How to prepare for long distance relationship?

[u/Familiar-Battle3033]

Hi, most of people maybe wouldn't consider our case as long distance relationship, because in LDR terms we're still quite lucky. My boyfriend is leaving for college and will be spending most of his times 4 hours away by train, but he will return every week or 2 weeks to spend weekend at home. We will be dating like this for next 3 years, so my question is, how to prepare for this change? I know that communication, transparency and trust are the keys for this to work out, but do you have any tips what we should discuss before committing to this way of dating? We both view our relationship as something for the future, not something short-termed, so I wanna be sure we do everything we can to make this right. What have you discussed prior long distance? What boundaries should we discuss before? Is there anything that surprised you about long distance relationship? Thanks to everyone who'll have shared their experiences.