I am going to inject my two cents here as I am very intimate with this topic.
In 1999, I was in Pensacola, FL in flight school in the Navy. I did NOT want to date while I was there because it is vy common that women there are looking for a military man (officer preferably) to get them out of the hole called Pensacola. Well, I ended up meeting my wife while I was there. We dated during the summer. She was in Gainesville going to pharmacy school at UF 4hours away. So, we took advantage of the time we had while she was on her break. Eventually, we saw each other only on the weekends. We did this for the next 6 months until a time we decided we wanted to get married. So, we decided to get married thenext summer. Well, only two months after deciding to get married, I got orders to go to Seattle. We got married 19 days later because I would have had to move before our wedding date. After moving, we were about as far apart in the US as two people could get. To make a long story shorter, in the first 4 years we were together, we only got to see each other for 11 months total time combined with 3 1/2 months being the longest at any one time. All this while my wife was in pharmacy school and I was undergoing 2 deployments overseas -very stressful on a relationship. My wife and I are now only a couple of months away from celebrating our 11th wedding anniversary and having brought home our twinbaby girls on our 10th anniversary.
My whole point to this post is that if you love someone and feel they are 'the one', they making the sacrifices necessary to make a long distance relationship work is well worth it. At times, the separation really sucks. Sometimes you question whether it is worth it. But, if you really care for and love the significant other, then you do whatever it takes to make the relationship work and make the other person feel as if the miles apart are only yards apart. Do I regret choosing the path we took? Absolutely not. Realistically, going through what we did made our relationship as strong as it is. It has made my time in dental school and her time in her MBA program go extremely well during the times we cannot devote the time we'd like with the other person. We still know how each other feels for the other. We have learned how to do the litle things to make the other feel loved, wanted and needed.
Long distance relationships are not for everyone. It takes a lot of effort to make them work. But, if you really love someone, it is rewarding and well worth it in the end.