(Varia, 20, in a long-distance relationship with Vlad for close to a year)

This mutual support is important if one of the partners is homesick, having difficulties adapting or finding friends. However, it can also create problems, since the mobility also creates opportunities for control and increased surveillance: a couple of my informants who moved to Moscow for university experienced that their boyfriends left back home became overly controlling and jealous of new friends and coursemates.

Long-distance relationships for the young people I interviewed is embedded in the academic context and the way individuals make sense of the relationship inextricably interconnected with the way they make sense of education. Vlad, who is currently doing a PhD in America, while his girlfriend is finishing her undergraduate degree in Moscow, put it this way:

“I have long ago accepted the fact that academic life is full of randomness, basically, any relationship in academia is a story like ours. It's all very dull and incomprehensible. I do not cherish any hopes”“Просто, потому что я уже давно смирился с тем, что жизнь в академии - это полный рандом, вообще любые отношения в академии - это такая история. Очень мутно и непонятно. Я никаких надежд особо не лелею."

(Vlad, 22, have been in an LDR for close to a year)

For Vlad and many other young academics, being long-distance for some time is a normal, though painful, track. High mobility is typical, especially for postgraduate students, who are expected to do their MAs and their PhDs in different universities, regardless of the relationships they have built in the meantime. Grisha talks about the difficulties him and his girlfriend had (he wants to further pursue an academic path whereas she wants to work in business after finishing her MA in Germany):

“Sounds like a not very long-term plan to be together. Because of academic ethics, I have to change the country or university when I finish my education [MA]. That is, I definitely make another move. And she ... either settles in Germany or returns to Russia. And for me it is unlikely”“Звучит как не очень долгосрочный план быть вместе. Дело как бы... я по определению должен из-за академической этики сменить страну или вуз, когда закончу образование. То есть я точно делаю еще одно перемещение. А она... либо осядет в Германии или вернется в Россию.”

(Grisha, 21, him and his girlfriend decided to break up after 6 months long-distance)

Grisha and Vlad both have decided to stay on the academic path and are ready to abide by the rules. For them their relationships becoming long-distance is an intrinsic part of academic life, but the relationships stay the same. However, there are people who see the long-distance aspect of the relationship as a problem, a hurdle that you have to live through, rather than live out. For them the distance is temporary (just as their presence in academia) and they make efforts to end it as soon as possible by moving closer together.

“It is obviously a difficulty [being long-distance]. It is a period that needs to be lived through”“Это явно какие-то сложности. С одной стороны, это какой-то период, который надо пережить...”

(Zhenya, 21, was in an LDR with her boyfriend for 6 months, currently both living in Moscow)

Both types of long-distancers experience intimacy that is deeply intertwined with being in education and hence they make sense of the relationship though framing it as learning. They talk about it in terms of self-improvement, personal growth and gaining important soft skills. It seems that they process this emotionally and psychologically difficult experience through the narrative that they are most familiar with: learning, productivity, progress.

“During the relationship you develop yourself, go forward. We often tell each other something important that we needed to hear. Sometimes it happens that you and your partner feel that you are moving to a new stage, to a new level.”“В процессе отношений ты развиваешься сам, идешь вперед. Мы часто говорим друг другу что-то важное, что нам нужно услышать. Иногда бывает такое, что вы с партнером чувствуете, что переходите на новый этап отношений, на новый уровень”

(Dima, 24, was long-distance for 6 years, currently are both living in Vienna)

For a lot of the young people I talked to the long-distance relationship seems to be a tool for self-improvement: they say that you learn to cherish the limited time you have with the partner, learn to trust, and be patient, but most importantly, you learn to communicate your needs, negotiate, and problem-solve. Sounds like skills you would put on your CV, does it not? And that is not surprising, considering, that those people are middle and higher middle class, are receiving higher education and are preparing to do intellectual labour. The framework that they use to make sense of their relationships and the world around them is the framework that they have probably been taught to use all their lives.

Overall, the specific long-distance intimacy that my informants experience is constructed through connected presence (emphasising the importance of images and visual communication) care work and emotional support, organisation and planning, temporality and temporal synchronisation. Young students and academics feel close to their partners as a distance through a specific combination of connectivity and separation, discreteness and continuance, control, ritualisation and freedom.

