How Can Long-Distance Relationships Affect Romantic Expectations on Valentine's Day?

TRANSCRIPT

So our long-distance relationship research, we've conducted two studies on that to date. And in the first study, we compared people in LDR, or long-distance relationships, to people in proximal relationships, or PR.

What we're finding is that with an increasing amount of technological options people are reporting the capacity to connect more and a higher sense of connection to their partners. And in fact, we even see some data to show that increases in technology is one of the reasons that people are more open to LDRs now than they were in the past because they know that such options might be available to them. 

Regarding Valentine's Day, I think one way it links to our work is that with Valentine's Day comes a set of expectations usually, for connection or intimacy. And that's something that actually can be disenabling
of connection and intimacy, the expectation of that. And so in LDR there's a little bit of the same, where we find some expectations related to the relationship that are hard to maintain in LDR.

So my advice to people on Valentine's Day, whether they're in an LDR or not, would be to come up with reasonable and managed expectations, and that's going to promote an enjoyment of the LDR, of Valentine's Day, or a Valentine's Day in an LDR.