It's dark, the engines are roaring and I'm on my third flight within 24 hours. My head is throbbing, my eyes are burning and if the flight attendant offers me one more bag of mini pretzel snacks, I'll toss them all the way to Australia like confetti.

“I was stuck in a traffic jam yesterday and it took me over an hour to get home to my husband!” a friend of mine complains on WhatsApp.

I smirk while the person sitting next to me on the airplane unwraps a thick, smelly onion sandwich. When I want to see my husband, I have to take three different airplanes and travel for up to 30 hours. I have to pay at least 900 dollars for the round-trip-ticket, fly 6000 miles through eight time zones and have seventeen heart attacks for various reasons: Because my cheap connections are too tight, a blizzard is raging somewhere on the East Coast or the US border officers welcome me with yet another second screening to make sure that I am - again and surprisingly - no criminal warlord who is about to invade the country.

I am German and my husband is American. I live in Germany, he lives in the USA. We are in a long-distance relationship since 2018, and we've literally been through heaven and hell: Through Homeland Security interrogations, romantic welcome posters, mental breakdowns after saying goodbye, a pandemic with border closures and a spontaneous change of all life plans due to a terrifying cancer diagnosis. I believe that things like these either destroy a relationship or let your bond grow extremely strong and tight. For us, it's the latter. This is an insight into our long-distance relationship - what makes it work, how we manage even the worst scenarios and why, for us, love always wins.

From the very beginning it was pretty clear that we would never move together and never close the gap. This may sound surprising at first but there are a ton of practical reasons for us. So here's the disclaimer: Our story may not be a great general guide for long-distance couples but I hope it's inspiring anyways.

So why do we purposefully live apart? Well, I run my own succesful business in Germany and definitely do not want to give up on it, I own a house with a long family tradition and hence a lot of emotional attachment, and I have many close friends in Germany.  I  know some of them for as long as thirty years now and they are like siblings, like a chosen family.

My husband, on the other hand, has lived in the Rocky Mountains for decades (he and I have an age gap). He is very attached to his home and the great outdoors surrounding it. Also, learning German at his age proved to be too hard for him, and he has amazing doctors, fabulous treatment and insurance in the USA (he is ex-army), which is extremely important since he got diagnosed with stage 4 cancer in 2022.

Because my husband is retired and I can freely organize my work schedule as a freelance book author and copywriter in Germany, we are lucky and grateful that we can make a lot of time to see each other - as long as we keep an eye on our repsective visa days.

In the years before his cancer diagnosis, we sometimes didn't see each other for two or three months in a row, which was okay for us since we had been pretty independent people long before we got together. But now we try to spend as much time together as possible because his outlook and life expectancy is unfortunately not very good.

When we are apart, we usually start a countdown on an app that shows how many days, hours and minutes there are until we see each other again. Every time, it feels like I'm a kid again and as if Christmas morning is getting closer with each passing day - even after seven years of relationship. When we meet at the airport, one of us brings a silly welcome sign or a big balloon in the shape of a heart, dinosaur or squirrel. When we spot each other we start to run. Then we hug tightly and won't let go for a while. Every time it is special. Something that also keeps a relationship fresh, we found.

Although we now manage to spend almost ten months a year together (before the diagnosis it was more like six - we spend the time partly in the USA, partly in Germany and partly on trips around the world) we sometimes still have to say goodbye.

The reasons for this are for example my husband's cancer treatment in the US, my work in Germany or limited visa days.

If you are a EU citizen and want to travel to any country outside the EU, you usually have to apply for a tourist visa, which allows you to stay in the foreign country for a certain number of days. This is often 90 days and also applies to traveling to the USA.

However, I have an extended visa for the USA, a B2 tourist visa, which allows me to stay for up to 180 days at a time. But! You shouldn't go overboard with it and make sure you stay out of the USA for a certain amount of time before re-entering.  I have only once stayed the full 180 days to support my husband during his chemotherapy. Unfortunately, the period of time you have to stay out is not stipulated by US law, but depends on the mood of the officer at the border. If you come back too early or if the officer simply hasn't slept well, crossing the US border quickly turns into a nerve-wrecking interrogation. I can tell you because I have been in several of those interviews and I always had a meltdown afterwards.
My husband can currently come to Germany / the Schengen area for 90 days within 180 days and has never had any problems entering the country. He never had to apply for any visa (US citizens enter the EU visa-free) and never had to go through a second screening or interrogation.

As you can see, you can spend a lot of time together by simply using the given visa days - if you can make the time, earn and save enough money at home to afford the trips and plan carefully. And that's the thing: Long-distance relationships need a plan. A timeframe, a financial plan as well as honest debates about the future, hopes, expectations and reality. I am not a guru of any kind, so I cannot offer any personal advice for specific cases, I am only telling our story here. As already mentioned, we have a favorable job situation that gives us lots of latitude. If we both had worked full-time as employees, moving to one or the other country would have been the only long-term solution for us.