The verbalisation of intimacy

Moving onto the verbalisation of intimacy, it seems that the original assumption that verbalisation of intimacy through social media posts is used by long-distance couples to validate their relationship was not accurate for my informants. Even though the participants do feel stressed about the long-distance aspect of the relationship and sometimes feel the societal pressure, stereotypes like LDRs are “not serious”, “not real relationships”, they still do not feel the need to “prove” the legitimacy of their relationship or normalise it by posting about it.

“It's just that, when the question arises about long-distance relationships, everyone immediately says that it doesn't work. It's such a common stereotype… Lots of people think that it [LDRs] does not exist. And I know that we are not the most ideal example for the traditional understanding of relationships, but it is a relationship. It is possible. Many people say: “do you meet once a month and text? Bullshit, not a relationship”. Every time I think that the rest of the world sees relationships as something different [for me].”“Просто, когда мы в каких-то компаниях, всегда возникает вопрос про отношения на расстоянии и все сразу говорят, что это не работает. Это дикий стереотип, просто все... Не важно... Это невозможно, честно. Огромное количество людей думает, что этого не существует. И я знаю, что мы не самый идеальный пример для традиционного понимания отношений, но это есть. это возможно. Многие люди говорят, вы что, раз в месяц встречаетесь и переписываетесь? Фигня, а не отношения. Я каждый раз допускаю, что весь остальной мир понимает под отношениями что-то другое.”

(Ulyana, 19, have been long-distance with her boyfriend for two years)

Alongside other informants, Ulyana mentioned the feeling of being judged or her relationship being perceived as not functional. Despite sometimes having a perception of LDRs being less valid and misrepresented on TV and films, my informants told me repeatedly, that they do not have a desire to “convince” anyone of the seriousness of the relationships through online verbalisation. They specifically say that they do not post about their relationship to validate it, to feel more accepted. Actually, they say they do not post for other people at all. So how and why do they post? How does the verbalisation function in their long-distance experiences?

To start with, not all my informants posted about their relationships online. Some say they post very rarely or prefer scenery to people, some specifically do not post about their relationship status even while being quite open about other aspects of their personal life online. Lera notes:

“People with whom I have a romantic relationship with really aren't visible on my Instagram. I think it's some kind of an attempt to control the information on my part. My close circle of friends knows who I'm with and the rest don't need to know.” “Людей, с которыми я в романтических отношениях, реально нет в моем инстаграме. Мне кажется, это какая-то попытка контроля информации с моей стороны. Что я готова открывать людям, мои близкие знают, с кем я, а остальным и не надо знать.”

(Lera, 21, in an LDR with a partner for close to a year)

For Lera the information about her partner is too personal to share publicly. She goes on to say that in a previous relationship she only posted a picture with per partner after a year of dating and when she was sure it was “serious” and long-term. Other informants expressed similar anxieties about posting their current partner and breaking up afterwards, because they will have to either delete the pictures of them together or see them on their Instagram profile while scrolling through old pictures. But there is also a desire to keep the romantic life private just as means of “controlling the information”, as Ira puts it. In an age where all your data is publicly available, keeping a secret might feel good for a change. This is consistent with what S.Livingstone describes in her work about teenagers' use of social media- they do not open up toeveryone but rather strive to achieve a “gradation of levels of intimacy” (Livingstone, 2008). In this case, there is a differentiation of audiences that have the different levels of closeness and hence can get access to different types on information. Similarlyto what Miller calls “scalable sociality” that is inherent to social media communication, Instagram is a part of this segregation or scalability (Miller, 2016)

Some of my informants expressed disapproval of the people who do post about their relationships online, long-distance or otherwise. According to some of my informants, it is not right or appealing to publicize private emotions, to “show off your dirty laundry”. In one case, an informant said he once unfollowed an acquaintance on Instagram because she posted about her relationship in an intense, uncomfortable way. She even invented a hashtag for the posts concerning her partner and their relationship, which became a running joke among my informant's friend group. Clearly, there is a fine line between sharing and oversharing on social media, maybe there is a certain cultural code of being reserved and inhibited that differs from, for instance, Asian cultures.

