15 Long Distance Gifts For Him To Use While You're Apart
Most long distance gifts are symbols of missing someone, which is why they are unplugged by March. These fifteen are aimed at the logistics instead: the call, the ritual, his room, the flights.
There is a particular gift that shows up in every long distance guide ever written: the pair of lamps that glow when the other person touches theirs. It is a genuinely beautiful idea, and it is bought several hundred thousand times a year, and if you ask around you will struggle to find one still plugged in after the first winter. The bracelets that buzz go the same way. So does the countdown clock, which is the cruellest of the lot, since it spends every one of its days telling him how many are left.
The reason is not that these objects are badly made. It is that each one is a symbol of absence, and a symbol of absence does its job by reminding you of the absence. Nobody wants a daily notification of the central difficulty of their life. What they want is for a Tuesday in February, eleven days after the last visit and five weeks before the next one, to be slightly more bearable than it would otherwise have been.
Which turns out to be a practical problem rather than a romantic one. A long distance relationship is not a feeling, it is a set of logistics: an hour on video most nights, some shared thing to do across the gap, a room you have never stood in, a bag packed every few weeks, and two clocks that refuse to agree. Fifteen gifts below, arranged in exactly that order, from a nine-dollar box of writing paper to an eighty-dollar camera. The first four are the ones nobody thinks to buy, and they are the ones that change the most evenings.
With affection, the editors.
PRODUCT // THE PROPER WEBCAM The Proper Webcam.
Logitech C920x, 1080p, glass lens.
Work out the hours. An hour on video most evenings is something like three hundred hours a year, which is more time than most couples in the same city spend looking directly at each other. All of it currently runs through a laptop camera mounted below his chin, in the dark, at a resolution that was unambitious in 2015. The C920x has been the default answer for a decade because it focuses fast, corrects its own exposure in a badly lit bedroom, and then never asks anything of you again. Not a romantic object. Easily the one on this page that changes the most days.
PRODUCT // THE CONDENSER MICROPHONE The Condenser Microphone.
FIFINE T669, cardioid, with boom arm.
If you only buy one thing from this chapter, buy this rather than the camera. Video is the part people notice; audio is the part that decides whether an evening together is restful or quietly exhausting, because a bad microphone makes you lean in, ask again, and give up on the long meandering silences that are the actual point of talking to someone every night. A cardioid condenser hears what is in front of it and ignores the rest of the room. The arm keeps it near his mouth and away from the desk, so you stop hearing every keystroke.
PRODUCT // THE GOOSENECK ARM The Gooseneck Arm.
Lamicall, aluminium alloy, clamps to a headboard.
The unglamorous truth of a long-distance evening is that one of you is holding a phone at arm’s length until your elbow gives out, and then the call ends earlier than either of you wanted it to. Twenty dollars solves it permanently. The arm clamps to a headboard or a desk edge and holds the phone wherever you point it, which means he can talk to you while cooking, folding things, or falling asleep, and the call stops being an event that requires sitting up straight. The upgraded version is the one to get; the cheap ones sag within a fortnight.
PRODUCT // THE LAPTOP RISER The Laptop Riser.
Nulaxy C1, folding aluminium, height adjustable.
Every laptop puts its camera below eye level, which is why everyone on a video call looks tired, unimpressed and faintly like a hostage. Raising the machine four inches fixes the angle, and fixes his neck at the same time. This is the least interesting object on the page and it is here because the effect is out of all proportion to the price: the same person, the same room, the same lighting, suddenly looking like they are pleased to see you.
PRODUCT // THE TRAVEL CHESS SET The Travel Chess Set.
House of Chess, acacia and boxwood, magnetic.
Chess is the rare game that survives the distance intact, because there is no hidden information in it: two boards, one video call, and you are playing exactly the same game as two people sitting across a table. Buy two sets and keep one, which is the only sentence in this chapter that matters. Magnetic pieces mean a game can sit half-finished on a windowsill for four days without being ruined by a door slamming, and the notation printed round the border means a move can be sent by text when you are five time zones out of sync.
PRODUCT // THE SAME BEANS The Same Beans.
Blue Bottle, Balanced, twelve ounces, whole bean.
The cheapest shared ritual there is, and the one most likely to outlast the separation. Order the same bag to both addresses and you are drinking the same coffee on the same mornings, which sounds like nothing until you notice that it is the only part of the day you are genuinely doing together. Balanced is the right blend to send someone whose taste you have never seen in person: caramel and cocoa, forgiving of imprecise brewing, nothing challenging enough to be a gamble.
PRODUCT // THE INSTANT CAMERA The Instant Camera.
Fujifilm Instax Mini 12, clay white.
A photograph on a phone is one of eleven thousand photographs on a phone. A photograph you can put on a fridge is a different category of object entirely, and the reason to give an instant camera to somebody four hundred miles away is that the prints are the only version of your week that can arrive in an envelope. Give it, keep shooting on your own, and post him the ones he is not in. Body only, so add a twin pack of film, and be aware the flash always fires, which is a look rather than a fault.
PRODUCT // THE WAFFLE THROW The Waffle Throw.
Bedsure, pure cotton, waffle weave.
Consider where he actually is during the hours you spend together: on a sofa or a bed, usually cold, usually under something that came from a supermarket in 2019. Replacing that is a quietly proprietary act. Cotton waffle rather than fleece because it does not go static, does not matt down after a summer, and looks like an adult chose it, which matters when it is the one thing of yours permanently visible behind him on camera.
PRODUCT // THE AIRMAIL LETTER SET The Airmail Letter Set.
Sixty sheets, blue-bordered, with envelopes.
