Assignment #5: Option 1

My boyfriend and I had met in the middle of the fall semester last year at a typical fraternity party. We talked for the rest of the party and he ended up asking me out for lunch. I am not one to give out my number easily so I told him to friend me on Facebook then look it up under my profile. I wanted to see how interested this guy really was. Enough time went by for me to assume that he was not interested until he actually called me for a lunch date. We did end up going out to lunch a few times before winter break.

According to McKenna’s Relationship Facilitation Factors, the fact that we were able to talk for a long time after our legit meeting shows that both of us were able to connect to each other because we shared similar interests (also Wallace’s common ground theory). By telling him to look up my phone number on Facebook, I set him up so I would be able to learn more information about him through his profile prior to our next meeting (McKenna’s “getting the goods” factor).

When we came back to school for the spring semester, I had almost lost complete interest in him because during the five weeks of winter break I only received one text message from him saying “Happy New Years.” He was obviously exhibiting McKenna’s Relationship Facilitation Factor of interactional control by choosing the lean medium of text messaging and controlling that we only interacted once. However, when we were both back on campus he exhibited the opposite interactional control by choosing a richer medium (the telephone) to contact me repeatedly. The increased amount of interaction we were having caused me to become interested in him, once again.

After many months of serious dating in close physical proximity (i.e. both being at Cornell), my boyfriend graduated and went onto graduate school in Florida, thus starting our long-distance relationship. Because of busy summers and the start up of a new school year, both of us again conformed to McKenna’s factor of interactional control. We talked as much as we could in as many mediums as possible for long-distance relationships, such as instant messaging, e-mail and on the phone. We would each choose the medium to interact based on how much time we had available. These mediums allowed for the removal of gating features (McKenna) because we were only interacting with mediated text and voice tone. This allowed me to not have to worry about looking good every time I spoke with him because he could never see me, which can actually be a benefit of long-distance relationships.

Comment 1 and Comment 2