Nevertheless, about half informants that did post pictures of their partner or them together, posted things relating to the long-distance experience and their story. Those “sharers” utilised Instagram as a platform in one form or another to verbalise intimacy online. It is also connected to the two types of long-distance couples that were mentioned earlier: those who treat long-distance as a form of a relationship and those who problematise it as a challenge and something they need to survive through. Could that be that those who treat long-distance as a form of a test and a problem to solve, would need more ways of being vocal about it?

The public display of affection online happens in a few visual “genres”: the candid shots, the selfies, the screenshots (of text conversations or video calls), the “traditional” couple picture, posing. Of course, the typology is not full and can be expanded, but those are the main types of photos that I discovered during the ethnography and that were mentioned in the interviews. The candid shots are the “momentous” (as one of my informants called them) depictions of meetups: handholding, pictures of the partner while doing something domestic and normal, celebrations of the cohabitation. According to the interviews, sometimes those pictures are preferred to “staged” pictures together where the couple is posing. It seems that candid pictures are so important precisely because they represent the physical co-presence that is usually unavailable to the couple. But at the same time, any pictures together, especially taken professionally, at a distance become more valuable. Anna said that she and her partner really want to take more pictures of them together, she notes:

“I cut my hair short in September and we don't have a single good photo where I already have short hair. And when I post old photos, it's immediately clear that these are old...”“И мы каждый раз думаем, что надо пофоткаться… Я подстриглась коротко в начале сентября и у нас нет ни одной нормальной фотографии, где я уже с короткими волосами. И когда я выкладываю старые фотографии, сразу понятно, что это старые фотографии.”

(Anna, 21, 3.5 years long-distance)

Pictures of the couple become an asset, harder to get and thus more important. They are a sign of commitment and should be regularly updated. According to Ulyana, who is in a non-monogamous relationship, when her partner suggested to get some professional pictures of them taken, she felt unsure about it, because it was too much of a commitment.

The ways in which long-distance couples verbalise intimacy online can be more casual (like a picture of the partner and a caption that says “see you soon”) or deep and intimate (some make long posts about their story or the hardships of being long-distance). The motivation for opening up on social media about the long-distance experience varies among the young people I talked to. Firstly, Instagram can be seen as photoalbum, something to look through and come back to.Similarly to what Van Dijak says about images being used for construction of personal memory, long-distance couples create a public album online (Van Dijck, 2008). A few informants mentioned Timehop, an app that shows posts you have made on various social media platforms on this day over the years. That is how Vera describes it:

“Now it is a purely an album of photos, for Timehop to remind you of this in a year. Just to re-read it yourself, reminisce, trace how it was on different stages”“ Сейчас это чисто альбом фотографий на память, когда Timehop тебе об этом напоминает через год. Просто сама перечитываешь, вспоминаешь, фиксируешь, как оно было в разные этапы.”

(Vera, 22, have been long-distance with her boyfriend for a year, they are currently living together)

This desire to track-progress, see where you were 3 years ago and now, is another way of framing the relationship as self-improvement, in terms of productivity and learning. But also it is a way of dealing with the discreteness, the temporality of the relationship. Being so obsessed with time, and rightly so, long-distance couples take control of their time together by posting about it, seeing the progress, seeing how far they have come and how far they have left to go. While having almost no control over when they see each other next, they can have control over how they present the time spend and how they construct the mamoties they create together through images. This is especially true for those for whom the distance is hard to get through. Vera goes on to say:

“The emotions just overfill you; you cannot hold it inside you any longer…<...>When you're going through hard times, you really want to talk about it, get it all out”“Но в какой-то момент это тебя просто настолько переполняет, что ты не можешь это сдерживать в себе. Оно все лезет...<…> Про это реально рассказывать, выплескивать то, что у тебя внутри, хочется только тогда, когда тяжело.”

