Welcome to my blog.
I’m an awkward person in real life so this introduction is probably going to be as awkward written down as it would be if we were talking in person therefore I’ll make it short and sweet. Hi, I’m Charlotte and this is my first blog post on my site looking into long distance relationships and technology. I hope you enjoy reading and can maybe take something from what I have to say. So here it is, a small history on how people connected to their partners and how they still do whilst in long distance relationships and how technologies changed.
Long distance love.
From only ever being capable of sending your other half miles away a love letter, to being able to constantly talk to them day in day out no matter what time, it’s fair to say technology has made a lot of long distance relationships possible. The ease of being able to communicate with your boyfriend or girlfriend long distance is a lot different compared to even when our parents were younger. I’m no stranger to the pain of being long distance with two long distance relationships under my belt. Admittingly my first failed due to the distance but I’m currently facing the everyday challenges a modern day long distance relationship endures whilst in my second year at university.
I can’t imagine being in a world where I’m not able to pick up my phone and call my boyfriend when I need to or just want too, but this was not the case for many long distance couples back in the day. Obviously long distance relationships have been around since forever, so it’s hard to narrow down when the first one began and what they used to contact each other. For the purpose of this blog post I’m focusing on before we had phones and how technology progressed since then. Prior to telephones being invented the only way to contact people who lived far from you was through letters. An art form that you could argue has died since the invention of technology today. I assume a very romantic pastime for those who received them from loved ones (I wouldn’t know my boyfriends never sent me one *cough *cough). I imagine it would have been a lot more exciting receiving a love letter after days or weeks of not talking to each other. My only thought with this is that it was probably a lot harder to keep up to date with each other and connect.
Dear John.
The famous Nicholas Sparks novel Dear John which was later turned into a movie played out the stages of a long distance relationship between John and Savannah whilst he served in the army. Although there’s mention of email we never see an exchange between the two, we’re only shown the letters and reading them. The film plays out the eventual breakup of the two through a sort of twisted irony of a love letter. Back when couples were separated by the war the only contact they had with each other was through letters, an almost impossible idea to comprehend for us in the technological age.
Technology now.
Once phones were invented staying connected got a little bit easier. Now you could hear your partner’s voice when you weren’t together. Although my mum tells me it wasn’t all that great because if you wanted a private phone call you’d have to shout down the road for others to get off the line. After this mobile phones and computers arrived which led to the technology we have today, Facetime, imessage, Snapchat you name it its available to us. The growth of technology we can now use to stay in contact and connect with each other is crazy. We have this ability to constantly stay together with each other.
So I’ll leave you with this, imagine being in a long distance relationship before technology was invented. It just goes to show how much technology has changed and how we rely on it to connect us to loved ones far away.
See you soon,
Char. ♥
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