Thanks all for your comments and answers! Keep them coming!
Lana, thanks for the support and encouragements, I need them!
Funchy, thanks for your warning but this type of situation really isn't a concern here. We met in real life, not online, and had a couple of months of "proximal" relationship (how the hell do you call the opposite of long distance?) before we had to move away from one another.
And the problem with the risk you take when you need years to really know someone is a very valid point, but I feel it applies just as well to face-to-face relationships. People change so much in their teens and 20s, I would really face the same challenges if I were with a local I met as a student who would then enter professional life. We just have to try our best to know ourselves, know each other and based on that bet that we will change in compatible ways.
ar81, yeees? To use an old anaolgy, most people joining a judo class will give up well before they're a black belt, but whether a new recruit will become a black belt has a lot to do with efforts and perseverance, and very little to do with statistics... This is also why I'm here asking for advice and positive vibes!
Akashic_Librarian, Interface Leader, you both had great testimonies and suggestions. We already do quite a few of the things you mentionned. Phone sex isn't much of a success here, unless we want to have a good laugh, but writing erotica, now you're talking...
Interface Leader, you are so right about the ptifall of omissing difficult conversations... "Well, we only have a week/2 days/a few hours together, let's not open that can of worms now"... We've managed to deal with it before (not easy!) but it's good to get a reminder.
Did you manage to have a fulfilled daily life without shutting your feelings down, though? I seem to go through cycles, at part of which I am very involved in the relationship and the rest of the world loses some of its interest, and other moments when I compartmentalize my life completely, having a great day to day life but keeping my love completely separate from that. Of course, he has cycles like these and we're not synchronized, which creates friction... Do you know what I mean?
More testimonies would be wonderful!