Saturday, 30 July 2011

• What's Wrong With Constant Communication?

  
  With the way our summer job schedules are set up, my SO and I rarely get to see each other let alone even speak to each other. It's been rough and we're doing what we can with the little time we have, but it's been putting a pretty sizable strain on our relationship. We quickly grow frustrated with the situation and we tend to take our emotions out on each other (despite how hard we try to keep our cool). I think a big part of our problem is the fact that, when our schedules are less erratic and opposite, we are basically in constant contact with each other even though we are in a long-distance relationship. As it turns out, there are some downfalls to being used to constant communication. This, I have to say, I did not see coming. 

  Unfortunately, our generation is so completely used to having many different mediums of communication. Before this summer, I thought it as a problem in more fundamental ways-- you know, like how children seem to be too tuned in to their PSPs and how they have cell phones at the age of 8, but I didn't see how it could be a problem in a relationship. As it turns out, because we usually have so many different ways to talk, when our luxuries are taken away from us we wind up feeling helpless. We struggle to go a few days with minimal contact. We feel disconnected and we find ourselves questioning whether or not we're actually capable of maintaining a serious long-term long-distance relationship.

  I work in an office, so my work environment is pretty low-key. I spend a lot of my time at my desk at a computer, so having my phone nearby is easy. My SO works at a Monday-Friday sleep-away camp, so phones aren't allowed from 8 in the morning until 10 at night (except the rare times that time off is given for an hour during the day). The cell service also pretty much sucks, so even when we do get to text each other, they hardly ever send immediately. This is especially frustrating because of how short the window of time is that we can communicate. Sometimes, I can send a text message and it won't send until hours later at which point we're both asleep. 

  My SO gets to spend almost all day with so many people (a lot of which are some of our best friends-- we met when we were both working at this camp), but I spend a huge chunk of my time by myself on public transportation or by myself in a cubicle. I eat lunch alone most days. So, for me, I think in a way it can be a little harder. I have more free time to think about how much it sucks. I stare at my phone all day long hoping we'll get just 10 minutes to catch up. What's worse is that by the time I get home from the office, get other work done, eat dinner, go for a run, and get showered off, I'm so tired that often I fall asleep before my SO's evening time off is over. On the nights where my SO stays in with the campers, I wind up being the one still awake. Working at camp is exhausting, too, so we wind up just so tired at the end of the day that we can barely even speak.
  
  If we hadn't been used to having cell phones, e-mail, Facebook, and more prior to this summer, we probably wouldn't feel so helpless now. I mean, think about it, even just 100 years ago people communicated by writing letters. There was no such thing as instant gratification. Now, if we don't get a text back in 20 minutes we're thinking, "what are you doing?! Can't you just answer me?" At least, that's how I think about it sometimes. Cell phones give us the luxury of multi-tasking. We can communicate constantly with our SOs while also watching a movie with Grandma, hanging out at the bar with some friends, or doing homework in the library. 

  Have you ever been in a situation where you felt paralyzed by technological luxuries? Are our privileges causing us to be lazier or less capable of maintaining a serious relationship? 

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