For Vera posting about the relationship was personal, something to look back on. But it was also very much social, she was going through a really hard time and needed support from her friends and family. But more importantly, she wanted support from her community, from other girls who had experienced long-distance relationships. She says:

“You want to be supported. But in fact, no one ever supports you (laughs) Or they try, but it turns out pretty sh*t, doesn't help at all <...> the maximum support that I've received, is was when I received comments, messages from other girls who are also at long-distance. We found each other, supported each other, cried to each other.”“Да, где-то внутри хочется, чтобы тебя поддержали. Но по факту, никто никогда не поддерживает (смеется) Либо они пытаются, но получается достаточно хреново, лучше не становится <…> максимум, который я получала, который был хорошим фидбеком, это когда я получала комментарии, сообщения от других девочек, которые тоже на расстоянии. тогда мы находили друг друга, поддерживали, плакались друг другу.”

The relationship with her partner was not easy for Vera, it was full of uncertainty and they were having problems with the language barrier at first (Vera's partner spoke very little English and she spoke almost no French) and they had to communicate exclusively through text (with the help of google translate). During this time, Vera was very vocal about her partner and their story, her emotions, both negative and positive. Interestingly, Vera's followers and close friends could not offer her the reassurance and support that she needed, she was seeking the advice and help only the long-distance community could provide. Verbalising the relationship and intimacy online Vera both created and cultivated the identity of being in a long-distance relationship and interacted with the community, which are both main functions of posting photos online (Van Dijck, 2008).

Another type of motivation for opening up online is Lisa's story. She used to be in a long-distance relationship for 6 years and now has been living together with her partner for 3 years. She gives an interesting perspective on the expert position you get after being long-distance for a long time:

“There are people I know who have experienced this [LDR] and asked me for advice. But I remember even people that I did not know writing me. "How is it?" or "it inspired me, so cool" or "I have a similar situation, what do I do?" And then they describe some problem they are having. They ask me for advice, as if I were some kind of a guru.”“И помню, даже писали люди, которых я не знала. "Как вообще?" или "меня это вдохновило, как клево" или "у меня похожая ситуация, как быть". И описывается какое-то происшествие. Короче у меня спрашивают совета, как будто я какой-то гуру.”

(Lisa, 24, had been long-distance for 6 years, have been living together with her partner for 3 years)

Lisa says that she has people who follow her now who have been following their story for years online and she does not know who they are. It is flattering to her and she tries to give advice as best as she can, but doubts that she has any expertise in the matter of long-distance relationships, only being an expert in her own relationship. Lisa also notes, that she does not write long posts about the relationship for herself or her partner, but more for her audience. Her partner adds that she mostly writes posts as answers to frequently asked questions, for example, if she receives too many questions about how they met, she answers in a post rather than individually. That being said, Lisa does not consider herself an influencer or a blogger, her Instagram account is actually private, the audience is carefully filtered. Interestingly, being a relationship that is socially perceived as successful, makes you an expert able to give advice in the eyes of people with similar experiences.

Thus, verbalisation of intimacy online through Instagram posts can be a way of finding reassurance and support from the community, a way of finding people with the same experience. It can also be a way to give advice and perform a fairytale relationship story to an audience of followers. But even though the online platform is public the verbalisation more often is for the couple themselves, less for the people watching. It is a way of time-management, a way of making sense of the meetings and long periods of waiting, sometimes through looking back at past times of being together.

