The problem for me with Skype is that the likeness is so real it makes me hungrier for the real thing. Yes, there is intimacy &mdash but none of it is physical. I’m not only talking about sex: I mean what happens when two people are in a room together. The middle-of-the-night conversations. A shared glass of water. Sweat on the pillow. Even the arguments are better; one doesn’t feel the need to resolve a disagreement before the other logs out. In physical reality, you can let the unformed thoughts hang in the air &mdash and bodily communication without words can say so much.
Of course, I can’t help but wonder if more people want to be separated, if we prefer being virtually connected to physically cohabiting. There are certain advantages to being in a Skype relationship. Couples don’t have to contend with their different standards of cleanliness when they only meet in cyberspace; they don’t have to fight over who’s going to take out the garbage or who forgot to return the DVD. And while they might not have a warm body to snuggle up to at night, they know they are still there for each other. Virtually.
Skype may not be taking our communication into the future so much as revisiting the past &mdash the Romantic era, when snail mail arrived several times a day. We court, we pine, we imagine our lover beside us.
In another century, John Donne wrote these lines to his wife:
Though I must go, endure not yetSkype encourages us to sustain and possibly deepen our relationships across vast distances. But in learning to be a better Skype lover, perhaps it is best to heed Donne’s advice: it’s healthy to allow enough room for a certain amount of longing. And to have some time to be alone.
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat.
