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What Is A Good Surprise? 7 Tips For Long Distance Lovers

It’s always troublesome when it comes to preparing a surprise for your lover. Despite hours racking your brain, nothing comes to your mind that makes you feel “Yes! This is the one!”. This is always a problem when you want to give your partner a surprise. This problem is even more severe when it comes to long distance relationship where the options are even more limited than close distance ones. So let me give you some advice on how to give your partner a good surprise. But in order to do that, you must first understand “What is a good surprise?”

In this article, I’m going to offer you 7 tips for giving a good surprise for your long distance partner. But some of these can definitely be applied to any kind of relationship, even friendships.

 

What is a Good Surprise?

A good surprise is the one that will “WOW” your partner. In order to have that effect, the surprise must be something that your partner…

1. Like
2. Need
3. Want
4. [highlight type=”yellow”] Didn’t expect you can do it or think of [/highlight] (Or your partner didn’t even think of it before)

These are the 4 components that make up a good surprise. You must make sure you fulfill the 4 components as much as possible. Let me teach you specifically what you must do and take note of.

 

Tip #1: Give presents that your partner WANTS!

How to do this? Be observant and a good listener. Take note of the little details in your conversation, either text or verbal. This will give you a lot of clues what your partner wants.

If you still cannot figure out, go for your partner’s hobbies, interests or jobs. Let me give you one of my personal examples. My girlfriend is currently working part time as a Uber driver. A few weeks ago, she often grumbled to me how tight and sore her right calf was. So I decided to give her a TiggerPoint GRID Foam Roller as a gift. (This gift is not even for any of our special days. It’s just a gift that popped up in my mind when I heard her grumbles.) This foam roller is for personal massage and muscle recovery. I’ve personally used it before that’s why it popped up in my mind straight away.

Guess what?! She loves it as it helps her to relieve her calf discomfort. It’s definitely a good present in this situation, isn’t it?

The moral of the story is: Be observant and take note of your partner’s need. This is usually what he or she wants.

(By the way, I bought it from Amazon.com and Amazon helps mail to her directly to KaoHsiung, Taiwan. )

 

Tip #2: There must be a REASON behind the present

The present you give must have meaning. You shouldn’t be choosing a present just because it’s cool or you “think” it will surprise your partner. Even if the present is expensive or unique, it doesn’t mean it is a good present. A good present must have a reason behind it so that it will be meaningful and memorable.

Just like the Foam Roller, the reason behind it is because I don’t want my girlfriend to suffer the pain and discomfort after a long day of driving. This shows my love and care for her. It isn’t something expensive but it is something meaningful. Oh yes, it is also meaningful because I have one for myself as well. So we are using the same thing. She would definitely be happy that we are using the same thing together.

 

Tip #3: Be CREATIVE every time

In order to surprise your partner, you must be a bit creative. You cannot give your partner the same amount of surprise every time. You must aim to give more and more.

One common pitfall is that people will start giving lesser and less meaningful presents when their relationship matures and becomes more stable. They tend to neglect the importance of surprise factor in maintaining their relationships.

Let me give you my personal example of how to be creative. Have you realized that every time when it comes to a special day with your partner, regardless of birthday, valentines or anniversary, you will most likely mail your partner a card? Can you recall how did you make the card? Did you mail your partner similar cards just with different designs and content?

Making a card is an area where you can be creative. See the cards I made for my girlfriend. I didn’t purchase them from any store. They cannot be found any where else in the world because these are hand-made cards. I will always like to play around with different types of hand-made cards every time, e.g. 3D card, LINE characters card, 3D card with me and my girlfriend kissing inside the card…

There are unlimited ideas in making creative presents. You just have to think outside of the box. But what I would recommend is to find ideas and inspirations from anywhere (your daily lives, the Internet, social media…) Same thing again, you have to be observant!