One of my original hypotheses was concerning the relational work couples do through posting on social media. I made an assumption that in a digitally mediated relationship there is a need for public negotiation and communication of boundaries and meanings of the relationship status. I suggested that the relational work that the couple does is targeted more towards the followers, to publicly restate the relationship and gain some sort of public affirmation. However, my informants did not feel the particular need to communicate their relationship status our boundaries to their followers. Partly because in their social context of young students and academic long-distance relationships were already fairly normalised. Nevertheless, the relational work is present in other forms. According to my informants, the long-distance relationship takes a lot of efforts and intense reflective communication with the partner to maintain. As Lisa puts it: “a relationship is a fire and you have to keep putting wood into it from both sides otherwise it will go out”. When I asked her, what would be a long-distance relationship in this metaphor, she said: “it's also a fire, but you need even more wood to keep it going”. In this way, there is a lot of work that is being done to negotiate and upkeep the relationship. In the beginning of the relationship, when the status and seriousness of the relationship is unclear, a social media post can be an indicator or a reaffirmation to both partners that they are indeed committed to being together. Sometimes this act of reaffirmation is a picture drawn on your VK wall or a lyric of your favourite song used in a post. But even more relational work happens “offscreen”, in private text conversations and video chats. In my informants' narratives there were many examples of renegotiation of rules and boundaries over the course of the relationship: either opening up the relationship and becoming non-monogamous, or on the opposite side, clarifying the rules of the relationship. For example, Ulyana describes in detail how her partner's behaviour online (liking pictures of a girl dating back years, posting playlists made for her, mentioning her in the caption for his Instagram pictures) made her uncomfortable. Even though they were in an open relationship at the time, this particular experience made her reconsider the rules they had discussed before and negotiate a new normativity for them. Another informant told me that when she moved to Moscow for university and her partner moved to a city close to their hometown, he felt insecure and jealous, so he tried to control who she befriended and people she spent time with. They had fights and long facetime conversations about her befriending boys from her course and the issues of spending time with them.

“The rule was that I cannot go alone with a guy somewhere. Once I went for a walk with a guy and then there was a very big scandal. Because it is "unacceptable" ... even in a group, it was not allowed at first, if there were guys. Then we talked about it and decided that yes, that was insane. But still I could not walk with a guy alone. When there were quarrels, I would say: "how should I behave? What should I do to make you calm down?" And then he would set the rules. At first I, of course, agreed. You do not think that it is terrible, you think about a person that he is also feeling hurt, I wanted to support him”“Было, что я не могу одна с парнем пойти куда-то. Однажды я пошла одна гулять с парнем и потом была очень крупная ссора. Потому что это "неприемлемо"... даже в компании сначала нельзя, чтобы были парни. Потом мы разговаривали и решили, что да, это маразм. Но ограничивалось тем, что одна я с парнем ходить не могу. Когда были ссоры, я говорила: "а как я должна себя вести? Что нужно сделать, чтобы ты был спокоен?". И он говорил, что вот, ты не можешь пойти туда-то туда-то. Первое время я, конечно, соглашалась. Не думаешь, что это ужасно, думаешь про человека, что ему тоже плохо, хочется его поддержать.”

(Lena, 21, was long-distance for 2 years, currently is living together with per partner in Moscow)

Lena and her partner went through phases of negotiation, because for her partner spending time with men was unacceptable and meant something different from Lena's understanding. At one point Lena had to break things off and after they reunited, the mutual agreement was reached.

While talking about efforts that are required to maintain the long-distance relationship, many of my informants' narratives indicate that they perform specific kinds of emotional work. They often use the term “nastraivatsya” (настраиваться) that Siegl describes in her work on surrogacy and emotional labour in Russia (Siegl, 2018). Nastraivatsya means “to make up one's mind” but also to “align oneself”, to bring yourself in the right mode. My informants use nastraivatsya to describe how important it is to think positively about the long-distance experience, focus on the next meeting instead of hurting because a meeting ended. Anna describes it this way:

“In the beginning I kept saying how difficult, how sad, how depressing. And then I realigned myself to look at things more positively… <...> We cannot be together any earlier, why torture ourselves. It is important that there is a deadline, it helps to align oneself [nastraivatsya]”“В начале я все время говорила, как сложно, как грустно, меня это угнетало. А когда я перестроилась на то, чтобы искать больше каких-то позитивных... Не хочется называть это словом безысходность (смеется) Но раньше все равно мы не сможем быть вместе, зачем себя мучить этим. Важно, чтобы был дедлайн, это помогает настраиваться. Человеку сложно настраиваться, если ты не знаешь, когда это все закончится.”

