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Long-Distance Relationships edits
A long-distance relationship (LDR) or long-distance romantic relationship (LDRR) is an intimate relationship between romantic partners, friends, or family who are geographically separated from one another. Partners in LDRs face geographic separation and lack of face-to-face contact. LDRs are particularly prevalent among college students, constituting 25% to 50% of all relationships. Even though scholars have reported a significant number of LDRs in undergraduate populations, long-distance relationships continue to be an understudied phenomenon.

''Recent and ongoing developments with technology and social media have produced new studies and scholarship about the relationship maintenance and challenges of LDRs. Studies concerning LDRs are interdisciplinary and involve subjects like psychology, sociology, and communication.''

Characteristics and Challenges of Long Distance Relationships
LDRs are qualitatively different from geographically close relationships; that is, relationships in which the partners are able to see each other, face-to-face, most days. According to Rohlfing (1995) he suggests the following unique challenges for those in long-distance relationships


 * Increased financial burdens to maintain relationships
 * Difficulty maintaining geographically close friendships while in long-distance romantic relationships
 * Difficulty judging the state of a relationship from a distance
 * High expectations by partners for the quality of limited face-to-face meetings in the relationship

Sustaining Family Relationship
A qualitative study that conducted 50 interviews with adult migrant children in Australia and their parents in Italy, Ireland, and the Netherlands found that geographically separated family members generally exchanged all types of care and support that proximate families did, including financial, practical, personal, accommodation, and emotional or moral support. According to Loretta Baldassar (2007), a closely related ethnographic analysis of 30 transnational families between grown-up migrant children living in Australia and their parents in Italy from the 1950s to 2000s illustrated that the exchange of emotional and moral support between parents and children was the fundamental factor for sustaining and staying committed to family relationships in transnational families. The prevalence of Internet technologies has facilitated remote family members’ emotional exchange, and provided them with the opportunity of accessible and affordable long-distance communication on a daily basis for sustaining relationships.

Cao (2010) conducted a series of interviews with 14 individuals who constantly communicated with family members living in different time zones, namely the UK, US, Canada, and China. Analysis revealed that among a variety of communication methods, including synchronous means such as telephone and Internet audio/video call (e.g., Skype) and asynchronous methods such as email or text messaging, remote family members relied heavily on synchronous methods for virtual contact. The real-time interactivity from synchronous communication provides a sense of presence, connectedness, and dedication between family members, which is regarded by Cao (2010) as an essential component of emotional support. Baldassar (2007) has noted in her decades long study, that both newer and older forms of communication such as letters, cards, photographs, etc. are used by families trying to maintain close bonds, but research is still inconclusive on what forms of communication are the most effective at maintaining those bonds.

Research has shown that people sustain close relationships using different communication patterns with different family members. While people usually communicate heavily with immediate family members such as parents or children, they tend to communicate less frequently and regularly with other family members including siblings across time zones. Cao's (2010) research has suggested that siblings feel less obligated to communicate frequently with each other, especially younger generations, and they prefer using types of communication like instant messages to update one another.

Staying in Contact; Tech, Social Media, and Theories
New communication technologies such as cellular phone plans make communication among individuals at a distance easier than in the past. Before the popularity of internet dating, long-distance relationships were not as common, as the primary forms of communication between the romance lovers usually involved either telephone conversations or corresponding via mail. According to Pew Internet, American citizens were asked how often they used the Internet on a typical day, they reported 56% sending or reading email, 10% reported sending instant messages, and 9% reported using an online social network such as Facebook or Twitter. However, with the advent of the Internet, long-distance relationships have exploded in popularity as they become less challenging to sustain with the use of modern technology. Ultimately, communicating and setting realistic goals can help prevent disconnection and the loss of touch.

The increase in long-distance relationships is matched by an increasing number of technologies designed specifically to support intimate couples living apart. In particular there have been a host of devices which have attempted to mimic co-located behaviors at a distance including hand-holding, leaving love notes, hugging and even kissing. The success of these technologies has, so far, been limited.

