… “absence makes the heart grow fonder” is a pretty clear prediction of an emotional reaction to environmental events. But then what about “out of sight, out of mind”?
These aren’t exactly opposed - ‘out of sight, out of mind’ is generally applied to things and problems, not, say, warm relationships.
Some of the others aren’t exactly opposed either—I’ve generally heard not crossing a bridge before you get to it referring to trying to solve a problem you anticipate before it’s possible to actually start solving the problem.
‘out of sight, out of mind’ is generally applied to things and problems, not, say, warm relationships.
Really? I’ve seen it used twice for non-relationship contexts, but too many times to care to count (on the order of 50-80) in the context of long-distance relationships, usually as a warning that a couple should not hope to remain steady and trust eachother if they become far apart for a long period of time (months or more) for the first time since entering a relationship.
In fiction, this either turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy or becomes the whole reason the main character can complete the main quest.
In reality, the causal influence doesn’t seem to be there, but anecdotally I observe that the drifting-apart usually happens regardless of whether any such prediction was made. Knowledge of this leads a significant fraction of couples to break-up preemptively when they’re about to enter such a situation.
That’s interesting. I’d more seen it used with annoyances. Maybe because I haven’t seen much of LD relationships, and those that I did see, worked. And it was clear they were going to work from the outset because they were really serious about each other.
Absence diminishes weak passions and increases great ones, as the wind blows out candles and fans fire.
Yeah. The advice applies mostly to “Let’s get married when you return!”-style relationships, where the couple met in meatspace, dated in meatspace, became a “couple” in meatspace, and then have to separate for a long period of time and things will all be better once they get back together… all of which often fails horribly.
From three data points, it seems like those that survive the first separation might have no trouble with subsequent ones, or at least that the risk of repeat separations is greatly diminished (though if one cheated the first time, they’ll likely be cheating the other times too, AFAIK, but that’s 1 more datapoint + folk wisdom).
7⁄7 relationships I’ve seen that were started in cyberspace, stayed long distance for a while, then met in meatspace, then had to have a long-distance period, all survived (and are still healthy couples to this day as far as I’m aware). Seems like the filtering effect applies long before anyone ever meets eachother for cyberspace-started relationships, especially for long-distance ones.
These aren’t exactly opposed - ‘out of sight, out of mind’ is generally applied to things and problems, not, say, warm relationships.
Some of the others aren’t exactly opposed either—I’ve generally heard not crossing a bridge before you get to it referring to trying to solve a problem you anticipate before it’s possible to actually start solving the problem.
Really? I’ve seen it used twice for non-relationship contexts, but too many times to care to count (on the order of 50-80) in the context of long-distance relationships, usually as a warning that a couple should not hope to remain steady and trust eachother if they become far apart for a long period of time (months or more) for the first time since entering a relationship.
In fiction, this either turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy or becomes the whole reason the main character can complete the main quest.
In reality, the causal influence doesn’t seem to be there, but anecdotally I observe that the drifting-apart usually happens regardless of whether any such prediction was made. Knowledge of this leads a significant fraction of couples to break-up preemptively when they’re about to enter such a situation.
That’s interesting. I’d more seen it used with annoyances. Maybe because I haven’t seen much of LD relationships, and those that I did see, worked. And it was clear they were going to work from the outset because they were really serious about each other.
Yeah. The advice applies mostly to “Let’s get married when you return!”-style relationships, where the couple met in meatspace, dated in meatspace, became a “couple” in meatspace, and then have to separate for a long period of time and things will all be better once they get back together… all of which often fails horribly.
From three data points, it seems like those that survive the first separation might have no trouble with subsequent ones, or at least that the risk of repeat separations is greatly diminished (though if one cheated the first time, they’ll likely be cheating the other times too, AFAIK, but that’s 1 more datapoint + folk wisdom).
7⁄7 relationships I’ve seen that were started in cyberspace, stayed long distance for a while, then met in meatspace, then had to have a long-distance period, all survived (and are still healthy couples to this day as far as I’m aware). Seems like the filtering effect applies long before anyone ever meets eachother for cyberspace-started relationships, especially for long-distance ones.