Long-distance relationships are like you can't just come over for a glass of wine in the evening. Well, at least I have never flown 30 hours only to drink a glass of wine with anyone. And then, of course, there's always the fear of one of us having an emergency like a car accident or a heart attack, where, even in a best-case scenario, it would take us 24 hours from home to home, even if we rush to the airport instantly.

Moments of separation and farewell are never easy. I hate the moment when you wave to each other through a barrier or window at the airport for the last time. I don't know how many times I've strolled to the gate alone with tears streaming down my face and people staring. I now even have a song that I listen to during these moments. Broken Crown by Mumford and Sons. It somehow comforts me.

As a retiree and freelancer we have time to write to each other on WhatsApp throughout the day when we're apart. Over the years we have discussed literally everything online from the best spice mix for noodle soup to bills, worries, plans and life after death. We always feel closer to each other when we can share as much as possible. I honestly don't know how we would have survived our many separations without deep, open and constant communication. It helps us not to drift apart, but it definitely requires commitment from both sides.

In the evenings, German time, we usually do a video chat where my husband reads me a book and I then peacefully fall asleep at some point. It's nice to hear his warm voice and be able to see him on my cell phone screen. We also always try to set a date for a reunion as soon as possible. That's the moment when the pain of separation turns into anticipation and I excitedly start bouncing around like a softball.

At the beginning of our relationship, the goodbyes felt always particularly heavy. I often fell into an emotional black hole. But the more often we do it, the easier it seems to get, though, as mentioned, it will never be easy.

Talking about some things never being easy: In March 2020 covid hit. The USA declared a travel ban on Europeans and the EU declared an travel ban on Americans. It was a fucking drama, to put it nicely. At the time we weren't married (a spontaneous wedding wasn't an option for various reasons) and there were no exemptions for unmarried couples for two long years (at least on the US side). As an unmarried couple, we were treated the same way as tourists. It was dignifiying and heartbreaking.
Back then the worldwide movement #loveisnottourism helped us a lot to find like-minded international couples with the same problem and to raise our voices together with them. I wrote to countless politicians during that time and signed many petitions to please open the borders for international couples again.

In those two years, during the US border closures, I traveled from Europe to the USA via third countries twice - yes, it was possible and the regulations were that crazy in 2020 and 2021. Europe had been declared a high infection zone at the time and you were only allowed to travel to the USA if you had not been in Europe for 14 days before you entered the USA. Thus I visitied Aruba for 14 days in 2020 and Costa Rica for 14 days in 2021. Completely insane.

Many other couples in long-distance relationships were separated at the time, too, and couldn't find a solution, and some relationships failed as a result. You can read about our chase for love around the world during covid in these articles:

• Covid-007 and the Love of my Life: How I disappeared to Canada overnight
• A Love Story in a Third Country: How I saw my Boyfriend despite Border Closures
• Smoke on the Airplane - my adventurous flight to Aruba

When everything was finally back to normal after covid, it only took another year for the universe to fuck our lives up again: cancer.
In November 2022, as a total shock, my husband was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer after he had complained about “a little abdominal pain” for a while. Stange 4 is considered the worst stage. It means you have already developed metastases and it's incurable. For a while it looked so grim that the doctor only wanted to give us a few more weeks.

Instead of flying home to Germany together for Christmas as planned, I dropped everything and stayed with my husband in the USA for treatment until April the following year. It was all that counted for me at this moment, nothing else mattered. We went through a tough chemotherapy, pain, paralyzing fear and very dark days together. For the first time, I used up all of my 180 visa days to stand by him.

Two days before the final test results of his chemotherapy came in, I had to leave the country because I was out of visa days. I had tried to get a visa extension for family emergencies, but the application was delayed and delyed and delayed by the US authorities to a point where I had no choice but leaving. Anyone who is overstaying his visa days for no matter what reason is committing a crime and can be banned from entering the country for up to ten years. It was inhumane and nearly tore me to pieces. So I was on my plane to Germany and didn't know whether the chemo had worked or not. Whether my husband would soon be in hospice and whether I would even be allowed to re-enter the country again soon to at least be by his side when he died. It was by far one of the worst moments in my life. All I really wanted to do was rip open the airplane door and jump off right over the Atlantic.

On the evening of my arrival in Germany, I received the relieving news that the chemo had gone extremely well and that the doctor had even given us another two or three years. I cried and laughed and screamed and drove up and down the highway in front of my house at night with one of my best sibling-friends, singing aloud to music. That was in April 2023.

So, we are still here. Despite everything. We finally got married and are certain that not even death can part us. He is my soulmate and we have proven more than once that we belong together. The most important thing is that we know that our love is something very special to us and that it can overcome a lot. Tested so often, passed so often. With tears, arguments, despair, fear, joy and hope. (Long-distance) relationships do need trust, passion, resilience, heart and a bit of insanity. And we have a lot of all of it.

If you like, you can follow our stories, travels, all the tragedies and happiness (almost) daily on Instagram: @squirrel.sarah.