Having lived in a different city than my family since I was 17, I began to rely on the phone, email, and instant message to stay in touch with my family and friends at home. Spending the summers at home meant I needed to have some connections still open and available to fulfill the social aspect of life once I returned home. One friendship that actually grew and blossomed into more than just acquaintances was with Bailey. She was someone I knew through many friends and never really spent time to get to know. Once I had moved away, talking mainly on instant messenger with her began to lead to more than a mere friendship. We usually talked 3 or 4 times a week on Msn Messenger and began to talk on the phone more frequently. With the distance that was put between us, we began to develop a relationship that wouldn’t have survived if we were in physical proximity.
Having the ability to remain behind the computer, yet know who each other were, we could use McKenna’s “Identifiability” to explore a new relationship. Having the feeling of being able to identify the person and continue to reveal information opened up our relationship when physical proximity was accessible. With the continuation of talking on Msn Messenger, the rapid development in our relationship created an ever lasting friendship.
Physical attraction became apart of the relationship over time. As we began to talk more while I was away, we made promises to hang out when I got home. A lot of the attraction we developed came after the fact that we had been friends online for an extended period of time. According to Wallace’s theory, we did actually reverse the physical attractiveness cycle. By beginning our relationship through a lean medium, instant messaging, we were able to avoid physicality’s that may have deteriorated each of us from trying to get to know the true inner self.
As this relationship developed into more of a long distance, long term friendship we became close and shared secrets that no one else knew about each other. Having shared many experiences, past and present, we began to build upon the already common ground between us. Through Clark’s theory of common ground, we were able to become physically attracted because of the common interests and beliefs that were uncovered amongst the hours spent talking to each other. Developing such a relationship has been unique in that everything went backwards; we became emotionally friendly first before physical attraction set in.
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4 comments:
I found it really interesting that you developed such a good friendship with someone when you were away,and had never done so when you were in person. It's funny how proximity of CMC can draw people together, yet the proximity of FtF can cause people to never meet. You're post was really well written and I liked how you incorporated many different theories that we learned in class. While your theoretical explanations were great and very in depth, I would have liked to hear more about the actual story. Did the two of you ever start to date because attraction set in later? Or if you were just really good friends, how did physical attraction play a part at all?
It is very nice to find another person who also hold a positive attitude towards long-distance relationships.And as Alison said, you did a very good job analyzing your experience with a combination of so many theories we learned in class.
Hi Brendon,
I, too, found your blog regarding your long distance relationship to be very interesting. When you step back and take a look at the big picture, it is quite interesting to see how many relationships nowadays develop and even last due to computer mediated communications. I found it most interesting how you explained your experience and described how little face-to-face activity took place. I also liked how you were able to relate your long distance relationship to various concepts and relationship-formation theories discussed in class. However, I feel that you could have related even more to McKenna’s concepts. You mentioned her factor of Identifiability, but I think your experience could have easily related to some of her other factors. You could have touched on Removal of Gating Features and explained how this aided the development of your relationship.
In sum, you blog was amusing and interesting to read. Good job!
-Joshua Navarro
Like you, I was able to grow closer to someone while I was at college, through CMC. I think CMC has such a large affect while we are at college because we are so busy with school work and making new friends it hard to make more extra time for people at home. However, everyone loves a good love story...so how did it end? Did CMC bring together a long lasting or long term relationship, or were your intentions more short term? This might be something interesting to further look into, whether or not your intentions were short or long term and how that had an affect on your relationship.
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