Re: "Rule of Thumbs: Love in the Age of Texting"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/14/AR2007091401972.html

Dear Natalie Y. Moore,
I understand your sourness toward texting, I think I really do. I had the same opinion of it that you do when my significant other lived with me. But you overlook a key demographic of the texting age: those of us crazy and in love enough to be in a long-distance relationship.
I love technology, because it's allowed me to be in touch with a man I fell in love with while studying abroad in Costa Rica. While we were there, we did everything in person, only talked on the phone once, and sent a few Facebook messages back and forth whenever we needed to make sure that we had understood a class assignment correctly.
It was very personal, we made plans face-to-face, walked to each other's homes and caught cabs and buses together with other friends. And then on St. Patrick's Day, we kissed. And kissed. And pissed the other two people at our table at the bar off. A lot.
We didn't know where our relationship could go, and I remember him saying to me that night, "Why are you from Pennsylvania?" as I wondered why the hell he had to be from Wisconsin.
For about two weeks we continued in this way, making out in cabs, pissing friends off, and sitting in the street until 5 AM when he would walk me to my front door and kiss me goodnight.
When the day arrived that we both had to leave for the U.S, we kissed one last time and that was it, neither of us knowing what would happen to the relationship we had started.
But the internet and texting saved us. Now really, I don't know what would have happened if our story were set in 1976, but technology has made it so easy for us to be in touch. We say frequently, "We are kicking the long distance's ass."
We text all day, whenever we can, to tell the other about our day or just to remind the other that we love them. But we also talk on the phone whenever we both can, to hear one another's voice, and in the case of Skype, to come as close to being face-to-face as possible.
The other night, we were chatting on Skype, solely through text because I was working on homework and he was watching a movie with a friend. I have had this feeling before, but he voiced it very well: "I've realized that this can be good for us. I think it makes us a lot stronger."
And damn right it does. It's not convenient to have to go weeks at a time without seeing the one you love, and it's not always easy. But in relying on forms of communication like texting and phone conversations and internet chatting and video chatting, we have had to become really good at understanding one another. And when we're together (usually for at least a week out of every month) we are flawless. There's not a single nuance we don't pick up on nor any mistaken nuggets of sarcasm.
Like everything, Natalie, it's not that simple. Frequent texting is not terrible; you can't wrap it up into an evil little package and stamp it as such. Of course there are abusers, but any technology is dangerous when in the hands of unintelligent and inconsiderate people.
I love you,
Liz