''The advancement and accessibility of technology and social media has driven new theories and studies into their use in relationships like LDRs. No matter geographical distance, nowadays there are both online and offline aspects to relational communication. Media multiplexity theory or MMT, looks at how communication across mediums affects relationships and whether it is useful to maintaining interpersonal relationships. The goal of MMT is to understand how the use of multiple medias at a time influences the understanding and satisfaction of relationships. MMT is based on five propositions 1) more medias used to communicate strengthens the ties of a relationship 2) tie strength determines amount of media interaction 3) tie strength and media use over time is a casual relationship 4) strong and weak ties are affected differently by changes in media usage and 5) what media is used to communicate varies based on tie strength and type of relationship.  Original theorists of MMT like Dr. Caroline Haythornthwaite, and studies involving MMT had predicted that using multiple medias to communicate would enhance ties and closeness between people in relationships. A recent study published in 2018 by Samuel Taylor and Natalya Bazarova, however, has found that multimedia's usefulness is maintaining and enhancing relationships is dependent upon context of the people and their relationship to one another and feelings towards the involved media.''

Relationship maintenance behaviors
The ways in which individuals behave have a major effect on the satisfaction and the durability of the relationship. Researchers in communication studies, mainly Dr. Laura Stafford and Dr. Marianne Dainton, have found systems of maintenance behaviors between intimate partners that work to maintain and change relationships between people in all kinds of relationships. Maintenance behaviors can be separated into seven categories: assurances in relation to love and commitment in the relationship, openness in sharing their feelings, conflict management, positive interactions, sharing tasks, giving advice to their partner, and using social networks for support.

Dindia and Emmers-Sommer (2006) identified three categories of maintaining behaviors that are used by partners to deal with separation :


 * Prospective behaviors, which occur before an anticipated separation
 * Introspective behaviors that are communication when the partners are apart
 * Retrospective behaviors that occur after separation to reaffirm partners' connection

These behaviors are known as relationship continuity constructional units or RCCUs. Maintenance behaviors as well as the RCCUs are correlated with an increase in relationship satisfaction, as well as commitment. Since their discovery and enduring prominence in academia, relational maintenance behaviors have been viewed as similar to the Five Love Languages , a different concept that is still after its first publication in 1992. Like the 5 Love Languages, relational maintenance behaviors stress the importance of factoring in the individuals' needs during intentional communication to have positive outcomes in a relationship. Individual needs for certain maintenance behaviors can be explained by Attachment theory which examines humans' social and psychological needs to establish connection through various types of relationships. One challenge with the maintenance of long distance relationships can be the increased anxiety produced by geographical distance that may threaten the feelings of security in attachments that is granted with close personal proximity.

Couples who have routine, strategic relational maintenance behaviors, and take advantage of social media can help maintain a long-distance relationship. Having positivity (making interactions cheerful and pleasant), openness (directly discussing the relationship and one's feelings), assurances (reassuring the partner about the relationship and the future), network (relying on support and love of others), shared tasks (performing common tasks) and conflict management (giving the partner advice) are some of the routine and strategic relation maintenance behaviors A study done by Pistole, Roberts, and Chapman found that both long distance relationships and geographically close relationships use maintenance behaviors and RCCUs in a similar manner and frequency dependent on attachment types of the individuals. While distance is a known challenge to long distance relationships and communication practices, studies such as those by Crystal Jiang and Jeffery Hancock (2013) as well as Natalie Ellis and Andrew Ledbetter (2015), have shown that individuals in long distance relationships can exhibit more self-disclosure that leads to behavior adaptations and idealized intimacy, resulting in positive relationship maintenance behaviors.

''Despite efforts in recent scholarship like those published in 2013 and 2015, there is still no proven casual relationship between media use, relational maintenance behaviors, and positive relationship results with LDRs. Instead, studies like those done by Jennifer Belus, Kimberly Pentel, Matthew Cohen, Melanie Fischer, and Donald Baucom (2018) as well as a study by Emma Dargie, Karen Blaire, Corrie Goldfinger, and Caroline Pukall (2015) have shown that there isn't much difference in the usage of relationship maintenance behaviors between LDRs and geographically close relationships. Both Dargie et al. (2015) and Belus et al. (2018) show the importance of individual characteristics in relationship maintenance and predicting positive relationship outcomes, no matter the distance.''