Can love survive from afar?

Departure: Sam Patterson chronicled his long distance relationship with Monica Gartner on his personal YouTube. (YouTube/Screenshot)

Students, professionals breakdown surviving long distance

Social media is advancing the dating field for variety of relationships including long distance forms. Before social media most  communication depended on phone or postal services. As detailed in the book “My Dear Bessie,” by Simon Garfield, a collection of love letters written by Chris Baker to his girlfriend while deployed.

Baker’s letters feature what he wrote to his friends during World War II while stationed in Africa, during which he fell in love with his childhood friend Bessie Moore, forming a long distance relationship between the two. After the war they married each other proving that despite the distance between them their relationship was able to work.

Now with advancements such as texting or video calling, long distance daters can stay connected through multiple apps.

“The positives [are] that you can Facetime and it gives each of you space to really think and reflect on the relationship and everything you would do just to be with them,” said student Claire Zimmer, 18, business major.

Zimmer said in most cases people state that the physical aspects of a person is what they linger for. New inventions are making distanced couples feel connected emotionally or physically. One of these inventions being Filimin two lamps that are link on wifi, so when one person touches the lamp the other one lights up even across the world.

Long distance sexual relationships have advancements with real time reactions with apps such as Lovense that connects sex toys through wifi which the partner can control  the rhythm or speed of the sex object with a real time reaction.

“Technology has made communication easier and common for long distance relationships, in fact most of the people that create long distance relationships meet via online so it should be utilize,”said UCI Senior Staff Psychologist Saimir Thano.

YouTubers across the world are posting about LDRs like Sam Patterson from England and Monica Gartner from New York a couple from two different countries that vlog about their relationship.

Even celebrities such as David (who was temporarily in Los Angeles) and Victoria (in England) Beckham have gone through trials of a long distance relationship. Both couples originate from England, but David had to play soccer for LA Galaxy while Victoria took care of her family and fashion business.

Thano said that like any other relationship, communication has an effect so it is important that serious conversations should be handled through a phone call or video call because texting can cause a misunderstanding. He said the lack of face to face communication should be made up by doing things such as giving full details of an event that one attends or watching Netflix together.

“I suppose bad communication would be where one or both of the folks involved in the relationship came away from the interaction feeling like they were not valued or that the other person was not living up to their side of the conversation,” said Saddleback Interpersonal Speech Professor Terry Torres. “Short, rote statements, impersonal questions, a lack of involvement would all be detrimental over the long run, for sure. This doesn’t mean that one or two examples.”

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