The Woman at the Other End of the World

By Lenie Maré

I was 48 when I discovered that the person who could change my life lived almost 10,000 kilometres away. 

On 7 December 2025, I met Ninna on TikTok. I was in South Africa. She was in Sweden. We were two women living separate lives on opposite sides of the world, with different daily routines, different seasons, and a distance between us that sounded unreasonable even when you said it quickly. 

I wasn’t looking for a grand love story. Maybe that is why it found me so quietly. 

At first there was conversation. Then there was that peculiar feeling that someone you have never met in person can somehow become familiar. A message stops being just a message. You begin to notice the hours of another country. You learn when someone is waking up while you are already moving through your day. You begin to understand that missing somebody does not always require having stood beside them. 

There are plenty of ways to describe long-distance love. People usually begin with the kilometres, the time difference or the cost of flights. Those things are real. But what I remember most is not a map. It is the experience of being seen. 

When you are queer, being seen can carry extra weight. There are parts of yourself you may have spent years explaining, protecting or making smaller so other people could be comfortable. There is a particular relief in not having to do that with the person you love. You get to be funny, frightened, stubborn, tired, hopeful and complicated. You get to be a whole human being instead of a lesson in somebody else’s understanding. 

Ninna did not arrive in my life to fix it. She arrived as herself. And little by little, I found myself making room for a future I had not expected. 

In February 2026, she travelled from Sweden to South Africa to see me. The woman who had existed in a phone screen was suddenly in the same country, the same time zone, the same ordinary world. There is something extraordinary about that shift. A voice you know becomes a person you can turn toward. A goodbye at the end of a call becomes the possibility of another conversation without a screen between you. 

The visit made the distance more difficult in one way. Before you meet, you can tell yourself you are doing very well with video calls. After you have been together, you understand precisely what an ocean is keeping from you. An ordinary afternoon, a shared meal, the comfort of being close: none of it feels ordinary anymore. 

I travelled to Sweden in June and July. Once again, we were allowed a little time inside the same life. And once again, there was the reality of leaving. 

I think people sometimes imagine love later in life as the easy version. Surely, by your late forties, you should have worked everything out. You should know exactly who you are, what you want and how to make it happen. I have found almost the opposite. You know more about what matters, but that does not mean you stop being afraid. You are old enough to recognise the risks and still young enough to take one. 

Our relationship has never existed apart from ordinary pressures. There are jobs, bills, families, responsibilities and the practicalities of being in two countries. There are days when one of us needs reassurance and days when the other has little energy left to give. Loving someone does not make mental strain vanish. If anything, it asks us to learn how to speak kindly through it. 

I have also learned that love is not a competition to see who misses whom more, who has sacrificed more or who can be the strongest. Some days love is a big decision. Other days it is a small check-in, a patient explanation, an apology, or a reminder that we are still on the same side. 

Along the way, Ninna and I began building Bloom LGBTQ+, a space intended to help queer adults find friendship, chosen family and support. It grew from a conviction we both feel deeply: nobody should have to be alone simply because they have not yet found their people. But this is not a story about an app. It is a story about how being loved can change what you believe is possible for other people, too. 

I used to think connection was something that happened when your circumstances were right. When you had enough money, enough time, enough certainty. Our love has taught me that life rarely offers all three at once. Sometimes all you have is a person willing to keep showing up, and the courage to do the same. 

People ask about the distance. It is a fair question. Nearly 10,000 kilometres is not romantic when you are trying to plan another flight, working out paperwork or saying goodbye. It is exhausting sometimes. We do not pretend otherwise. 

But distance has also shown me the difference between being alone and being lonely. I can be physically alone in South Africa and still know someone in Sweden is thinking of me. I can have a difficult day and know there is a woman on the other end of the call who cares what happened. That does not replace a hug. It does make the waiting feel less empty. 

I cannot write the ending of this story yet. We are still living it. We are still making plans, still learning each other, still trying to shorten the distance between us. I do not want to give our love a neat, cinematic ending while we are doing the much more human work of keeping it real. 

What I can say is this: on 7 December 2025, I could not have imagined what a stranger in Sweden would come to mean to me. I did not know I would get on a plane, build dreams with another woman or find myself looking at the future differently at 49. 

And if someone reading this has quietly decided that their chance has passed, I want them to know that I once might have thought the same. 

Sometimes love does not arrive around the corner. Sometimes it arrives from another continent, at an unexpected age, through a screen you were about to put down. 

And sometimes you answer. 

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Lenie Maré (she/her) is a South African writer and LGBTQIA+ community advocate, and co-founder of Bloom LGBTQ+ with her Swedish partner, Ninna. Her writing explores queer love, belonging and second chances in midlife. Follow her on: Instagram: @bloomlgbtq143 and TikTok: @leniemare11

Photograph provided by the author