e-communication: from meaningless to meaning everything

“I know you said you want me not to think about you too much when I’m travelling. But your actions have the opposite effect on me. When I hear from you, even a small message, I feel happy and connected, and I’m able to enjoy myself with you in the back of my mind. But when I don’t hear from you, I worry something has happened, that there’s a real reason why you didn’t write, not simply games or control tactics. I don’t need big, long messages, just something regular, daily, to know you’re well.” (p.196)

In my ‘words and meanings can be miles apart’ blog entry, I talk about the challenges of communicating with partners from a different cultural and/or linguistic background. This post explores some of the fundamental communication difficulties when we travel without our partner or close ones.

A friend who was analyzing the electronic communications in my novel pointed out that we don’t have the same use for the internet and emails when we’re travelling: away from our routine, we may use the internet and phone as the only means of continuing to build relationships and have meaningful interactions, while back home, the internet may be more of a convenience, a simple means of passing a message that can’t wait.

At first read, this friend interpreted much of the book’s contents as me thinking too much all the time, and becoming paranoid. But after thinking about it for some time, she remembered a period in her life when she was in Spain for six months, while her partner had to remain back home in France: each letter she would receive at that point would have a heightened intensity, creating a heightened reaction (which she said was more often crying than laughing). This tends to happen when we’re taken away from our regular routine: when we’re at home following a schedule, we may be bombarded by communications, and skip over many of the words in a message, looking to get to the point; when we’re travelling, missing familiarity and the everyday access to our partner’s lives, our emotions may hang on their every word, and we in turn hope to see them replying to every little detail we’ve shared. Not having easy access to them makes the moments we do communicate mean so much more.

At home, our ability to be in touch is almost taken for granted. We can spend minutes or hours reading and sending SMS messages, commenting on nothing or everything through social networks, asking and answering practical questions in a moment’s notice, and emailing the tiniest update to someone we care about, knowing we’ll be able to follow up on the story through another message or in person later on in the day. And if our partner is travelling, we miss them, but we still have these familiar comforts to share with our friends as regular life continues.

For someone travelling, they are usually doing it for a reason (whether it’s as specific as research for a project, or as general as time away from work to relax on the beach). This creates a new schedule for them to balance, and it can be a real effort to find a place and time to be able to connect. But for the person who is at home surrounded by technology, they may not even realize how difficult or frustrating it is when they don’t show up on time for an online chat (for example), and the other person has to sit and wait, paying by the minute. And the longer we wait to hear from someone (especially when we know they’ve got the means to interact with us at their disposal), the more frustrated and over analytical we may get, especially if it affects our ability to function and achieve our objectives in our new surroundings.

So how do we bridge the gap when we’ve got to survive a long-distance relationship due to travel? The first important thing is to make sure that both people understand what their limitations are: how often do you have access to internet and telephone? If there’s a time difference between you, how does that affect the hours you’re available to write or chat? Will the traveller have a schedule of activities to follow, which shouldn’t be interrupted to rush off to a computer or phone? Does the person back home have work and social obligations that prevent them from communicating at certain times of the day? Once you’ve established your limitations, you can make sure that you schedule some times to stay in touch with the person you care about, and make sure that you respect them.

For me, as a traveller, I can be fine hearing from someone only a couple times a week, if I know when those times will be, and I can look forward to them; it actually makes it easier to concentrate on the new cultural experiences I’m enjoying abroad, and I get excited about the time when I’ll have the chance to share the fun. I make sure to put time in my schedule to write to my partner, whether on a computer or by hand when technology isn’t available, so that I’m not simply waiting for the moment to communicate interactively; all the daily details I’d share if we were together are still there for me to share when we have the means. And I let them know that I value receiving those little messages from them too; I need a balance of the everyday mundane and the deeper conversations to remain connected.

As someone at home while my partner is away, I make sure I continue to send the small messages I’d send to them if we were in the same place (especially if I spend much of my day on the internet with other people), only I don’t expect to have an answer as quickly. When I do receive a detailed correspondence, I make sure that I treat it more as I would a hand-written letter, rather than an everyday email. And if I set a time to talk or chat online, I make sure that I treat it like a date (the same I would if we were in the same place), with the time marked in my schedule, and no other obligations to run off to.

There’s no easy answer to make us feel closer when we’re apart, but it can help if we recognize, plan, and take advantage of the various ways we have to keep in touch. Most important, in my mind, is recognizing that we aren’t in the same place with the same leisures and constraints, and no matter how independent we may be, we need to ensure that our partners and close ones don’t feel neglected.