Keeping your distance

This girl I met is doing her thesis on long distance relationships and the use of technology to maintain successful relationships. Or something like that. She tells me that there’s lots of research been done, lots written on how frequently and for what duration people use technology to connect, but that her research will be focused on what people disclose, and the degree of intimacy gained in the interactions mediated by technology. I am somewhat fascinated by this, I feel like maybe somewhere out there is a journal article that will tell me exactly how many minutes long my phone calls should be when distance separates me from a lover, to make sure the wheels don’t fall off, and that our relationship stays deep and strong and connected.

This is relevant to me because I’ve been in a long distance relationship that ‘didn’t work’. This is to say the relationship tumbled apart and it happened in the long distance phase. We weren’t always long distance, although towards the end it like the moon and back. Unchartable distances, unpassable distances, different space time continuum type distances. We probably didn’t see each other often enough, or call often enough. We probably didn’t use the calls for what you should. I imagine that long distance couples who plan to see each other every second or third or even fourth weekend, where the distance and budget can stretch to this, do better than those who see each other only every couple of months.

I imagine that those who speak daily about the details of daily life, cheerfully, longingly but not reproachfully do well. I imagine those who are distant for a shared and tangible reason that both understand and accept, and even better for a defined period of time with an end point in sight, do better than those who are creepingly unsure about why they are apart, or for whose benefit they are apart, or when the apartness will be resolved and the distance brought hurling together, fast motion style, their separate points in space collided.

There is a certain familiar grief around separation in romantic relationships. Think every film with sad goodbyes at train stations, our collective thoughts of war and its sweethearts, lockets and folded damp paper letters, think of modern service people, the tours of duty which may not involve war like the old movies but still involves separation, astronauts hurtled out into black space in their tin rockets, or prison stays with strained visits between scratched plexiglass and lonely nights in empty cells without family, and even those shorter separations, the business trip, the week away to see family, the other commitment, elsewhere, that you do privately beyond the commitment to your relationship.

I am interested now in the notion of long distance relationships because I think I’m in one. Probably it’s not as dramatic as any of the more iconic types. This is only the distance of a few suburbs; with this distance compounded by living in different daily time zones. Me, a nine to five office desk bound typey type, he a night flighty hospitality who. My bedtime is his peak hour. My morning is his sleep time. Like some nocturnal marsupial blinking wide eyes at the bright, and me some languid large lizard who slows to a stop in the dark, and warms up in the sun to be positively active by mid day. We see each other every weekend, so we have not turned into some strange memory, some painful long separated ediface of a couple. Nor have we been thrown into this separate mode recently, we met like this, we have built a relationship on these brief overlaps, these thin areas around the edge where our habit and habitat overlap is where we have become friends. As such the distance is not strange, there is no other better time that we pine for. This is a blessing. There is some grace in not having an idealised past without the tyranny of distance to return to.

I wish there was some formula, some paper that had reviewed 100 lives like ours, and could tell me how intimate to be on the phone, how long to speak for, but I doubt there is. I do know from my own experience that the smallest of things matter when you are not close by. A 5 minute call can feel luxurious when you are used to 1 minute ‘can I call you later I’m just with customers?’. A text message wishing you a good night’s sleep or luck for a meeting brings this person to life, brings them into your life firmly and positions them as a solid and steadfast element at these important moments at days start and end when we look new on our lives and loves and take stock. This positioning as an ally is important.

And while little sweetnesses are easy to send by phone other things are less easy. When a misunderstanding or a scheduling mishap happens, phones are hollow and brittle medium for expressing dissatisfaction or trying to get more information. How many missed calls and missed returns calls volleyed in a row before it starts to feel like a bad game? How many days in a row can you cheerfully weather of not getting to talk, or being cut short because the timing is poor before you start to feel not listened to, disconnected, not cared about? Being heard, having your time to speak, as well as being spoken to, being considered worth telling things to, seems critical to forming bonds. And maybe because we all touch base so often, we have adjusted to this constant reassurance and continued construction of the relationship in virtual space, that we are not resilient to sudden breaks in transmission.