(Anna, 21, have been long-distance with her boyfriend for close to 4 years)

It takes work to get through being long-distance, including aligning yourself with a positive outcome, thinking about the deadline and future reunion. Alina goes on to say that posting “thankful” and optimistic things about her relationship helps her to think differently about the relationship and ultimately helps her get through it. It can be suggested that there are certain “feeling rules” when talking about long-distance online (Hochschild, 2012). You can only talk about the positive, the enthusiasm and hope, plants for the future, the glee of meeting your partner, even for a short period of time. Talking about more painful details, emotional struggles, uncertainty or “termless” relationships is less approved off. Some of my informants mentioned, that they would not post about feeling negative about their relationship or being in a bad place. Instagram in general is a platform that favours positive, idealised imagery, but for long-distance relationships it feels even more regulated. Though some of my informants did post about the struggles of being long-distance, the narratives of those posts still correspond with the accepted mythology of being long-distance: hard but worth it.

Alongside emotional work on positive reinforcement, Mariasaid that she experienced difficulties with “retraining” herself that she and her partner were not living together anymore, she made certain efforts to “not get too attached” to the cohabitation experience, because her partner was leaving to do an academic exchange programme in Europe. She also mentioned how she experienced pressure to be happy and to “make the most of it” during the short trips they took together while being long-distance. She experiences periods of depression and she felt like she needed to make herself feel more cheerful, if she was feeling depressed during their meeting, since they had so little time together. This emotional management is also present in long-distance communication. Zhenyatold me, that there are certain emotional efforts in communication with your partner, especially when you are tired after a long day. She adds:

“You need to be able to monitor [your emotional state], talk about it, collect your last strength and explain. Even though sometimes I can barely speak when I'm tired, I lose all verbal function (laughs)”“Нужно уметь отслеживать, об этом говорить, собирать свои последние силы и объяснять. У меня было такое, что я даже говорить не могла. У меня еще есть такая особенность еще, что если я устаю к вечеру, у меня вербальная функция отрубается (смеется)”

(Zhenya, 21, was in an LDR with her partner for 6 months, currently both are living in Moscow)

Couples in long-distance relationships perform emotional work, aligning themselves with the mindset that would help them successfully pass the long-distance period. This emotional work helps to find a balance between the distance and communication and care for the partner. It is performed through aligning your own perception and feelings but also through verbalising the relationship to the partner, significant others and online. Verbalising intimacy online can provide a support system that will help you feel more positively and make the difficult long-distance period bearable.

To conclude, the verbalisation of intimacy online serves as tool to get support from your friend circle as well as to find advice and reassurance from the people who had a similar experience. Verbalising intimacy can be a way to help others in your community, give advice and perform a perfect relationship, but it is more often directed towards the partner (to renegotiate the relationship status, to check-in with each other) or is meant for yourself to make sense of the relationship, to do the time management necessary to live through a difficult experience. The long-distance intimacy has to be negotiated through relational work and has to be correctly aligned thought emotional efforts.



Conclusion

Long-distance relationshipsindeed rely heavily on digitally mediated communication: a couple practically exists in the online space, both public and private. Consequently, emotional closeness and intimacy are constructed through connected presence: a combination of regular phone conversations and frequent check-ins through texts, images and audio messages. Combined, the two modes of connected presence create an ongoing conversation that constructs a space of shared meanings. The connected presence seems like a “third life” that the couple shares, it is deeply ritualized and plays an important part in relational maintenance and emotional support.

Interestingly, for my informants time feels more significant than distance: they focus on controlling time, synchronising time,and managing time. They balance the discreetness and longevity,plan for the future and live through the cycles of being long-distance. Temporality is inherently connected education and academia, because of the specificity of my sampling: my informants are currently in the stage of their lives where they are getting an education, plan for a future career, prepare to move, etc. Hence, they make sense of their relationships through the language of productivity and learning, which is the framework that is most familiar to them. They often talk about the relationship as a tool of self-improvement and progress, which raises a question: do young people generally make sense of their life through the lens of studying and academia?

Contrary to the original assumptions, young people do not seem to feel the need to validate their long-distance relationship through verbalisation of intimacy online. Furthermore, the public verbalisation of intimacy and closeness is more often geared towards the partner or done for themselves rather than for the followers. Although some of my informants used social media posts to connect with the long-distance community, get reassurance or advice (or, in turn, give it), most used online public displays of affection for other reasons. It is about creating and reaffirming an identity and shaping memories, curating a photo album that you can look back on. Social media posts also solve the problem of temporality and lack of control over the time the couple spends together: sharing images and posts creates your own timeline, an illusion of control and makes the experience easier and more bearable.

