Monday, September 24, 2007
So Close...Yet, So Far... From the Coast to the Prairies
Entering my senior year of high school or what I call grade 12 since I am Canadian I was leaving my hometown of Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia to attend school in Wilcox, Saskatchewan. At the time I was in a relationship with a girl who I had been dating for a few years. We quickly adapted to CMC communication and found a new connection that we may have never found if I had not moved away. Our similarities or what Wallace calls our “common ground” helped us to maintain a close relationship. At times it felt that we became even closer because our conversations were often much more intimate or revealing than they had ever been before. We were engaging in the removal of gating features. We would share embarrassing childhood stories that we would probably never tell one another face to face and may have even convinced ourselves that we would be able to deal with the distance forever. However, when I returned home and had decided that I would attend Cornell the following year our expectations of the relationship seemed to change. Perhaps it was because we felt that four years would be a long haul, but I seem to think that we were more realistic in our FtF conversations. It felt like the CMC communication made us feel that we were indestructible or that we could take on the challenge of living apart when in reality it was a long shot. As we got closer and closer to my departure for Cornell we decided that it would be too hard to tackle the distance. Ever since my arrival at Cornell we have stayed in touch through instant messaging and of course, Facebook, and maintained a great friendship. The laws of attraction describe how the proportion of shared activities, beliefs, etc cause us to remain attracted to each other. Although we are no longer dating we still share a very strong emotional bond which is why we have remained such good friends. Without CMC communication, I think it would be much more difficult to hold our relationship together the way that we have.
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2 comments:
While sharing common experiences helped you maintain your relationship, it seems the lack of common experiences due to social distance inhibited the relationship. You were less inhibited to share embarassing stories, but without the ability to interact face-to-face, it is hard to further an already developed relationship. Your post made me understand that developing a relationship online and maintaing a relationship online are very different things. Factors such as common ground and disinhibition help keep conversations ongoing, but do not necisarilly faciliate relationship development.
I thought your post was great. It's too bad you and your significant other decided not to continue your relationship. However, I feel that staying friends was a good idea and a lot of times I find that when you partake in long-distance relationships there is a lot of room for disaster because you feel like you need to change things or compensate for the mediated communication available to both parties. Without the pressure of trying to keep a relationship going long distance, you've done good for both you and your friend. I guess Wallace's common ground factor can be applied to your relationship as well.
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