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"FacebookPinterest\n\nLet me just say this: I didn&amp;#39;t see the iceberg coming. Last fall, when my boyfriend accepted a job on the West Coast, I thought managing a newly long-distance relationship would be just that\u2014 manageable. There&amp;#39;s literally an app for that. Between FaceTime and Kayak.com, you can practically be in two places at once. Besides, I thought, absence doesn&amp;#39;t just make the heart grow fonder. It would also provide some awesome white calendar space to get my own shit done.\n\nBut then reality set in. We were suddenly thousands of frequent-flier miles apart, shuttling back and forth for birthdays and conjugal visits but mostly just communicating digitally. I tried to have a good attitude about the whole thing\u2014at first. Calling is now cheaper than it&amp;#39;s ever been. It helps that texting is free, too, thanks to WhatsApp, which works anywhere you have a Wi-Fi connection, even internationally. And then there&amp;#39;s that old-fangled standby, Skype.\n\nBy the way, everything you think long-distance couples do with Skype, they do. When it&amp;#39;s working, that is. Nothing makes you feel farther apart than trying to have an intimate experience over a weak Internet signal. Sometimes my dude and I would get so frustrated with buffering video that we&amp;#39;d talk on our more reliable cell phones instead while staring at pilated images of each other on our laptops. (Can you see me now?) It&amp;#39;s like an episode of The Jetsons animated by Chuck Close.\n\nMaybe the Internet gods were trying to warn us. Because what this technology really offers is faux intimacy: It&amp;#39;s the perception of intimacy with the added hangover that comes with waking up in a queen-size bed next to nothing but your laptop. Seeing each other every night\u2014 but not being able to touch each other\u2014is its own form of punishment. Therein lies the rub\u2014or in this case, not.\n\nSome good advice came my way from, of all people, Adam Levine of Maroon 5 and The Voice. I interviewed him for a lady magazine, and we talked about how he handles life on the road while he&amp;#39;s got his Victoria&amp;#39;s Secret model girlfriend, Anne V, waiting at home. The two of them Skype, he told me, but not obsessively: &amp;quot;Your girlfriend can&amp;#39;t be a cell phone or a computer.&amp;quot; And there was a bright spot I was missing. &amp;quot;You get to see each other a couple of weeks later,&amp;quot; he said, &amp;quot;and it&amp;#39;s like you&amp;#39;re seeing each other for the first time.&amp;quot; Maybe so. But that guy&amp;#39;s got moves like Jagger. I have moves like Zuckerberg.\n\nStill, I think Rabbi Levine had a point. All of this immediacy comes with a price: Just because you can know where your partner is at all times doesn&amp;#39;t mean you  should know. The key is to lasso the tech and rein it in. So I fashioned a plan that kept my boyfriend and me connected but wasn&amp;#39;t so all-consuming that it killed our respective lives. Because skipping nights out with friends to make room for regular two-hour downloads (How was your day? No, how was your day?) is an unrealistic time-suck that can only lead to that romance killer, resentment.\n\nIn this new reality, we&amp;#39;d reserve text messaging for flirtatious asides that never required a response. Previously harried morning phone calls were replaced with quick video texts that I shot on my iPhone. These one-way communications\u2014sort of like messages in a $300 bottle\u2014are less interactive but more satisfying. So instead of scheduling a phone call, I&amp;#39;d shoot a video (yeah, love makes us do adorkable things) and leave it as a hello in his in-box. I&amp;#39;m also digging HeyTell, an app that turns your iPhone into a walkie-talkie\u2014like sending a text with your voice. No emoticons needed. As for the extended high-school-style phone calls, we limited those to a few times a week\u2014you know, so we actually had something new to say\u2014and saved Skype for the really lonely nights.\n\nBut most importantly, we threw money at airline tickets. I realized I&amp;#39;d rather endure a serious wallet hit for that last-minute nonrefundable seat than feel alone and bummed out. Five years from now, I doubt I&amp;#39;ll miss a thousand bucks. But I&amp;#39;d damn sure remember losing someone I loved so heartily because we couldn&amp;#39;t figure out a way to hear each other."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.gq.com/story/how-to-have-long-distance-relationship-men-video-chatting>