morse Code. That isn't who we are anymore. You have a cell phone, use it.
Like I said above, this topic is huge, and has a lot of offspring topics that will require their own posts entirely, so the subject will likely come up in many future posts. After all, what is a LDR without communication? It can't be based on sex, it can't be based on enjoying similar hobbies, it has to be based on a solid foundation and then nurtured over distance through communication, which is tough. So communication is essential, and when communication is breaking down, it won't be long until the relationship breaks up.