Long-distance relationships when your families live in different countries

Plenty of relationships now start across borders: someone you met on a family visit, at a cousin's wedding abroad, through friends, or online. Others are local relationships where each family lives in a different country. Either way, distance adds three things most couples don't have to think about: time zones, travel, and immigration rules.

How do couples in different countries stay close day to day?

Couples who stay close across countries protect a regular call window, mix video, voice and messages, and share ordinary life rather than reporting on it. Small, frequent contact usually beats long, rare calls.

• Find your overlap. With a five- or eight-hour time difference, there may be one good window a day. Protect it.
• Mix the formats. Video calls for the big conversations, voice notes for the small stuff, photos of ordinary life in between.
• Do things together, apart. Watch the same film, cook the same recipe, play an online game, read the same book.
• Don't let calls become reports. Talk about feelings and plans, not just what you did today.
• Know each other's calendars. Ramadan, Lent, exam season or a busy period at work all change how much someone can give. Our guide to festivals and dating shows when the main festivals usually fall.

Watch the clocks change

Time differences aren't fixed all year, because countries change their clocks on different dates or not at all. A few examples:

Put both time zones on your phone's clock, and check before booking a call around the changeover weeks.

Meeting for the first time

If you met online and haven't met in person, plan the first meeting with safety in mind, however well you feel you know each other.

1. Video call several times first. Someone who always has an excuse not to is a red flag.
2. Check entry rules. US citizens visiting the UK now need an electronic travel authorisation (ETA) before they travel; UK citizens visiting the US need an approved ESTA or a visa. Other nationalities have their own rules.
3. Read your government's travel advice for the country: GOV.UK foreign travel advice or the State Department's travel advisories.
4. Book your own accommodation and a return ticket. Don't depend on the other person for somewhere to stay or a way home.
5. Meet in a public place and keep the first day short.
6. Keep your passport, phone and money on you.
7. Tell a friend or family member where you'll be, share your location, and check in at agreed times.

Our safety page has more on first dates and where to report a problem in the UK and US.

Visas and immigration: go to the source

Sooner or later, one of you may want to move. Immigration rules for partners and spouses change often, can include financial and English language requirements, and take months. Get information only from official government sources, and be wary of agents or "fixers" who contact you first or promise a certain outcome.

• Moving to the UK: the UK family visa covers partners and spouses of British citizens and people settled in the UK. To marry in the UK without staying, there is a Marriage Visitor visa.
• Moving to the US: a US citizen can petition for a spouse, or for a fiancé(e) on a K-1 visa. For a K-1, USCIS says you must normally have met in person within the two years before filing, and must marry within 90 days of the fiancé(e) entering the US. Details are on the USCIS fiancé(e) visa page.
• Anywhere else: use that country's official immigration website only.

Most importantly: a partner you haven't met who needs money for a visa, flight or "proof of funds" is one of the most common romance scam stories. The FBI lists requests for airfare, and partners who live or work overseas and keep cancelling plans to meet, among the classic warning signs. Our guide to romance scams that target diaspora communities explains the patterns and where to report them.

Money between you

Couples who have met and are building a life together will eventually share costs. A realistic list:

• Flights, and leave from work for visits.
• Travel permits, visa application fees and any health surcharge.
• Translations and certified copies of documents.
• A wedding, possibly in two countries.
• Setting up a home, and the gap before a new arrival can work.

Talk openly about how you'll split them. Be honest about family obligations too; many people support parents or relatives, and that will continue. But never move money through your own account for someone else, and never send money to someone you haven't met in person.

Two families, two countries

If your families live in different countries, every festival, wedding and illness becomes a question of where you'll be. Agree early:

• How often will you each visit family, and will you go together?
• How will you share important festivals between families?
• What would you do if a parent needed care?

Meeting each other's families is a big step when it involves international travel. Our guides to introducing a partner to your family and meeting your partner's family in Latin America have practical advice, and dating when you don't share a first language helps if the families don't share one.

Deciding where home will be

The hardest long-distance question is where you'll eventually live. It depends on careers, families, immigration rules, language and where you'd want children to grow up. Couples who handle it well talk about it early, keep revisiting it, and are honest about what each would be giving up. A relationship with no plan to close the distance tends to run out of road.

If you'd rather meet someone closer to home who shares your background, our guide to finding singles events in your culture or faith community is a good place to start.