How far away is "normal"?

submitted by HelloMomo from self.Lesbians

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[–][deleted] 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

"Normal" is relative in terms of long-distance relationships. I don't think anyone can really answer what a "normal" distance in an LDR is.

The more answerable question is whether or not living 2 hours away (what's the physical measurement of distance if you don't mind my asking?) is "workable." But that also can't be answered here... by anyone but you and her. I've never been in an LDR but "workability" seems to be based on things like whether you have the means and money to make that roundtrip, how often that trip is going to be taken, who's going to be doing the traveling, individual schedules (just because you're visiting her in her home doesn't mean she doesn't have other tasks/chores/hobbies to do), if either of you live with roommates/family, your physical health/ability to make the trip, and your willingness to be in an LDR knowing that it ultimately isn't going to be the same as dating someone who lives in the same city as you if that's something that you're used to and are looking for. Many people say they're willing to go the distance (metaphorically and literally) until it comes time to actually do so.

Also, over the years, I've heard a multitude of reasons why lesbians seem to LDR more than anyone else including population size with lesbians making up 3-4% of the population, many (most?) lesbians don't live near major cities so we have to branch out further to find more women like us, those of us who live near each other probably already dated each other and maybe we don't want to date our friends or ex's ex or friend's ex or whatever. Also, it does seem the whole "settling down" thing happens younger/quicker amongst many lesbians, so if you're older and want to date someone your age, only looking in a 10 mile radius for a single available lesbian who's your type is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Straight people can go ahead and only look in their own city and they'll still have so many people they can date. If lesbians did that, we'd have like 1.5 options at most.

[–]votkriscan 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

The population is closer towards 10%, which still makes it a very small population (1/10). The key is that lesbians are a segregated bunch. There is this assumption that lesbians must be equally distributed in every region, city and country. This is not the case. There are some areas where there are a large amount of lesbians, and at others, they do not particularly exist, or the dating demographic you are interested in does not. For anyone who have the misfortune to live in no-lesbian land, then they will have to branch out much harder or make the decision to re-locate.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

Ten percent is what Albert Kinsey estimated the general gay male population to be over half a century ago. The population rate of LGBT people is 3-5%. As shown in this study, this other study, and this Gallup poll. Save your corrections for when you're actually correct. And the rest of your response is just regurgitating mine so... great job repeating me, I guess.

[–]votkriscan 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Look hey, I'm just talking about what I find to be an observable belief, that's all. There are many who don't wish for LGB people to exist and I'm going to take that into account. But more to the point, what you wrote, at least from how I interpreted it, seems to insinuate that lesbians are getting into LDRs due to being 3-5% of the population.

Except, there is also another group that is roughly 3-5%. The so-called extremely wealthy, and they are not getting into LDRs. In fact, straight/bi women in that strata marry rather strictly within cultural, country, location and ethnicity lines. So, this doesn't explain any kind of LDR phenomenon between lesbians. Hence, together with my belief, is the reasoning that it's largely due to the number of lesbians not being equally distributed and far less about the smaller population ratio.

Lastly, I don't even know why you are taking this personally. I was just simply stating my opinion. It was never intended to be of a personal nature.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I highly doubt researchers are deliberately destroying data for 5-7% (which is huge in terms of data) of the LGBT community just because of homophobia, especially when these studies are based on self-reporting, were actually conducted within the 21st century, and the second study was conducted by a gay man.

You:

But more to the point, what you wrote, at least from how I interpreted it, seems to insinuate that lesbians are getting into LDRs due to being 3-5% of the population.

Hence, together with my belief, is the reasoning that it's largely due to the number of lesbians not being equally distributed

I literally wrote in my last post:

many (most?) lesbians don't live near major cities so we have to branch out further to find more women like us

So yeah, you just keep repeating me. Also, you don't think our population size has something to do with distribution?

I feel like your insistence that we're 10% is because the activist gay community has been saying it for decades, especially during the fight for same-sex marriage in the US when homophobes didn't want to change the laws for "a few people" so we had to say we were more in numbers because discrimination against 10% of the population "looks worse" than discrimination against 3-5%. Here's the thing: we could be 1% of the population and that wouldn't make the fight for gay rights any less important since we literally just want the same things straight people want (but legally) and we're not demanding crazy ass things like access to opposite-sex spaces or suing people for not using our preferred pronouns.

Your wealthy people analogy is another false comparison because wealthy people can actually date anyone of the economic spectrum; nothing stops them from doing so other than keeping their wealth and reputations away from "the poors." A lesbian wouldn't and couldn't date someone outside a sexuality or gender that matches hers.

The population is closer towards 10%, which still makes it a very small population (1/10).

The very first line of your original response to me.

Lastly, I don't even know why you are taking this personally. I was just simply stating my opinion. It was never intended to be of a personal nature.

I literally took nothing "personally." You went out of your way to "correct" me and state your personal belief and opinion as fact, you were proven wrong, and now you're mad about being called out on it so you're calling me oversensitive. If anything, you're the one taking the proof that you were wrong personally just because of what you choose to believe. Sound familiar?