Alice Jones
Reporter
Senior Yun Ji Kim-Berkten had a 9-hour time difference with her boyfriend of eight months who spent three months in Belgium for competitive cycling. The couple resorted to FaceTiming during her morning — his night — and texting whenever they were awake.

High school students have to manage school, extracurriculars activities and homework. Finding time to have a relationship in their vicinity is hard enough, let alone keeping a long distance connection alive through bad Internet connection. Skype, Facebook Chat, AIM and Viber have become technological life-savers for communicating with an international beau, according to Kim-Berkten.

“We would Skype every day, but my boyfriend was nine hours ahead (in South Africa) which made it really hard,” senior Alex Milton, who managed a 2-year relationship with only two face-to-face visits, said. Although one visit was a summer vacation in her native South Africa she says, two years is a long time to stay faithful. Unlike Milton’s relationship, Kim-Berkten and her boyfriend have decided to have an open relationship while he is away.
“We promise to be very truthful with each other when something happens with some else,” Kim-Berkten said.

“As long as the expectations and communication is clear there is no reason the relationship should be unhealthy,” counselor Annie Egan said. “Open relationships are common because I think people are really scared to break up, especially when you both really still care about each other and the only difference is geography.”

Larkin Grant (’08) was a resident advisor at Occidental while in college and got an earful from girls trying to make their high school relationship work in college, long distance or not. She agrees setting up ground rules and expectations is important in the beginning so nothing can be misinterpreted and lead to unhappiness.

Approximately a third of college relationships are long distance, but 40 percent breakup according to Statistic Brain. Half of college students are in long distance relationships and up to 75 percent will be at some point, according to a study in the journal Communication Research. Long distance relationships have been on the rise since 2005 due to the “improving spectrum of technology,” making it a lot easier to communicate and giving a long distance love a better chance for success, according to Wait.com.

“I’ve seen maybe a 100 relationships start from high school and maybe two come out — there is a very low success rate,” Grant said. “Stay as positive as you can towards your relationship because there is no use in worrying when you can’t do anything about the distance.”