Furthermore, verbalisation of intimacy on social media is a part of relational maintenance. It happens through relational work - negotiation of boundaries and terms of the relations. Public posts serveas an indication of commitment or intentions, and sometimes are used as tools in renegotiating terms of the relationship (like level of monogamy). Additionally, there is certain emotional work involved in maintaining long-distance relationships. There are certain feeling rules online, a certain emotional normativity - a positive view is more accepted than a negative one, a fairytale like picture of your story is more accepted than a raw and hard story that involves fights and breakups. Apart from that, my informants talk about aligning themselves with a certain emotional track, both online and offline, which helps them live through the difficult periods.

When it comes to verbalisation of intimacy, there is a fine line between sharing and oversharing, gradation of levels of intimacy that my informants see very differently, some find in acceptable to post about their partner, but some deem relationship-related information too vulnerable to share. I suggest, that it could be connected to the specific cultural code and how people share private intimate details with people offline as well as online.

Public verbalisation of intimacy seems to be more useful for some but not for others: some people see long-distance as a temporary, painful measure and a problem to be solved, but some see it as a usual way of life, another mode of a relationship, uncomfortable, but functioning. It could be connected to the view of academia and the role academia plays in you people's lives: studying as a temporary state, soon to be over, or studying as the beginning of the academic career. It is unclear from the interviews I did for this research, because we were focusing on the relationship and not academic aspect but could be a topic for future research. Moreover,is interesting to do further research on how the logic of economic rationality is used by young people to makes sense of different aspects of their everyday lives and interpersonal relationships.

Qualitative design does not allow for a comparative analysis, but it would be useful to do a comparative study on long-distance couples and geographically close couples behavior online to see the ways in which they verbalize intimacy and if it serves the same purpose. Even though I explored how the specific long-distance experience plays out online, it is unclear how this experience relates to other online experiences. Could it be similar to other less conventional or less publicly accepted relationship practices, like non-monogamous or LGBT+ couples?

Overall, long-distance relationships are a balancing act between distance and time, control and synchronisation, alignment and verbalisation. Long-distance couples use Instagram as a keepsake, but it is also a powerful tool of communication between partners and an access point to the long-distance community.



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AppendixA

InterviewGuide

Добрый день! Меня зовут Оля, я студентка Высшей Школы Экономики, провожу качественное исследование про отношения на расстоянии. Мне интересно услышать про особенности вашего опыта, послушать вашу историю. Со своей стороны я гарантирую конфиденциальность беседы, а также обеспечение полной анонимности: личные данные не будут разглашаться. Остались ли у тебя какие-либо вопросы?

В начале, расскажи, пожалуйста, немножко про себя, как тебя зовут, сколько тебе лет, чем занимаешься. И потом, что за отношения. Когда отношения начались, как долго они длились, как перешли на расстояние (если начались офлайн), сколько уже на расстоянии (были на расстоянии)? Если познакомились офлайн: Как принималось решение остаться вместе на расстоянии или расстаться? Вообще про это был какой-то разговор, может быть взвешивались варианты расстаться или остаться вместе? Решение далось легко? Если познакомились онлайн: был какой-то разговор что вы начинаете встречаться на расстоянии, как принималось решение?

А что ты думал/а об отношениях на расстоянии до того, как оказалась/ся в таких отношениях? Были какие-то стереотипы? Как друзья и близкие отреагировали на твои отношения? Поддерживали или не верили в успех, может быть отговаривали? У тебя раньше был опыт отношений на расстоянии?

Расскажи, как вообще поддерживался контакт на расстоянии? Переписывались в мессенджерах/созванивались/скайп? Как часто вы коммуницировали? Было какое-то разделение каналов общения, например, мессенджер для каждодневных вещей, а скайп для серьезных разговоров? Что-то изменилось, когда начался период отношений на расстоянии в плане коммуникации? А вы когда-нибудь ссорились на расстоянии? И как проходили ссоры, по переписке или созванивались? Было ли тяжело оставаться в контакте, пока вы были на расстоянии, надо ли было как-то планировать заранее коммуникацию или делать какие-то усилия?

