<human>: Can you summarize the given text in a few sentences?

I have been dating Stephanie for almost one year. Or at least, that's what I thought.

During 3 months of this relationship (July/Aug/Sep 2015), we were long distance. It was me that left, I was assigned something for work and had to move away temporarily. Long distance was hard in the way that they usually are: we missed each other, had some struggles communicating, etc. but we made it through. 

The other day I mentioned that our one year anniversary was coming up, and she kind of laughed it off and said that it's only been nine months. I asked her to clarify, and when she did she basically said that the three months that I was gone "don't count", and that we restarted when I got back.

Is this normal? I know it may seem like a weird detail to nitpick about, but I always thought that you're still in a relationship even if you aren't physically with each other.
<bot>: I just learned that my girlfriend doesn't "count" 3 months of our 1 year relationship because we were long distance, but that doesn't make any sense to me.