...I hate the phone, but I wish you'd call...

Brent and I were driving in the car over Labor Day Weekend (finally, we went on a trip!), and we heard these lyrics - "and I hate the phone, but I wish you'd call" from a song titled "Fear you won't fall" by Joshua Radin. We looked at each other immediately - oh, can we ever relate!

How canst thou miscommunicate over the phone?....Let me count the ways..........

So, here are some borrowed, but fitting, thoughts I found on the subject:
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Many people assume that the long distance relationship (or, for the purposes of this essay, the LDR) is a modern custom, born of technology—airplanes and telephones and Eisenhower’s interstate highway system. But it is actually an ancient ritual—the origins of the phrase ‘LDR’ can be traced to a Latin root roughly equivalent to “spend a lot of money and be miserable.” ...

Anyone who has ever been in one knows that the lifeblood of the long distance relationship is the written word. ...

If the written word is the lifeblood of the LDR, then the phone call is the cholesterol. On paper, you tend to be more reflective and less likely to overreact. But even if you do exaggerate, you still have the option of reconsidering your words before mailing your letter. With the phone you don’t have the luxury of a cooling-off period. You’re often lonely and feeling betrayed by the distance, which causes you to take it out on the other person. This leads to a lot of fights. And the most frustrating aspect of arguing on the phone is not the fact that you can’t see the other person or even the preclusion of instant-gratification-make-up [activities]. Instead, it’s that no matter what the topic or how angry you might be, the only thought going through your mind the entire time is, “I’m paying 25 cents a minute to be yelled at.” And this makes you angrier, which makes you fight more, which costs more money.

You would think that talking on the phone was just like talking face to face. But it’s not. You don’t have the opportunity to read facial expressions. You can’t see body language. Talking on the phone is not the same as talking in person just as speaking Latin is not the same as speaking Italian. Although some of the words are the same, there’s still going to be an awful lot of miscommunication. ...

If a relationship is like a rope, then distance is an anvil tied to the end of the rope—if the relationship is even slightly frayed, the distance will eventually snap it. If you can avoid LDRs you’ll have more happiness, more money and more [intimacy]. There is little to recommend them.

---Gary Cozine
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Can I get an Amen?

Love
Jess and Brent