long distance relationship

I have a close friend at Binghamton University which is an hour away from my location, Cornell University. We emailed each other because we were both in the same sorority, and we met once or twice at national meetings or conventions. We did not become close, however, until I started instant messaging her more frequently because her blog and away messages seemed to indicate her sad mood. Over the course of a month, we learned more about each other and became close. We would communicate mostly through instant messaging, though we would call eachother randomly. When it came time for another national meeting, I even stayed at her place because I was not from the area. We still keep in close contact, though the distance does not allow us to talk very frequently.

Wallace's factors can be attributed to the reasons why my relationship with my friend remained strong despite the distance. The following are the two main factors of Wallace's attraction factors that pertain to the relationship I have with my friend.

Proximity: The proximity effect says that those who have greater proximity have more opportunity to meet and get to know each other. Those with great proximity in CMC experience greater intersection frequency where they "run into" each other online.

My friend and I experienced the proximity effect. Our schools are close to each other, and our sorority chapters interact frequently. A big reason why I continued keeping in contact with my friend was because I expected future interactions with her. I would not have put in the same effort if she had been from Massachusetts. We also used similar online forms of communication such as our sorority meetings, online blog circles, and AOL Instant Messenger. We were also both very active in contributing and participating in these activities. This furthered our relationship development because our intersection frequency was high.

Common Ground: Wallace states that "people tend to like those with similar attitudes and ideas". The law of attraction is based off the proportion of shared commonalities. The level of interaction is proportional to the proportion of shared attitudes.

In the case of my friend and I, we started off with a huge common ground, our sorority. We were both very enthusiastic in contributing and participating to upcoming events. As we got to know eachother, we both realized that we were pensive and spent a lot of time reading interesting articles online. We were also both sarcastic and able to joke around. Our relationship development also followed the expected outcomes for CMC relationships. It seemed me and my friend had infinite amounts in common. When we met FTF I could tell we had less in common than I had presumed, but our strong common ground helped perpetuate our relationship.