Staying in tech-touch

Once upon a time, college meant a struggle for most long-distance relationships. Dates, dinners and long conversations were replaced by letters, phone calls, and perhaps an occasional visit.

Not so anymore. When today's teenagers tell their hometown honeys that they'll make it work, they have phones, text, e-mail, instant message, and even video chat at their disposal.

"In the past, you didn't have all these opportunities," says Wilmington's Joe Oehmke, a Stanford University sophomore whose 21/2-year relationship with his University of Delaware girlfriend has survived their freshman year. "It was much harder to stay in touch with people even one or two states away. All this social networking stuff is really new and interesting."

These new opportunities are largely computer-based. Facebook and MySpace allow users to share pictures and post comments on one another's profiles. Instant-messaging programs, such as AIM, let people rapid-fire messages back and forth in real time. Skype provides a usually free online phone service that allows callers to speak to friends, whether next door or continents away, with only a computer microphone, and also allows video chats through Webcams.

Couple all of this with constant availability of cell-phone calls and texting, and it's possible for long-distance couples to spend more time hanging out when at separate colleges than they did when they lived in the same place.

The question is, is that a good thing?

Alexandra Christian certainly thinks so. "It just helps you connect more with that person, be more in each other's lives," she says.

Though the 19-year-old West Philadelphian, who attends Virginia Tech, talks to her Montgomery County Community College boyfriend every day and visits him once a month, she found their relationship was revolutionized when he bought her a Webcam. "That helped a lot," she says. "When I didn't have a video, it was frustrating because I started to forget him. And on the phone, you can get bored."

"You get to stay in touch more and get to know what's going on on a daily basis," acknowledges Laura Fernandez, a Mount Holyoke senior who has been doing long-distance with her boyfriend since high school, when he attended the Hill School in Pottstown while she went to Springside School in Chestnut Hill.

"I like all the communication methods because then your boyfriend or girlfriend is a companion you can talk to on a daily basis, and you can tell them more than you can tell your best friend."

The daily details, even those that might seem trivial, are the key to bonding, explains Caroline Tiger, the Philadelphia-based author of The Long-Distance Relationship Guide. "Because you're not seeing each other face-to-face, you have to create intimacy and forge bonds using other means," she says.

Katelyn Petherbridge, however, disagrees. Though the Arcadia University sophomore talks every day to her boyfriend, a senior at Roman Catholic High School, she vividly remembers one friend who almost broke off a long-distance relationship because of the mentality created by potentially constant communication.

"People were saying, 'Doesn't he care enough to call and say hi once a day?' " Petherbridge recalls. "But if you're happy knowing that you don't have to talk all the time, then that's good."

Fernandez is also familiar with the pressure these new forms of communication can put on a relationship. "While he was studying abroad in Greece, it sort of got to the point where I was checking to see whether he posted on Facebook and I hadn't gotten an e-mail from him that day," she admits. "You know he has other stuff going on and he only has so long that he's online, but you get upset when you don't get an e-mail."

And even Christian admits that photos on Web sites like Facebook and MySpace can be stressful. "If it's something that I don't know about, I'm like, 'Who's that person? How come I didn't know about this?' " she explains. "It's in your face and you're like, 'What is going on?' "

Tiger, however, insists it's not technology that's to blame; the real question is "basic consideration and relationship management. If you feel like the other person wants to be in touch more than you do, that would be an issue even if you would only talk on the phone," she says.

"I don't think the fact that there's more technology out there really matters that much. You need to talk and figure out what you are both comfortable with."