As a current participant in a happy, healthy, long-distance relationship, my ears perk up anytime I hear someone else on campus talk about their girlfriend/boyfriend back home. I love listening to what I call "success stories," or other couples who are making things work despite the distance. The more people I meet, though, the more I seem to hear about relationships like mine involving participants in Florida and even California. Before I left, pop culture had me fooled into thinking these relationships didn't work and any efforts were bound to fail. It has become clear to me from talking to others on campus, though, we have entered into a new era in which these relationships might even be considered possible.
If one were to ask their parents, or their grandparents especially, about long-distance relationships, their stories would be filled with failure and the overall impossibility of making things like this work. Even Ted Mosby, my hero, called long-distance relationships a lie teenagers tell each other to get laid the summer before college. However, technology has come a long way even since this episode aired in 2006. Before cell phones existed, there would be lines to use the dormitory's landline and time limits on how long the phone could be used. Before that even, long-distance lovers would have to write each other love letters as often as they could. Sounds romantic, but not if it's your only form of contact. Now, we live in a time of apps and websites that allow us to watch live video of other people and communicate with them. Slightly more intimate than adding hearts to the end of a letter, I'd say.
Apple released FaceTime in 2010, more focused on their sales than on their app's impact on college-aged kids and their long-distance relationships. Still, this app puts a real-time image of a loved one, or anyone you choose to call in front of you to talk to and look at. FaceTime may not have been the first of its kind, and it is definitely not the only with Skype and Google Hangouts also in widespread use. In fact, when my FaceTime call fails, I often turn to Google Hangouts as my backup. If Google Hangouts were to fail, there would still be a plethora of video-chatting media through which people can now chat.
Because of these advances, long-distance relationships are much more different than they used to be. Many would agree that hearing someone's voice on the phone is not the same as seeing them. Hence, people of past generations felt that their relationships were not the same without being able to see their significant other. Now, video-chatting allows parents to read to their kids from anywhere in the world, or just allows college students to hear about how some girl was rude to their girlfriend that day. Whatever it's used for, these video-chatting services have eliminated the distance that can separate people. It is much easier to pretend someone is around when you can see them as well as hear them.
This is not to say long-distance relationships have become easy per se, as many of the failure stories I hear involve one or both parties missing the physical presence of a normal relationship. While it is possible to trick oneself into believing FaceTime constitutes really being together, breaks and time spent at home can act as a reminder of what it feels like to really be there. For now, video-chatting has not made physical contact, but you never know what the next big thing in technology could be.
Before the generation of smartphones and video chat, maintaining a long-distance relationship required constant visits home and slightly unfulfilling phone calls. Now, FaceTime and other video-chat services have eliminated many of the problems faced by college students leaving their better half at home. Technology is a long way from making the transition from high school sweethearts to distant dearests, but the daunting stereotype about the impossibility of long distance should be removed from the conversation and replaced with a challenge that many people here at Princeton are willing to take on.
