In a blog it’s said that all that intimacy-building phone time is actually making you better at communicating in general if you are in a long distance relationship. Being apart forces your communication skills to be razor sharp—or else you face destruction. The Cornell study found that long distance partners go to greater lengths to overcome communication barriers.”You’re learning each other’s communication styles and you’re doing it in a way that’s a little more non-threatening,” says Hendrix. “Both people need to know what it is that they need to feel connected. And long distance couples make the effort to give that to each other.”
However in my opinion there are always barriers of communication when you are in a long-distance relationship. First, people lack nonverbal communication if they have long physical distance. From textbook I know that no discussion of communication would be complete without a discussion of nonverbal communication. This type of communication includes body movements, facial expressions, and the physical distance between the sender and receiver. Therefore, it’s important for the receiver to be alert to these nonverbal aspects of communication. People will miss some information when they communicate through text messages and phone calls.
Lying is also a serious problem. The literature suggests that most people are not very good at detecting deception in others. Most people who lie take steps to guard against being detected, so they might look a person in the eye when lying because they know that direct eye contact is (incorrectly) assumed to be a sign of truthfulness. Yet when a long-distance relationship happens it’s very possible that people can’t detect lying. This may cause a problem that although the relationship goes well they may both deceived.
In a word, I don’t think people will be a master of communication in a long-distance relationship since many barriers of communication exist.
308 words
Sources:
http://www.shape.com/lifestyle/sex-and-love/6-ways-long-distance-relationship-makes-you-more-love
Vrij, P. A. Granhag, and S. Porter, “Pitfalls and Opportunities in Nonverbal and Verbal Lie Detection,” Psychological Science in the Public Interest 11, no. 3 (2010), pp. 89–121.
