Abstract
Literature avails controversial arguments between long and short distance relationships. The long distance relationships harbor copious challenges even with the assistance of technology to reduce its impacts. These challenges ranging from the satisfaction and insecurities to unfaithfulness are discussed in order to arrive at a conclusion that long distance relationships fail in most contexts. Some literature argues that long distant relationships foster intimacy while other researchers describe the failures connected to such relations. The evaluation of studies reveals the reasons why the relationships fail while developing other controversial literature in order to reach a conclusion against their success. These different ideologies leave a gap in knowledge about who might be right on this issue. This paper targets to develop an argument backed by research that long distant relationships fail. The argumentative essay will apply literal studies that either support or differ from the main argument in order to weigh their suggestions.
Introduction
There have been diverse orientations of literal works on why long distance relations fail to survive towards a life commitment. In essence, relationships may be classified to those based on love for spouses, relatives, friends, as well as the girlfriends and boyfriends. Among these relationships, the most controversial relationships are those involving lovers either in or towards marriage. Some researchers argue that such relationships do not survive due to human characters like jealousy, the urge to meet, lack of communication, changes in character, disagreements, life separation by distance, exposure to other people, monotonous life, and lack of love commitments. Such researchers as Peterson (2014) argued that the relationships are not real as they lose their meaning over time when communication loses vigor. They also demand a lot of trust while the lovers sacrifice most of their happiness during this period. In another perspective, some researchers like Kauffman, Arditti, Allen, and Bird (2000) offer a distinct perception on the maintenance of distance relations. These researchers believe that long distance relationships are manageable in the presence of relational maintenance within the prevailing advancement in communication. This paper argues the different perspectives as availed by researchers while supporting the main agenda that long distance relationships are doomed to fail.
Claim and Reason
The argument being developed in this paper is that “long distance relationships fail”. There are several reasons that have been raised to support this argument. First, the relationships demand too much including trust and sacrifices of some human needs to satisfy partners. Secondly, the relations are subject to external factors like competition from other lovers since they are not as effective as the close ones. In perspective, partners would prefer close relationships in order to avail securities, intimacies, and needs without enforcing sacrifice to maintain them. Thirdly, they tend to replace adverse interactive experiences like tours, vacations, tours, and handling active issues together. For instance, the partners may find it more interactive while cooking, walking, and hiking together than talking via a phone while sitting lonely in a house.
Supporting Literature
In a research conducted by Skinner (2005), investigations involving women in different levels of lengthy relationships depicted varying challenges and capabilities to retain their intimacy. The women in extremely long relations did not retain their faithfulness. Other levels of distance and time also depicted significant amounts of unfaithfulness where the inverse proportionality between distance length and faithfulness prevailed. The faithfulness reduced as the distance between the spouses increased. The researcher attributed variations to the levels of commitment between the distant partners since it proved to be the most reliable tool while compared with love and self-esteem attitudes.
Most people believe that long distances fail due to lack of many aspects when partners are separated. Although this argument is subject to debate based on literature, it still applies that distance does not actually heal a relationship. Logically, spouses face challenges and different mindset as well as influences when separated since they do not manage to attend most issues affecting each other. In this respect, Merolla (2012) believes that most partners do not survive a long distance separation especially when it is set to operate for long periods.
The geographically long and short distances in romantic relations have differently oriented outcomes on insecurities, self-disclosure, idealization, and gossips. The research performed by Pistole and Lee (2012) to predict the satisfaction of partners on these two conditions informed that low idealization in long distance relations and high in short ones. In a bid to enhance this study, the researchers involved 536 student participants in a web survey where SEM multi-group analysis showed a lack of equivalence between long and short distance relationships. There were clear differences where self-disclosure caused insecurities in the participants within the long and short distance relationships. The positive self-disclosure was linked to idealization in close distance relations while the negative side was associated with idealization on long distance setups. In general, the mediated path was weaker than the idealized one in the geographically close relations. It implies that although the close and long distance setups had some similarities, they also had many differences. In the two setups, insecurity led to the less disclosure, idealization, and satisfaction. However, the long distance promotes more gossips than in the short ones. In this respect, the researchers concluded that higher idealization is correlated to higher insecurity affection and self-disclosure in the close relations while a less idealization is apparent in the long distance relationships. The insecurity in affections was attributed to higher idealization and satisfaction in the long than short distances.
Contrary Literature
The ideologies of researchers on this aspect vary. The findings of other researchers present different outcomes on the survival of long distance relationships, especially on intimate ones. In a study credited to Dargie, Blair, Pukall, and Goldfinger (2015), an online survey was conducted on 474 females and 243 males who experienced the long distance relations and 314 females and 111 males in close relationships. Their research concluded that the long distance relationships did not trigger relevant differences from the close ones.
Similar arguments are supported further by the advancement of technology within the 21st century. While presenting the challenges that face partners in long distance relationships, Greenberg and Neustaedter (2011) informed that most lovers experience a section of their relationship while separated in distance. Such separation usually mediated by work and education among other issues foster communication using other models. Traditionally, long-distance communication was enhanced via letters, e-mails, text messages, and calls. However, the prevailing modernization has introduced other more reliable communications to enhance the maintenance of long distance relations where partners can use video calls. Such video chat communication social sites as Facebook, Skype, Google Hangout, and IMO among many others are fostering live sessions between individuals. The researchers, therefore, believe that long distance relations have been made easy. They found increased intimacy between lovers after conducting the survey from partners in long distance relationships who use video communication.
Justification
However, these arguments avail ideas that close distance relations will always be better than the long ones. All the above researchers investigating this issue have demonstrated that long distance relations must be aided to work as short-distance ones. Those arguing that intimate relations do not fail have applied strategies explaining why they must not be doomed to fail. However, they ignore some critical factors apparent in most relations worldwide. For instance, video calls may influence and foster the survival of long distance relations, but do all partners have devices to facilitate video calls on a daily basis as in close relations? They, therefore, present gaps that trigger a perception that not all fail but most do.
Conclusions
In conclusion, long distance relations have fewer chances to survive through the many challenges apparent in their period. The argument above has demonstrated that most long-distance relationships fail for different reasons.
References
Dargie E., Blair K., Pukall C., & Goldfinger, C. (2015). Go Long! Predictors of Positive Relationship Outcomes in Long Distance Dating Relationships. Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, 1-31.
Greenberg, S. & Neustaedter, C. (2011). Shared Living, Experiences, and Intimacy over Video Chat in Long Distance Relationships, Computer science 1005(17), 1-18.
Kauffman, M., Arditti, J., Allen, K., & Bird, G. (2000). Relational Maintenance in Long-Distance Dating Relationships: Staying Close, Family studies, 1-109
Lee J and Pistole C. (2012). Predictors of Satisfaction in Geographically Close and Long-Distance Relationships. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 59(2), 303–313
Merolla, A. J. (2012). Connecting here and there: A model of long-distance relationship maintenance. Personal Relationships, 19(4).
Peterson K. (2014). Distance Makes the Heart Grow Fonder: Do Long Distance Relationships Have an Effect on Levels of Intimacy in Romantic Relationships? Global Tides 8(8), 1-11
Skinner, B. (2005). Perceptions of College Students in Long Distance Relationships, UW-L Journal of Undergraduate Research 8, 1-5.
