Personal Story of Distance Love

I have a story from my own life about a long-distance relationship that grew out of cyberspace and phone conversations. Back in High School, belonged to this youth group where Jewish teenagers from around our region (Eastern PA) belonged to individual city chapters, but got together three times a year for Regional Conventions. Now, my story begins with a girl (my current fiance, just to give perspective) coming to her first convention. She was rooming with a friend of mine named Alex, who told her that if she saw any guy who she thought was cute, to let her know and she would do the rest. Of course, at the convention, she points out my best friend and Alex sets the two of them up. After a little while, Lisa(the girl in question) and I start talking via AIM and phone, since she lived out by Valley Forge, PA. A little while later, my best friend and Lisa break up. Of course, by this point my fiance and I have been talking via AIM and the phone for a few months, and like in the story, we began to form a connection. Skipping ahead a few years, Lisa enrolls at Syracuse University in central New York, while I go to Goucher College, a small liberal arts school in Baltimore, MD. We started dating right before going to school and we are currently engaged and living together in Bethlehem. However, for the entire time previous to this past November, we lived at least an hour apart, sometimes for more. We only saw each other physicaly about once a month (if we were lucky) during our college years, and only once for a semester when she studied abroad in London. My point is, that for the majority of our relationship up until this current point, we have survived being long-distance by talking online or via phones. So, I can understand where the girl from the article, Alexis, is coming from. I know the exact feelings she has, when she says that after a while, the line between the "virtual world" and the "real world" becomes blurry, since your are having the same conversation whether you are face-to-face or in cyberspace. I will talk more later about the specific questions that Dr. Bob brought up, since this post is becoming quite long. But before I end this post, I just want to add that I truly believe that our relationship would never have occurred if we could not talk online or via phone or even through letters.