Long distances relationships suck. Technically, they arent long distance relationships because they arent relationships to begin with. You know why? Because theyre long distance! All you can do is sit around hoping for the next chance encounter with that person - hoping the magic gets recreated. Or you can create rules and schedule when those encounters will happen - which as any self-respecting teenager will tell you - completely ruins the whole spontaneity rubbish.

And therein lies the eternal dilemma. Do you risk scheduling and killing the excitement of those chance encounters or do you mope around listening to Dave Matthews and getting distracted while doing everything else hoping to get a whiff of the other? And even if you work your ass off for three months and try and save money to get together thanks to aircraft, the dreaded visa rears its ugly head (not applicable to the Europeans).

Then theres other conundrums. Is calling allowed? Can you call everyday or is that an invasion of space? (On a sidenote - everyone on facebook who cribs about their privacy not being respected needs to get slapped) And then theres also the semantics. Can you say things that are acceptable in your culture but can be completely misinterpreted in the other? Who decides on symbolism? Is leaving an offline message a positive sign or another space invasion? Is asking for pictures normal or something that ND Tiwari would do?

All you can really do is stretch the conversation long enough to be in physical proximity. If that goes beyond 6 months, not only are you in for a completely annoying 6 months of moping and giddy excitement, but also under constant threat of insecurity that one day - you will be bumped off by someone else in a mistaken state of drunken stupor.

And lets not even get into the arguing. Oh - the arguing. Because youve spent one week wondering and thinking what the other person was upto - the next 2 hours you do get end up being spent arguing about what did not happen in the past week. There go your two hours - and another crappy week of high drama and loneliness ensues.

During this time you also start re-reading all your emails and past conversations to pick on signs that you might have missed out on. Then, your brain goes into overdrive, and a myriad of connections start forming in your head that would put Da Vinci Code to shame. Your brain goes Aha! this was all a mistake anyway, and it was never going to work out, now that you perceived line number 6 of email number 19 to be something that it wasnt. All a shame, because your friends who have admired your courage in pursuing something so illogical, finally realise that it has had an incredibly damaging impact on your head, and that perhaps, it would have been better to not entrench yourself into the charade of a love torn apart by continents, and that Mills and Boons are at the end of the day, fiction. Even the sex.

All of which leads you into New Years eve, where you realise that Andy Borowitz came up with the most succinct observation you have ever heard which is, "The decade started with Y2K and ended with a WTF".

Truer words have never been said. If ever there was a poisoned chalice, this is it.