Longing across miles, a phone in the room, and a separate discomfort with closeness

Published 2026-04-21 · 8 min read · By LovePinnacle Editorial

On 16 October 1774, Abigail Adams wrote from Braintree to John Adams, and the checked text puts three hundred miles between them. In Familiar Letters of John Adams and His Wife Abigail Adams During the Revolution, edited by Charles Francis Adams and published as Project Gutenberg ebook 34123, two sentences were opened and checked:

"My much loved friend,—I dare not express to you, at three hundred miles' distance, how ardently I long for your return. I have some very miserly wishes, and cannot consent to your spending one hour in town, till, at least, I have had you twelve."

She signs related letters "Portia." These notes do not add any other line from that day. The letter is a record of longing across a stated distance and a stated date. It is not a study of couples now, and it does not test what helps a relationship last when people live apart.

The trial these notes do not contain

These notes do not contain a trial of long-distance couples. There is no headcount of pairs who stayed together, no comparison of visit schedules, and no result that says a video call replaces a room. If you came for a survival manual with success rates, this page will disappoint you on purpose. What it can do is set a real letter next to two findings about technology, and then set both next to a finding about discomfort with closeness that does not depend on miles.

You might still want a rule: call every night, visit every month, share one calendar. Those rules are not in the sources below. Treating them as science would invent a study. You can still choose a rhythm that fits your life. Do not borrow the authority of an experiment this packet does not have. Abigail's "twelve" before "one hour in town" is her wish in a letter. It is not a dose.

Tools that help people stay in touch

The U.S. Surgeon General's 2023 advisory, "Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation," says technology can help people stay in touch, including people with disabilities and people seeking community. Online support groups, the advisory says, can carry information, advice, and emotional support. Digital environments are listed among the settings that inform connection, beside neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces. Social connection itself is defined there as the structure, function, and quality of relationships. Relationships with family, friends, colleagues, and neighbors all count.

Read that as permission to use a tool, not as a grade for your relationship. A message can carry advice. A group can carry emotional support. A call can reach someone who cannot travel. None of those sentences was written as a verdict on couples who live in different cities. They were written about connection in general. If you are far from someone you love, they are the closest on-point lines these notes contain, and they stop at "can help." They do not say the tool is enough, and they do not say it is a substitute for the hour in the room.

The advisory also treats digital life as part of the structure of connection, not as an enemy by definition. A person with a disability may rely on that structure. A person looking for community may find advice and emotional support in an online group that their town does not offer. If your distance is partly a body that cannot make the trip, or a community you cannot find locally, the advisory's help sentence includes you. It still is not a trial of romantic partners separated by cities.

The phone during the hour you share

The other technology finding points the other way, and it is about in-person time, not about the miles in the 1774 letter. When the phone was used often during in-person time with family and friends, distraction rose, the quality of the conversation fell, and people rated the time as less enjoyable. The advisory's suggestions to individuals include a plain version of the same point: minimize distraction, and don't check the phone during meals and important conversations. It also suggests spending time with friends away from social media.

So the class of machine that can carry a message across a country is the class of machine that, in the room, is tied to a cheaper conversation and less enjoyment. These notes do not say you should copy Abigail's arithmetic of twelve hours to one. They do say that when you are physically together, a phone in use is associated with worse conversation and lower enjoyment. If distance makes the together-hours rare, that finding is the one that applies to those hours. It is still not a long-distance trial. It is a finding about phone use while you are actually with people.

One U.S. study cited in the advisory found about double the odds of increased perceived social isolation when social media use ran more than two hours a day, compared with under 30 minutes a day. That comparison is about perceived isolation and time on social media. It is not a finding that a couple who text across cities are in trouble, and it is not a cap you can treat as a prescription. It belongs here as a brake on the idea that more screen contact is always more connection. Staying in touch and feeling less isolated are not the same outcome in this advisory.

You can hold both technology sentences without forcing them into one mood. Use the tool to reach someone. Put the tool down when the person is in the chair. The advisory supports both moves. It does not rank them for a couple with two addresses, because that couple was not the study.

Discomfort with closeness is a different problem

A separate research line is about being uncomfortable when people get close, and it does not mention distance, letters, or phones. In 1987 Cindy Hazan and Phillip Shaver published "Romantic love conceptualized as an attachment process." In their newspaper sample, readers who classed themselves as avoidant checked this description: "I am somewhat uncomfortable being close to others; I find it difficult to trust them completely, difficult to allow myself to depend on them. I am nervous when anyone gets too close, and often, love partners want me to be more intimate than I feel comfortable being." The authors also tie that description to fear of intimacy. They do not tie it to mileage.

That nervousness can show up in the same house. It can show up across an ocean. The miles do not create it in this study, and deleting the miles does not, on this evidence, remove it. If you feel nervous when a partner wants more closeness than you want, the 1987 wording is about that nervousness. If you ache because the person is three hundred miles away and you still want them home before they spend an hour anywhere else, that ache is Abigail's kind of sentence. Mixing the two will send you looking for a flight when the issue is closeness, or looking for an avoidance label when the issue is an empty chair.

The newspaper study has limits the authors name. People opted in, the sample tilted a bit toward more schooling and toward women, and one item crammed several issues into a single choice. None of that is a map of long-distance relationships. It is a reason not to treat a self-description from a 1985 newspaper quiz as a diagnosis of your commute. The quiz ran in the Rocky Mountain News on July 26, 1985, in the Lifestyles section, and readers described their single most important love relationship. That is a different project from a trial of couples living apart.

What you can decide without a fake study

You can tell the truth about which problem you have. Longing across miles is one problem, and these notes illustrate it with a dated letter and a stated distance, not with a cure. Phone use during the hours you share is a second problem, and the advisory ties it to distraction, conversation quality, and enjoyment. Discomfort when someone gets too close is a third problem, worded by people who were not describing a train ride. If you only work on one, you may be polishing the wrong hinge.

A licensed counselor who sees couples can help you sort those three without pretending a research trial of distance already exists. This page is history plus a public advisory plus one attachment paper. It is not care, and it is not a plan that says your relationship will hold. If the talk across the miles keeps turning into pressure and retreat, that pattern is a different study, told in who demands and who withdraws. It still will not turn this page into an experiment on distance.

When you are next in the same room, will the phone stay out of the meal and the conversation, or will it spend the hour you finally have?

Letters and reports behind this

• Abigail Adams to John Adams, Braintree, 16 October 1774, in Familiar Letters of John Adams and His Wife Abigail Adams During the Revolution, edited by Charles Francis Adams, Project Gutenberg ebook 34123. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34123
• Office of the Surgeon General, "Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation," 2023. https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-social-connection-advisory.pdf
• Cindy Hazan and Phillip Shaver, "Romantic love conceptualized as an attachment process," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52(3), 511–524, 1987. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.52.3.511

long distance relationship · LDR · relationship advice · communication · trust

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