Modern love (cont.)

Bruce Hogg who was living in Toronto when his now wife, Jennifer Kerr, was in London, also encountered doubt, critique and prejudice as a result of his relationship. When he headed to Paris to meet Kerr for her birthday, he wanted to bring a package of Laura Secord chocolate bunnies. Unable to find the bunnies in Grand Praire, Alberta where he was traveling on business, he arrived empty handed.

Kerr forgave him, but the customs agent on his return home did not. "This woman pulled me aside and said, 'you've been flying to London every three weeks for the last year, it's a little suspicious," recalls Hogg, who explained that his girlfriend lived there and they had just spent her birthday in the Loire Valley. "Well, what did you get her?" she asked him. When he told her he didn't bring anything, "the interrogation began. It was the first and only time I've ever been stopped in customs."

Communication breakdown within the relationship is also a challenge. Think of the old adage - never go to bed angry. Now imagine trying to make that work when one person is going to bed and the other is in the middle of their day at a competitive investment bank, 10 time zones away. "There is always a difference in the kind of mood you are in," says Papp, "if I am out with friends having a good time, it's his morning and he is being serious about work."

Super-LDR couples often create schedules for daily reports about the mundane as well as periodic powwows on more serious topics. "When we talked, we tried to put a functional nature to our conversation," says Lazzaro. "We endeavored to raise the caliber and quality of our communication, make every second count."

Text and e-mail messages back and forth keep the day-to-day banter going and connect the couple emotionally. "Sometimes it is those over-the-top romantic one-liners, 'wish I could hold your hand, missing you right now,'" says Campolattaro of her BlackBerry exchanges with Steel.

Kerr and Hogg, on the other hand, used humor to connect. "Being able to make each other laugh is important," says Kerr, who often sent her husband's updates via e-mail and texts about their dogs, Stewart and Sadie - "Pugs have eaten more of coffee table." The pugs in Kerr and Hogg's life played another important role: breaking the ice when they re-united. "One of my fondest memories was just going for a walk with the dogs," says Hogg, "everything seemed instantly normal, it grounded things if we were struggling."

The struggle of reunion is typical. In fact, coming home can be the hardest part. "I use the term 're-entry' because it is kind of dramatic, like an astronaut re-entering the atmosphere," says Margery Marshall president of Prudential Relocation, which helps thousands of people move overseas and back for jobs.

Marshall says that while most people think the outbound part of the journey is the most difficult, she counsels equal preparation for repatriation. "Even if it has been only one or two years, the world has changed," she explains. "You are re-immersing yourself into a cultural bubble that you may have lived in your whole life, but it's new to you again. There has been a huge gap."

Sometimes that gap widens because the minutia of a relationship has been neglected and couples end up idealizing one another - they wouldn't bother with such a complicated situation unless their partner was pretty stupendous. What they find when reunited is that no one is perfect. Bad habits and annoying quirks that were forgotten seem magnified. Hogg complains that between their two pugs and his wife's new diagonal sleeping position, there is no room for him in their bed. Kerr counters that her husband is messier than she remembered ("I thought the pile system was a very effective way of managing your clothes," explains Hogg).

Hogg and Kerr separated twice. Once while they were dating and once after they were married. They have reunited now and added a baby to their family, but looking back, Kerr says that the time apart was easier after they got married. "You don't want to be in that situation," says Kerr, "but at least you know for sure that you are going to be together."

For singles like Steel and Campolattaro who separated after only seven months of dating, the situation can be more complicated. "You are obviously trying to assess whether this is the person you want to marry," explains Steel, "and because you are so far away you wonder if you get an impression... that you have if you were with them every day." But Campolattaro says Steel's commitment to her from such a distance gives her confidence in their relationship. "There is something about being this far away that makes people open up a little bit more," she says.

They say that distance can make the heart grow fonder and according to Dr. Atkins, it can also strengthen a relationship, not only boosting personal growth and career advancement, but also the effectiveness of interpersonal communication. "[These couples] save their relationship energy for being together. They create time and space to focus on each other."

Lazzaro says he thinks that the distance forced he and Papp to communicate even more effectively than people who are together constantly. There are "three things," he says they learned. "First, it has strengthened our communication subset - whether it is through e-mail or telephone or the few hours you have together in an airport. Second is a feeling of trust. You are not a part of their day-to-day lives, I have to trust in what you are doing and saying because I don't have any other form of proof. And thirdly, I think it is very easy for one person to dominate a relationship. In [Raya] defining her own experience, it brought us to a new level of individuality." And finally, Lazzaro says, and perhaps most importantly, "we have improved our ability to work as a team, which is critical."

The good news for these globetrotters of love, is that while local "experts" - friends and family - will tell you long-distance relationships never work, research done by the Center for the Study of Long Distance relationships has shown that's not the case. "The data so far suggests that long-distance relationships do seem to work," says Dr. Guldner, "and all of the studies so far that have tried to look at demographic variables, show they don't make much difference - so how frequently you see each other, how often you call, how far apart you live - don't seem to have much impact."

Relationships always require compromise, but some would argue that what these type A folks are doing is ridiculous. But it doesn't take an MBA to crunch the numbers on divorce these days, and maybe, just maybe, by pursuing love and professional ambition, these future CEOs are managing their way to more effective communication, efficient quality time and superior romantic relationships.

"They know all the obstacles in marriage, they know they have to be whole people, and they are giving each other the opportunity to fulfill their dreams," says Lazarro's mom Carolyn Land. "I think that has made it work." 

1 2