 

Tip #4: Try to add a PERSONAL touch to the surprise

In addition to having reasons and being creative, the next thing you need to take note of is that you must add a personal touch to your surprise. A personal touch is the only thing that will make your surprise exclusive, special and different from others.

Adding personal touch is not that difficult. You can simply add in the common things that you and your partner share. For example, my girlfriend and I use LINE as our main communicating platform. We always use the stickers with LINE characters. As time passed by, the bear with the name Brown represents me and the rabbit with the name Cony represents her. That’s why my cards above have many of them.

Let me show you another surprise that touched my girlfriend. I drew a short story of how we met and got together with Brown & Cony. I bought the plain book from MUJI store and drew with marker and color pencil.

These are just a few pages of the book. Again, these are not expensive and not very unique because it basically is just a plain book with drawings inside. But, once the personal touch is added, it becomes a very meaningful present.

For me, I’m not good at drawing. I simply followed the stickers and modified a bit. Yes, it’s that simple 🙂

So, for your next surprise, try to add in some features that are meaningful to both of you or can represent you.

 

Tip #5: Must express your DESIRE for being physically together with your partner

Being in a long distance relationship, nothing is more important than having the opportunity to be physically together. Every celebration for special days will only make you more eager to spend the time with your distant partner. So, do make sure you explicitly express your desire to your partner.

“I want to always celebrate your birthday with you in the future” is something that you may want to say. There are a lot of ways you can do this. You can write it in your card. Just don’t forget to remind both of you about the expectations for your future. This is also something that will keep your long distance relationship going.

 

Tip #6: Preferably choose something that both of you can have it TOGETHER

There are more and more products out there that are catered to couples. This is because couples always want to have the same thing, wear the same thing, share the same thing… These products creates a boundary for you and your partner from others. You can feel the exclusiveness between you and your partner.

Despite not being physically together, having the same couple things is also very important. You can still feel the exclusiveness. Some common examples are couple shirt, underwear, pillowcase… But, let me show you something that I got for me and my girlfriend.

This is a 3D printed watch made in Netherlands, designed in Singapore. Our names are customized on the strap 🙂

[highlight type=”yellow”] Take note! These watches are just normal cool watches without our names on the strap. But, with the names, they suddenly become very meaningful and unique. So, CUSTOMIZATION is something that you would want to keep in mind when preparing a surprise for your lover! [/highlight]

 

Tip #7: A surprise need not necessarily be surprise!

Sounds contradicting, right? This is a skill that you may want to apply sometimes. This means that you don’t keep your surprise present a complete secret. You can tell your partner that you have a surprise for him or her but you don’t say what’s the surprise about. From my experience, this can generate a lot of curiosity and high expectation from your partner. It actually makes your surprise better if you do it correctly.

This is a skill more for the long distance couples because you cannot be there physically when your partner receives the surprise. So, by raising your partner’s curiosity and expectation, it will actually make it a more memorable experience.

For close distance couples, you may want to keep the surprise a complete secret if you are able to be there physically when your partner receives the surprise.

 

Conclusion

What is a good surprise really depends on the situation and your relationship. Surprise represents the difference between expectations and reality. It is a good surprise as long as you can give something that exceeds your partner’s expectation.

“Reality – Expectation = Surprise”

If the reality is less than the expectation, then you will have a “negative” surprise which means you are disappointing your partner. Please DON’T do this! You must be giving more and more. This is the key to a long term successful relationship. This does not only pertain to surprise, this applies to commitments as well. You must be offering more, not less.

If your partner truly loves you, he or she is not looking for anything expensive or unique from you. Your partner simply wants to feel the LOVE from you. Be yourself and be authentic in preparing the surprise is the way for your partner to feel your love. Make the surprise moment meaningful and memorable! This will keep your relationship fresh, fun and long-lasting.

 

I wish you all the best in preparing your SURPRISE!

P.S. If you want to learn some hand-made cards, gifts and roses, please comment below and let me know. I am thinking of creating some tutorials for that 🙂 Thanks!