Ms. Welp was accepted into her dream college, Suffolk University in Boston; Mr. Sorensen, the University of Colorado, Boulder. Initially, they fretted over their divergent paths. “I really wanted to try to make it work,” says Ms. Welp. Ditto, Mr. Sorensen says.
So far, it has. Two years later, they are still seriously dating, cross-country. “In love, most definitely,” Mr. Sorensen says.
Generations of high school sweethearts have stayed together into college, but the connection tends to unravel amid the charms of a new campus, often during the rite known as the Thanksgiving Break-up, or Turkey Drop.
That tradition — and college dating over all — is being tweaked, thanks to today’s ability to communicate easily and variously across the miles. Relationships begun in high school and over summer vacations are continuing. Studying abroad isn’t a deal-breaker. As long as they can Skype, text, send a BlackBerry message, post on Facebook and call at will, distance is no obstacle to love, or to long-distance sexual play.
“I used to hear a lot more that ‘I don’t want to deal with a long-distance relationship,’ ” says Mike Malmon, a psychologist and counselor at the College of Wooster in Ohio. “But there’s been a transformation.”
Take Ms. Welp and Mr. Sorensen. Last year, they Skyped for an hour or longer nearly every night. They texted constantly, talked on the phone and wrote letters (yes, snail-mail letters). Now, more confident in their relationship and squeezed by busy schedules, they Skype twice weekly and call a bit more than that. They send a stream of daily texts and see each other at home on break. For the past two Thanksgivings, Mr. Sorensen has flown to Boston, and later this year they plan to study abroad together in New Zealand. “I’m so reliant on being able to just check in with him and do video Skype conversations,” Ms. Welp says.
Skype and similar technology figure large in this trend. “I don’t know if we would be together without Skype,” says Lisa Hoeynck, a University of Notre Dame junior, committed for the past three-plus years to Dusty Weber, a senior at St. Louis University. “Seeing his face makes our relationship even stronger,” she says.
Ms. Hoeynck recently acquired an iPhone. “It’s like Skype for your phone. When I’m walking to class I can talk and look at him.”
But what students say they find most romantic is a handwritten letter. “There is nothing really romantic about getting an e-mail or a text,” says Alia Roth, a Connecticut College freshman who has been dating Jake Blum, a University of Pennsylvania junior, since the end of her junior year in high school. “But there is something romantic about going to my mailbox and seeing a letter from my boyfriend and reading alone words from wherever he is,” she says. “It was the action of thinking of me, wherever he was, removed from technology.”
In return, Ms. Roth pens her own letters, sealing them with a lipsticked kiss.
Skype and Facebook also let students make contact with the other’s roommates and friends. This virtual intimacy, say students, increases understanding of each other’s lives. From Boston, Ms. Welp used Facebook to enlist four friends in her boyfriend’s dorm to run a scavenger hunt for his 20th birthday. Each clue focused on a moment in their relationship: the dorm piano for a song Mr. Sorensen taught her there during a visit, for example; the prize, a special T-shirt. Mr. Sorensen feared his friends might laugh, but “they went along with it and enjoyed it just as much as she and I did.”
IN the adjustment to college, first-year students often cling to high school sweethearts for security and for the history shared. For many, it’s their first big relationship, making it harder to move on even as they grow apart.
Introverts tend to be clingier, says Suki Montgomery Hall, assistant director and psychologist in the Counseling and Wellness Center at Ithaca College. “Because,” she says, “it’s difficult for them to make new friends.”
Though technology binds campus-to-campus relationships, text messages, calls and virtual images still provide just a momentary — and sometimes puzzling — window into a partner’s life.
Stories abound of jealousy over comments posted on a boyfriend’s Facebook wall or photos showing him dancing with someone else. A late response or poor word choice in a text can leave girlfriends stewing for hours about the state of their romance and asking friends and therapists to decipher a message’s meaning.
Abigail Sullivan Moore is co-author of “The iConnected Parent,” published in 2010 by Free Press.
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