The title is self-explanatory

1. Long-distance romantic relationships as
mediated through video chat applications:
An autoethnographic psychogeography
Robert Beshara
The University of West Georgia

2. The history of LDRs is
the history of telecommunication
The Smoke Signal (Remington, 1905)

3. Distance: temporal &
spatial.

4. A very brief history of broadband
(aka high-speed Internet)
• “North American households' access to broadband
began in 1996, when Rogers Communications
introduced the first cable modem service in Canada.
[…] A growing percentage of U.S. households seem
to agree that broadband connections have many
advantages. Between 2000 and 2001, broadband
subscriptions rose over 50 percent, with an
additional 48 percent growth in 2003” (“Internet
history: From ARPANET to broadband,” 2007).

5. Information and Communications
Technology (ICT) & transportation
• Thanks to the availability, affordability, and speed of
broadband, video chatting became a possibility (on
platforms, such as: MSN Messenger, Skype, Google
Hangout, Facetime, etc.) making the experience of
being in a LDRR very different.
• For one, the problem of temporal distance has been
resolved with synchronous communication.
• The problem of spatial distance remains, but air travel
has been much cheaper and easier with the advent of
Web 2.0.
• Also, cyberspace as lived space is worth pondering
about.

6. Intimacy, solitude, and identity
• MIT professor Sherry Turkle (2011a) calls LDRs
“machine-mediated relationships.” She asks, “Does
virtual intimacy degrade our experience of the other
kind and, indeed, of all encounters, of any kind?”
• Her argument is that not only do we need to spend
more time offline, we need to spend more time alone
and not constantly networked online to cover up our
loneliness.
• She is also critical of this notion of online worlds as
“identity workshops” because she sees a difference
between identity performances (e.g., online persona or
avatar) and identity, but is there a difference?

7. Cyberintimacy
• “But when technology engineers intimacy, relationships
can be reduced to mere connections. And then, easy
connection becomes redefined as intimacy. Put
otherwise, cyberintimacies slide into cybersolitudes”
(Turkle, 2011a).
• There might be some truth to that, but I’m interested
in cyberintimacy as a helpful tool in committed LDRRs and
not as a substitute for “real” intimacy.
• I don’t see cyberintimacy as less real, but as a different
way of being intimate.

8. Intimacy & extimacy
• Emotional intimacy is context-dependent and not space-
dependent, so there is no reason why a couple can’t
experience emotional intimacy online.
• Also, who’s to say you can’t be physically intimate in a
LDRR? Use your imagination, please.
• What is presupposed when LDRs are compared to
“Geographically Close Relationships” (GCRs) as far physical
intimacy is concerned?
• Normative sexuality? Sex as intercourse?
• What about extimacy? “the presence of exteriority in the
intimacy, or deepest interiority, of the subject, and […] the
resultant non-distinction and identity of the exterior and the
intimate or most interior” (Pavón-Cuéllar, 2014).

9. Our (true love) story, or
cosmopolitanism in the 21st
century
• Cony and I have been in a committed LDRR for 7 years.
Committed means long-term not only long-distance.
• We met in Cairo, Egypt and we started dating on February
11th
, 2007.
• 2007 - 2014: I’ve lived between 4 different cities in 2
different continents and Cony has lived between 5 different
cities in 4 different continents.
• Thanks to the Universe, we got married on April 22nd
, 2014,
so we have finally settled down together after a lengthy noble
struggle.
• I don’t know if our LDRR would have worked out if were
living in the 19th
century, for example.

10. Bonobo-ing?
(Chicago, IL, 2011)

11. Glitch art?
(Moscow, Russia, 2011)

12. Bad hair day?
(Santiago, Chile, 2011)

13. The literature on LDRs
• Mostly quantitative: using surveys. We need more
qualitative & theoretical research on the topic.
• Mostly comparative: LDRs vs. GCRs. What about
understanding LDRs on their own term?
• Small samples: mostly university students in the
West, particularly North America. Cross-cultural
variation?
• Theoretical frameworks: communication theory
(uncertainty), attachment theory, developmental
psychology, and conflict management. Other meta-
theories?

14. The literature on LDRs (cont’d)
• A lot of the research was done with college counselors
in mind. Being in a LDR as a pathology?
• A portion of the research may be implicitly promoting a
normative ideology: GCRs as “healthy romantic
relationships,” especially when it comes to
understanding intimacy.
• Another implicit theme is the fear of technology, as if
LDRs (machines) are replacing GCRs (humans) in the
vain of sci-fi dystopias (e.g., Terminator & Terminator 2:
Judgment Day and The Matrix Trilogy).

15. Cyberspace as lived space
• “What makes any space real is that it serves as a context in
which people coordinate actions and undertake complex
projects” (Adams, 2005, p. 80).
• “Despite the impossibility of knowing the entirety of the space
inhabited by the self, my call for breadth implies the very
important potential […] to bring the space of agency and the
space of awareness into rough congruity, to produce a kind of
symmetry between knowledge and action. This is definitely
not a matter of colonizing the world through discourse, but
rather a task of bringing communication to a space already
colonized in several ways [e.g., by economic relations]. This
colonized space is not simply geographical space, but the
virtual space in which a distanciated society is regulated”
(Adams, 2005, pp. 186-187).