Получается, большая часть отношений проходит в социальных сетях. Расскажи, а ты вообще афишируешь, с кем ты встречаешься в социальных сетях, постишь что-то про это? Если да, то какие это посты? (можете показать пример?) А как относишься к тому, что партнер тебя выкладывает в свои социальные сети? А ты фолловишь людей, которые активно постят про свои отношения? Что об этом думаешь?

Как проходил сам период на расстоянии, вы встречались за это время? Как проходило планирование встречи? Было тяжело ждать следующей встречи, как вы с этим справлялись? А как коммуникация менялась в период “вместе”, чем-то отличалась? А присутствие друг друга в социальных сетях?

Были вещи, которые вы хотели друг для друга сделать, но не могли на расстоянии? Как поддержка, забота, работает на расстоянии?

А были праздники, на которые вы были “порознь”, как вы друг друга поздравляли? Например, годовщины, дни рождения, новый год. Присылали друг другу подарки по почте или дарили уже лично? А как в социальных сетях это освещали?

Как обстоит дело с доверием на расстоянии? Было сложнее доверять? Было ощущение какого-то особого контроля со стороны партнера или ревности, когда вы были на расстоянии? Были случаи, когда ты как-то менял/а свое поведение онлайн из-за партнера, например, не постил/а какую-то фотографию?

Вообще как ты думаешь, какое в твоем окружении мнение об отношениях на расстоянии? Много таких пар вокруг или это редкость? Как ты видишь роль твоих подписчиков в социальных сетях в ваших отношениях? Есть ощущение, что их присутствие влияет на то, что ты что-то постишь, например оказывают какую-то поддержку?

Что отличает отношения на расстоянии от “обычных” отношений? Какие практики у вас выработались, которых не было раньше (в других отношениях)?

* Если съехались вместе: расскажите, как отношения изменились после того, как вы опять оказались вместе? Как изменилось использование социальных сетей и ежедневная коммуникация? Были какие-то опасения по поводу окончания периода на расстоянии? Какие были ожидания?

*Если расстались: Как отличается расставание на расстоянии от обычного, чем-то сложнее или легче? Было какое-то осознанное усилие сократить коммуникацию после расставания, не звонить, не писать?

*Если партнер говорит на другом языке: а было просто коммуницировать на разных языках или возникли какие-то проблемы?

А ты фолловишь какие-то пары в отношениях на расстоянии в социальных сетях? Знаменитостей или просто друзей в таких отношениях. Тебе это помогает как-то справиться с расстоянием? К тебе когда-нибудь подходили или писали за советом по отношениям на расстоянии?

Вообще какие ощущения от отношений на расстоянии? Есть какие-то плюсы? А что плохого? Ты бы согласилась/лся еще раз? Что бы ты сказал/а подруге/другу, который собирается вступить в отношения на расстоянии? И какой бы совет дал/а?

Можно сказать, что есть работа по поддержанию отношений? Какие-то усилия? Если да, что в такую работу входит?Есть какие-то эмоциональные усилия?

Что для тебя отношения на расстоянии?

Почему ты решил/а со мной поговорить про это?



Appendix B

Interview transcript

Date of the interview: 27.04.2019

Name: Vera

Date of transcription: 28.04.2019

-Привет, я провожу качественное исследование про отношения на расстоянии, мне очень интересно послушать твой опыт. все совершенно конфиденциально и будет анонимизированно. Вообще хотела именно с тобой поговорить, потому что я хочу узнать, почему некоторые люди постят про свои отношения на расстоянии много, а другие мало. Почему так

-Это социальный эксгибиционизм называется (смеется) Мой папа так говорит

-(смеется) а ты как думаешь сама?

-Нуу местами, периодически. Я понимаю, что особенно мои посты, особенно в начале... это было то, что я бы раньше никогда не стала [постить], это слишком личное. Но в какой-то момент это тебя просто настолько переполняет, что ты не можешь это сдерживать в себе. Оно все лезет...

...