Just a couple weeks ago I was participating in a long distance relationship with my boyfriend while he was on a training ship around the world for his school. During the two months he was gone, our only form of communication was through email (except for a few brief conversations from frustrating foreign pay phones). It’s crazy how excited I could get to check my inbox and find an email from someone who is so far away. It seems very old school romance even though email is a fairly recent development.
Since we have known each other for 12 years or so and had an established face to face relationship prior to this time, physical attractiveness was not a factor for us online. We already knew we liked how the other looked, although we did send a couple pictures over email just to make sure! Similarly, because of the length of time we have known each other, and the fact that we met participating in a common interest, we have already established what common ground we share. This factor did allow us to make our emails more interesting to each other and perhaps connect better, but we were not finding those shared interests using online communication.
Proximity definitely had relevance to our CMC relationship because our emails made us feel closer even though we were continents away. Luckily for us, proximity in online communication does not have to be geographical distance, but it can be the amount of times we email and how much I hear from him. When we emailed more often, I felt more connected to him than when we missed a day of emailing.
Another reason that emailing more made us feel more connected is definitely due to self disclosure. Sometimes our emails told of everyday life. To stay connected, I wanted to know what he was doing and what his day was like. Other times the emails were exciting stories or big events that happened. The best ones, though, told of how much we thought of each other or planned what we couldn’t wait to do when we reunited. Those were the more personal emails that kept us connected and in love even if we couldn’t hear or see each other. Being apart makes you realize what that person means to you and makes you reflect on the relationship more. I think this is a big advantage to email communication in long distance relationships. You are able to think about what this person means to you and have the time to write it out eloquently for the other person and this makes the relationship stronger. This could be partly due to the nature of email writing which is more like a letter than other kinds of CMC. It is also in part due to the disinhibited effects of CMC. Since we did have time to write out our feelings, it was easier to say something that we might have been too nervous to say face to face.
Since we have already met and been together for a long time, the time we were forced to communicate only by email was spent continuing and strengthening our developing relationship.
1 comment:
I loved this post. I understand what long distance relationship are, and am thankful I was born in an era where love could be connected and maintained because of technology. I thought it was interesting you pointed out how different emails are from letters. I believe they are very similar, due to the mechanics and the function. But one thing I truly believe is that the flame stays alive much more because you can receive/send messages instantaneously instead of waiting weeks or months to get a letter over to another continent. I have also learned that people need prevent falling victim to forming extreme perceptions (especially the longer the relationship is held at a distance)that are explained by the Hyperpersonal model since deceptive feelings can arise when reuniting. People need to keep it real.
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