Long-distance love messages.

What do you text in a long-distance relationship?

The ordinary things, mostly. When you live in the same city, your partner sees your day without you having to describe it: the bad lunch, the late bus, the mood you came home in. Apart, none of that reaches them unless you send it. Couples who keep long distance working tend to text the boring parts as much as the big ones, because the boring parts are what living together would have been made of.

So the lines on this page come in two kinds. Some say the big thing plainly: I miss you, I'm not going anywhere, I choose you. Others are small and specific, the kind that makes a day on the other side of the world feel shared. Use the second kind more often. Save the first for when it's needed, so it still sounds meant.

How do you text across a time difference?

Time the message to their clock, not yours. A good morning that lands while they're still asleep is lovely, because it's the first thing they see. A long, heavy message that lands at 3 am, when they can't reply or can't sleep afterwards, isn't. Work out the gap once, and agree a rough rhythm: who texts first, when the daily call happens, when a slow reply just means asleep.

India doesn't change its clocks, so the gap changes by an hour whenever the other country does. When it's 10 pm in India:

• UK: 4:30 pm in winter, 5:30 pm in summer. The UK changes its clocks on the last Sundays of March and October.
• Germany and most of Europe: 5:30 pm in winter, 6:30 pm in summer, on the same dates as the UK.
• New York and Toronto: 11:30 am in winter, 12:30 pm in summer. North America changes on the second Sunday of March and the first Sunday of November, so its gap to India moves on different days from the UK's: three weeks apart in March, one week apart in autumn.
• California: 8:30 am in winter, 9:30 am in summer. The Indian night is the Californian morning.
• Dubai: 8:30 pm all year. No clock changes on either side.
• Singapore: 12:30 am, already the next day, all year.
• Sydney and Melbourne: 2:30 am the next day in the Australian winter, 3:30 am in the Australian summer, which runs from October to April.

Put their city in your phone's world clock and you'll stop doing the sum in your head. The time-zone lines here are written for the overlap: the "your morning, my night" message, the one for when they're already in tomorrow, and the one that says don't reply, go back to sleep.

What do you say when you miss them badly?

Say it, and then say something else. "I miss you" on its own can read like a weight you're handing over, especially if they miss you just as much and can't fix it either. Pair it with something from your day or something you're looking forward to together, and it becomes a shared feeling instead of a complaint. For missing someone in general, and not only a partner, the miss you messages page has more.

What should you send before and after a visit?

Before, a countdown. It's the one part of long distance that's actually fun, so make a thing of it: the number of days, the booking confirmation, the list of what you'll do first. After, send something within the first hour, while they're still at the airport or on the drive home. That stretch is the hardest part of the whole cycle, and a message then says the visit mattered as much to you as it did to them.

What do you text when the distance is getting to them?

Don't argue them out of it. If they say it's hard, it is, and a message that insists everything is fine makes them feel alone with it. Say you know, say you're staying, and offer something concrete: a call tonight, the next date on the calendar. If the conversation turns into a real worry about the relationship, move it to a call. Text strips out tone, and distance already strips out enough.

English, Hinglish or Hindi?

Whatever your chats already run in. If one of you has moved abroad and you've always texted in Hinglish, keep doing it: the language is a piece of home, and it matters more when home is far away. The Hinglish lines here are written the way couples type, in Roman script with the English left in. The Hindi ones suit a quieter, more poetic moment.