he road to romance in a long-distance relationship is paved with many things, but none of them is chocolate or floral. In fact, developing and maintaining l’amour is really as simple as enjoying one another, showing you care with actions, and learning what makes each other tick — all the fun parts of having the relationship in the first place.

Of course, when it comes to matters of the heart, nothing can be boiled down to a formula, but with the heavenly Lover of your souls teaching you to love, romance finds a way to thrive across distances.

Meredith comes home from work and, nearly every evening, spends a few hours on the phone with her boyfriend of six months, John. They live nearly 150 miles apart, so they only see each other on the weekends. While Meredith claims to not enjoy talking on the phone, she loves talking to John. When they've said their good-nights and hung up, she emerges from her room all smiles, giddy as she tells her roommate how much she likes him, how cute he is, and how she can't wait to see him again.

As they end a weekend together, she says that the moment of good-bye is both the best and the worst. It is the worst because she knows they won't see each other again for at least a week, but it is the best because they just spend time studying each other's faces, storing up images and feelings of togetherness to hold them over until the next weekend.

For Meredith, romance is all about gleaning every bit of enjoyment possible from the little things. She looks for it everywhere, and she finds it. Everywhere.

Laura is a hair-stylist, and her boyfriend, Brian, lives six states away. He tells her he's flying in for a visit on Friday, but really he arrives on Thursday. He makes an appointment with her salon under a pseudonym and pays for a haircut so he can surprise her and spend some time with her, allowing her to have an unexpected break from work without losing any income. And since they live so far away, they sometimes make plans to meet in a place where neither lives.

Surprises keep things fresh, but Laura also says it's important to "create lots of memories to entertain each other between visits."

For Laura and Brian, romance means spontaneity and grand gestures that show how much they care.

Megan and Nick, now married, sent each other care packages during their dating relationship while she was living in New York and he in Ohio. She also sent him text messages when she knew he'd be away from his phone, so a message would be there waiting for him when he returned. And they made it a point to talk every day even if it was only for a few minutes. Megan believes that keeping the romance alive long distance "depends on how one’s significant other receives love."

For Megan and Nick, connection is key. Knowing how the other person likes to receive love will determine how you show it. And that's really true for all couples, both long distance and not.

A big part of developing and maintaining romance is simply pursuing and getting to know one another. The more a man or woman feels someone of the opposite sex takes an interest in them, the more special they feel. The more special they feel, the more romantic feelings exist. After all, that's what romance is: desire, enchantment, acknowledgment of one another, setting each other apart from everyone else.

Communication, therefore, is paramount, and lucky for long-distance couples, although it may not feel this way; they actually have an advantage when it comes to the development of communication.

Certainly long-distance couples are at a disadvantage when it comes to reading body language (it is commonly accepted that more than half of communication is through body language); but this puts these couples into a position where they are forced to work on their verbal communication while in the dating phase of their relationship — a skill that most couples struggle with even after years of marriage.

When a relationship develops over the phone, the couple has no other option but to verbalize everything in order to simply maintain the relationship. But there's a refreshing freedom that comes with not having to have serious or difficult conversations face-to-face.

Andrea, who married Matt after several months of long-distance dating, says that "it's much easier to be yourself over the phone, and to truly express what you're thinking and feeling. Being willing to be yourself, to be honest and sincere, and to enjoy when the other person is doing likewise, you'll grow so much in your communication and understanding of each other; and you'll develop a sense of trust as you both accept each other as you are!"

However, even the chattiest couples can get tired of always being on the phone. In fact, Ella says that too much phone time can actually be detrimental to the romance because the routine of the phone winds up accentuating the fact that the couple is apart. She suggests opening other lines of communication in addition to the phone. E-mails, text messages and good old-fashioned letters served to break up the monotony of the daily phone calls while she was dating her now-husband, Wesley. They used to take pictures of themselves to send via e-mail so that they could "see" each other every day, and they gave themselves a break from the phone when they needed it.

Of course, just because you're in a long-distance relationship, that doesn't mean you never see each other. These couples and more all say that the time they spend together is crucial to the maintenance of romance when they are apart. They all say that it is important to not waste their time together but to have activities planned (even if the activity is hanging out doing nothing), both one-on-one and with groups of people.

And most importantly, a relationship must be built on the solid foundation of Christ. The only way to truly experience romance is with him at the center, drawing you in toward himself and each other. Put him first, and allow him to pursue you, to teach you what true romance is and how to keep that same romance alive in your romantic relationship.