The cheapest thing on this page, and the one with the highest chance of still existing in ten years, because nobody has ever thrown away a letter. A text is read in the second it arrives and is gone. A letter takes four days, cannot be edited once posted, and requires the specific act of sitting down with nothing else open. Sixty sheets is enough for a year of them. Send the first one the same week the set arrives, so it reads as a beginning rather than a suggestion.
PRODUCT // THE WAXED DUFFLE The Waxed Duffle.
Wildroad, fifty litres, canvas and leather.
Somebody doing this properly is packing a bag every few weeks, and doing it out of a rucksack that has been to university and back. Fifty litres of waxed canvas is the right size for the trips this relationship is made of: four days, one pair of shoes, carried onto the plane rather than surrendered at the gate. Waxed canvas is the material worth insisting on, since it sheds rain, takes a scuff as character rather than damage, and stops looking like luggage after about the third trip.
PRODUCT // THE SMALL TRACKER The Small Tracker.
Apple AirTag, second generation.
An unromantic gift that pays for itself the first time a bag goes to the wrong city while he is standing in an arrivals hall at midnight, three hundred miles from anyone who can help. Drop one in the duffle, put another on the keys he keeps losing. The second generation goes further and rings louder than the original, which matters in a terminal. Requires an iPhone, so check before you buy; the equivalent for an Android phone is a Chipolo or a Tile.
PRODUCT // THE SLIM POWER BANK The Slim Power Bank.
Anker, ten thousand milliamp hours, USB-C.
The specific misery of a time difference is that his phone dies at the exact hour you are free to talk, in an airport, with every outlet taken. Ten thousand is the correct capacity: two full phone charges, still small enough to live in a coat pocket rather than be left at home, which is the failure mode of the larger ones. USB-C both directions, so it charges from the same cable as the phone and there is nothing extra to lose.
PRODUCT // THE TWO-PLAYER GAME The Two-Player Game.
Jaipur, Asmodee, thirty minutes a round.
This one is for the days he is actually there, because the hand is hidden and it does not survive a video call. Worth owning anyway: almost every good board game is built for four, which is useless to a couple, and the visits are short enough that an evening out costs a fifth of the time you have. Jaipur is thirty minutes, mean in a friendly way, and different every round. It lives in the drawer for the next visit, which is its own quiet argument that there will be one.
PRODUCT // THE WORLD TIME CASIO The World Time Casio.
Casio AE-1200, resin case, steel bracelet.
The arithmetic never becomes automatic. You will still be counting on your fingers in year two, and one of you will still occasionally call at four in the morning. A watch that shows both cities at once removes the sum entirely, and this is the one to buy: a cult object for about fifty dollars, worn unironically by people who own considerably more expensive watches, with a little map that lights up and a battery measured in years. Set the second zone to her city and it stops being a watch and starts being a small daily reminder.
PRODUCT // THE SUNRISE CLOCK The Sunrise Clock.
Reacher, wood grain, with sound machine.
Long distance wrecks sleep in a way nobody warns you about: the good conversation happens at the end of the day for one of you and the middle of the night for the other, and then an alarm goes off in the dark four hours later. A light that comes up gradually over half an hour makes an early start survivable, and the sound machine covers a housemate coming in at one. Ends the page on the least romantic note possible, which is rather the point of the whole list.
A few honest questions, answered.
What do you actually buy for a long distance boyfriend? +
Something he touches on an ordinary Tuesday. The reliable test is to picture the object in use eleven days from now, when the novelty has gone and neither of you is in a particularly good mood about the distance: the microphone is still improving every call, the letter set is still on the desk, the coffee is still being drunk. Anything that only works as a gesture fails that test on about day four. Sentiment is not the problem, and the letters and the photographs are as sentimental as it gets. The problem is sentiment with nothing to do.
Are the matching touch lamps and long distance bracelets worth it? +
Honestly, rarely. They demo beautifully and they are lovely to open, and then they settle into a category of object that has one function, performs it identically every time, and is unplugged by about the third month. The deeper issue is that they are symbols of missing someone, so using one is a small reminder of the thing you are both trying to get through. If you want that register, a photograph you can hold or a letter in his handwriting does the same job and does not need a power outlet.
How much should you spend on a long distance gift? +
Less than you think, and the spread on this page is deliberate. Twenty-five to fifty dollars covers most of the list and buys the things with the highest daily contact, which is where the value actually is. The camera, the duffle and the instant camera sit at the top around seventy or eighty, and are the ones to reach for at a birthday or a first anniversary. The letter set is nine dollars and is arguably the best gift here. Long distance is already expensive, since somebody is always buying a flight, so a gift that quietly costs a fortune can read as pressure rather than generosity.
What if you are in different countries and shipping is difficult? +
Buy from the store local to him rather than posting your own parcel. Sending a duffle across a border can attract a customs charge payable by the recipient, which is a memorably bad way to receive a present. The consumables are the exception worth the postage, since a bag of coffee and a letter set are light, cheap and unlikely to be stopped. If you want the ritual of a package with your handwriting on it, send the small things yourself and have the electronics delivered.
What do you send when you only see each other twice a year? +
Weight the list towards the first chapter and the third. If the visits are rare then the video call is not a supplement to the relationship, it is the relationship, and improving it is worth more than anything waiting in a drawer for the next trip. After that, the objects that put you in the room: the throw he uses every evening, the prints on the fridge, the letters. Keep the duffle for the year the flights get more frequent, and consider a two-player game only once the visits are long enough to be bored during.
The distance is not
the point.
What people who have come out the far side of this remember is never the grand gesture. It is the ordinary texture of it: the game left half finished on a windowsill, the same coffee at the same hour, the letter that took four days and was worth every one of them, an hour of talking about nothing with the phone propped up so neither of you had to hold it. None of that is about the distance. All of it is just a relationship, conducted with more equipment than most. Buy him the equipment.