16. Embodiment in cyperspace
• “I argue that in the broadband era, enhanced bandwidth is
increasingly facilitating the exchange of bodily cues and
creating stronger convergence with audio-visual media.
Second, even in largely text-based online communications,
bodily markers often emerge either unintentionally as part of
the dynamics of discourse construction or deliberately to
authenticate users’ identity. Third, the material body is central
to Internet use, which is to a considerable extent motivated by
bodily needs and desires, as the popularity of countless health
and lifestyle websites suggests. Finally, I also argue that
constructing the Internet as virtual and disembodied obscures
the material and embodied lived reality in which technology
operates” (Gies, 2008).

17. Cyberbodies
• When you look at yourself in the mirror every morning, do
you think: I’m looking at a 2D reflection of myself, it’s not
me… it’s just an image? Or do you see your self in the
mirror?
• Similarly, when I video-chat with Cony, I don’t see a 2D
representation of Cony on my computer screen. I see Cony
and I hear her. We communicate together in a shared
experience. When we are video-chatting we are embodied,
but in a different way: as cyberbodies. We don’t leave our
bodies behind, we extend them.
• One doesn’t need to be on the Internet to feel disembodied.
The Internet does not have to cause disembodiment; it’s a
habitat full of tools, which we can use in any which way we

18. Self and identities
• The problem personal identity: we are always changing, yet
we somehow feel like we’re the same person. So what’s the
constant? Reconstructive memories?
• The problem of social identity (self and other): where do I
begin and where do you end?
• We can understand identity in LDRRs: discursively,
phenomenologically, and/or conceptually.
• In a presentation I gave last summer in Vienna, I argued that,
unlike the conventional use of these terms, in the psychology
literature there is a theoretical basis for the notion of self as
empty and identities as context-dependent roles we play
(Beshara, 2014). In contrast to the myth of individualism, we
do not exist in a vacuum; in fact, we are social animals and on
a basic level our survival depends upon our being in
community. See interbeing (Hanh, 1998).

19. Emptiness means interconnectedness
• Relational Buddhism: In-between-selves (Kwee, 2011).
• Social constructionism: Social self/relational being (Gergen, 2011)
• Engaged Buddhism: Nonself (Hanh, 1998).
• Narrative psychology: Dialogical self (Hermans, 2012)
• Social psychology: Relational self (Sedikides & Brewer, 2001).
• Philosophy of mind: Extended mind (Clark & Chalmers, 1998).
• Philosophy of mind (bundle theory): Extended self (Olson, 2011).
• Geography: Boundless/extensible self (Adams, 2005).
• Personality psychology: Second self (Turkle, 1984) / Tethered self
(Turkle, 2011b).
• Paranormal psychology/phenomenology: Long body (Aanstoos,
1986).
• Sociology: The embedded self (Walker & Lynn, 2013).

20. The hierarchical structure of the
Internet

21. Rootzmap: Mapping the Internet

22. The Opte Project

23. This PPP has a
happy ending or beginning
(Carrollton, GA, 2014)

24. References
• Aanstoos, C. M. (1986). Psi and the phenomenology of the long body. Theta, 13/14(3/4), 49-51.
• Adams, P. C. (2005). The boundless self: Communication in physical and virtual spaces. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University
Press.
• Beshara, R. (2014). Self and identities [PowerPoint slides]. Presented at the International Conference on Identity Studies.
Vienna, Austria.
• Gergen, K. J. (2011). Relational being: A brief introduction. Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 24, 280-282.
doi:10.1080/10720537.2011.593453
• Gies, L. (2008). How material are cyberbodies? Broadband Internet and embodied subjectivity. Crime Media Culture, 4(3),
311-330. doi:10.1177/1741659008096369
• Hanh, T. N. (1998). The heart of the Buddha's teaching: Transforming suffering into peace, joy, and liberation. New York:
Random House.
• Hermans, H.J.M. (2012). Dialogical Self Theory and the Increasing Multiplicity of I-Positions in a Globalizing Society: An
Introduction. In H.J.M. Hermans (Ed.), Applications of Dialogical Self Theory. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development,
137, 1–21.
• Internet history from ARPANET to broadband. (2007). Congressional Digest, 86(2), 35.
• Kwee, M. G. (2012). Relational Buddhism: Wedding K.J. Gergen's relational being and Buddhism to create harmony in-
between-selves. Psychological Studies, 57(2), 203-210. doi:10.1007/s12646-011-0124-8
• Olson, E. T. (2011). The extended self. Minds & Machines, 21, 481-495. doi:10.1007/s11023-011-9258-7
• Pavón-Cuéllar, D. (2014). ‘Extimacy’, in Thomas Teo (Ed.), Encyclopedia of CriticalPsychology. New York: Springer.
• Sedikides, C., & Brewer, M. B. (2001). Individual self, relational self, collective self. Philadelphia: Psychology Press.
• Turkle, S. (1984). The second self: Computers and the human spirit. New York: Simon and Schuster.
• Turkle, S. (2011a). Alone together: Why we expect more from technology and less from each other. New York: Basic
Books.
• Turkle, S. (2011b). The tethered self: Technology reinvents intimacy and solitude. Continuing Higher Education Review,
75, 28-50.
• Walker, M. H., & Lynn, F. B. (2013). The embedded self: A social networks approach to identity theory. Social Psychology