By Carol Church, Writer, Family Album
Reviewed by Larry Forthun, PhD, Department of Family, Youth, and Community Sciences, University of Florida
If you’ve ever been in a long-distance relationship, you know that they have their challenges. However, in recent years, new technologies such as video chat, texting, and our ever-present cell phones have changed the landscape. These days, couples separated by the miles can more easily maintain contact.
With this in mind, a new study in the Journal of Communication compared feelings of closeness and intimacy among 30 long-distance dating couples and 33 geographically close dating couples over the course of one week. Couples tracked all their interactions, whether these were face-to-face meetings, phone calls, texts, video chats, or other ways of staying in touch.
On average, long-distance couples actually reported experiencing more intimacy and closeness during their interactions than couples who lived closer to each other. This finding seemed to be related to long-distance couples’ tendency to disclose more about themselves during their interactions, perhaps as a way of “making up for” being apart. Long-distance couples also thought their partners were disclosing more than the partners themselves thought they were, suggesting a bit of an idealizing effect. And when it came to lower-quality kinds of communication—for instance, emails rather than video chat—long-distance couples tried especially hard to make these interactions special and intimate.
While long-distance relationships will always present challenges, the men and women in this study seemed to finding ways to keep intimacy alive. Today’s rapidly changing technology can provide couples like these with tools to help them maintain satisfying relationships.
(Image credit: Texting by Michele Ursino. CC license.)
References:
Jiang, C. L., & Hancock, J. T. (2013). Absence makes the communication grow fonder: Geographic separation, interpersonal media, and intimacy in dating relationships. Journal of Communication, 63, 556-577. doi:10.1111/jcom.12029
(Originally published in a slightly different form as: Church, C. (2013). Long-distance relationships, intimacy, and technology. [Radio broadcast episode]. Family Album Radio. Gainesville, FL: University of Florida.)
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