For the past two years, I have only seen my boyfriend in person nine times.

Our relationship began online and still thrives virtually today. Most of our quality time consists of texting, hours-long Discord calls and playing video games together. 

This Valentine’s Day, other people I know in relationships will be out on dates in the city, posting romantic getaways on Instagram or cuddling on the couch. 

Just like those other couples, I’ll be with my boyfriend on Valentine’s Day. 

But, unlike those other couples, I’ll be here in Santa Cruz, while he’s in Indiana, 2,300 miles away from me.

The way we met and became friends is the same way that we spend time together now — online. At the start of our friendship, we would hop into a Discord voice channel and listen to music, all the while telling stories about our lives. From past relationship trauma to family issues, we confided in each other about things we had never told anyone else. 

We’d stay up until two or three in the morning (5 and 6 a.m. his time) in each other’s virtual company, only going to sleep when we were too tired to say another word. On one of those late nights, months after we began our friendship, we both realized that we had feelings for each other. 

It’s now been over two years, and since that night, we’ve kept our digital relationship just as close as a relationship in person. 

But as Valentine’s Day comes around, I can’t help but feel insecure. With no red roses or fancy dinners to show for it, outwardly displaying my relationship has been a challenge. With our infrequent visits, I feel like I don’t have enough photo evidence to show that we are a couple even though we have a good relationship.

In an attempt to contextualize my experiences, I had a conversation with Vilashini Cooppan, professor of literature and critical race and ethnic studies, who also teaches a class that explores love, intimacy and sexuality in the modern age. 

I asked her if she thinks it is possible to be just as intimate with someone in a long-distance relationship than in an in-person relationship.

“Absolutely, and in some ways, perhaps even more so … it’s possible to have a very particular kind of closeness that way, in part because you can create a [daily] exchange that is pretty similar to what you might find if you were in the same zone,” Cooppan said. “I’m sure if you added up the number of texts that somebody in a long-distance relationship exchanges with their partner versus somebody who lives in the same town, the actual material numbers of exchanges would be much higher for the distant person. So it’s possible that the fabric of intimacy is maintained in a different way.”

Hearing this from Professor Cooppan was extremely validating. Everything that she said about long-distance relationships resonated with me and how I feel about my connection with my partner.

Although we can’t hold hands every day or cry on each other’s shoulders, we’ve exchanged  thousands of messages and spent countless hours on the phone with each other. Despite the lack of physical proximity we have, we’ve achieved virtual proximity. We can finish each other’s sentences and guess what the other is thinking without saying a word.

I asked Cooppan about how she thinks the digital age has reconstructed relationships today, both in terms of in person and long distance.

“This technology collapses geographic distance, however big it is. It could be from here to Indiana, it could be here to another college on campus, but it collapses at the same time,” she said.

This made me think of our relationship like a wormhole: literally bending space and time to be together.

We still dream about a future when we’ll be able to see each other more often, when we won’t have to bend space and time. But for now, the virtual is enough — our closeness knows no bounds.