I'm for a 3rd time with a foreigner woman into a long-distant relationship. The first 2 ended both in a marriage and both ended in divorce due to interference/confluence from my parents and some friends (also one's religion caused interference). The first two were from #Philippines while the third is from #Kenya and I dated her on #OkCupid first.

There I noticed a few things. The first thing you might come across in such relationships is #trust , which is actually a key for any serious/close relationships and and second is #communication . The third one is maybe only typical for distant relationships which is patience. It might become an issue when trust is low because you simply cannot look there 24/7 what is happening there but sure the same with physical relationships, like having your love-partner next to you and when you go to work you need trust in him/her.

Patience plays a very important role with distant relationships because simply maybe of different time-zones (Germany/Philippines is 6-7 hours distant, while Kenya is 2 hours away from Germany, both in advance). So you need to wait/sleep longer until your distant partner is waking up again. But yet still you might not be able to talk to him/her.

For my Kenyan girlfriend, she lives a humble life in a village and needs to bring her smartphone to a charging station where then I have to wait for finishing loading. First it was not so easy and also because of Internet is very "broken" (disconnects very often) there. So it wasn't that easy to trust that she is not "ghosting" me, actually the network has disconnected her again due to weak connectivity.

I then found myself often wondering, why she is suddenly not replying and I become feeling worried about it. But I later learned that everything was okay and now it is no longer an issue to me.

Yet still we both have a (currently) separate life, like she needs to help her mother out with their farm while I (now) have a work that keeps me away from home for a longer time. In the evening we both find again some time together where I devote a lot time (highest priority) into chatting and talking with her over the Internet (#Linphone ). Also #Nextcloud comes very handy here because we can securely exchange pictures about many things.

So to summon up, my experiences are good into #LDR with foreigners from so-called "third-world or developing countries". Sure I need to be cautious due to gold-digging habits but so far she didn't gave me that kind of feeling and she keeps her relationship low-profile to her parents (as many questions may come, including financial) and so I keep her away from my parents as they may start interfering with our early relationship. We might trust each other but I currently have revoked #trust into my mother with my relationships as she has messed up my previous relationships with messages on #Whatsapp and #SMS to my previous wives (sent behind my back about myself in the out-dated view of my mother).

I won't repeat that mistake I made so now I talked openly to my girlfriend about the "problems" or "issues" I have with my parents (that they are complicated and #asexual and begged at me for my then-girlfriend's phone number). I cannot sleep well when I know my mother can send messages behind my back to my distant girlfriend and even when she is here. That trust to her (my mother) is currently fully revoked and may not be restored in the near future.

So that is what you have to watch out when it comes to relationships in distance: a lot trust, very good and open communication and a lot patience that he/she has a currently more important matter to attend to and that is his/her currently separated own life. And surely every outside influence may cause more trouble when you don't have built up much trust into each other! I still trust my mother generally, but not into my relationships. I want to let more time (years) pass until that will be restored. For now, I may allow a "proxified" communication between them (mother/girlfriend) so I can directly control and monitor which messages are going out and which not (to each other). Yet still I may not allow my mother directly communicating with my girlfriend so quickly again for the fear of loosing my relationship again.

Also remember to maintain some kind of distant intimacy with your love-partner like sharing pictures (again trust is needed to do that) as this gives you some kind of distant-feeling of being intimate with your partner.

My parents may have helped me financially out but that does never give them permission to influence and mix themselves into my relationship, never! And this is what you (being poor) have to make clear to your "helping" relatives as well, financial help is fine but interfering with your relationship (to your love-partner) is never fine.