A Guide to Falling in Love + Growing a Modern Romance Online
Leveraging technology in relationship to create a fuller life offline
Joel and I met in person a year ago today.
Before that, we met on Twitter. A website that asks you to say what you’re doing. In 140 characters. We have learned how to say a lot in very few characters.
That’s how we met. People ask me all the time how they can meet someone on Twitter. That part’s easy. Be yourself. And learn to say something compelling in 140 characters by a) doing and b) emulating people who do it well.
The falling in, as everyone knows, is the easy part. It’s how we’ve grown the relationship that matters. These are some simple steps we’ve taken to grow, stabilize and have fun with our relationship online in order to make it a richer relationship offline during Human Interaction Time. Whether you’re in a relationship…or wanting one, here’s hoping they help you, too!
Basecamp: Relationship HQ
In many ways, Joel and I run our relationship like a business. That’s not to say it isn’t romantic. We just realize that having a central place to document our goals, plans, wines and restaurants we love and more is a good idea.
For us, it’s Basecamp. Basecamp ($24/mo.) is a tidy place online to keep track of who is doing what, when and with whom. There’s a calendar function and, very important for us, there’s a central place to track todos. Basecamp is a good way to assign responsibilities - to keep up with who is doing what and whether or not it has been done.
This week Joel discovered a way to sync up Basecamp and OmniFocus (Spootnik, if you’re a true nerd).
OmniFocus lives on your computer (and they have an iPhone app, too) and is a good way to track your progress individually.
One of the most important things these technologies allows you to do is have shared goals, responsibilities and plans…but separate lives. It takes both.
Shared But Separate
Joel and I have shared a calendar for about 6 months now. We each had our own Gcalendars (free) associated with our Gmail accounts, and then we set up a joint calendar for shared events. Once a week we go over the details of the week together. We roll over events that we missed.
Most important, we associate a time and date to things so that we get a reminder sent to our phones before it’s time for it to start. Believe it or not, this seemingly small point is a crucial ingredient to the success of our relationship.
Travel
We share our trips through Tripit (free). You email an itinerary to Tripit, it turns it into a shared document. Simple, shared travel. Your loved one will thank you.
Email
Good ol’ email. What new can be said about email?
Recently a friend showed me an email she received from her significant other. It was a careless, hurtful, two-line dagger to the heart. There was no desire for communication in it - the opposite of why we have email. We send emails to communicate, not to hate.
Check the tone of your emails. Sometimes things can get heated…but email is not the place to have a lover’s quarrel.
Use email as a springboard for conversation, to send a friendly love note.
Don’t use email to say things you’re afraid to say in person.
Are your clients important enough to put on the schedule? Your partner should be, too.
Joel and I have three firm dates on the calendar each week.
We meet on Mondays for Monday Morning Makeout Breakfasts. There’s no actual making out. Instead, we go to our favorite breakfast spot and look at our goals for the week ahead.
On Friday, we have Date Nights. We got this idea from Joel’s parents who…despite having (or perhaps because they have) seven children…date weekly. If there’s something to celebrate, that’s when we do it.
Sunday evenings are Family Nights. We go to Joel’s parent’s house for time with the family. We play cards, enjoy birthday cake and watch movies with his family. Simple? Yes. Crucial to the development of our friendship? Absolutely.
And that’s both the good and bad of living some of your relationship online.
I know of couples that have had very passionate relationships on Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites…some even grew websites together and saw them engulfed in flames when it didn’t work out. I don’t advocate 100% transparency in your relationship online. Some things we just don’t want to know. You have to decide what those boundaries are as a couple.
It really is the little things.
I have talked with men whose girlfriends/wives have very intense online relationships. If you are a woman reading this and are very active online, check to see how much you include your significant other. Could you turn up the communication a bit? You have time to talk with people you’ve never met in person — could you take a few minutes once a week to communicate with your significant other publicly? When is the last time you acknowledged their existence? Something to bear in mind…even the shyest person likes to be acknowledged and appreciated for their role in your life.
I have another friend whose husband’s ID comes up, “Lover,” when he calls. Daily reminders keep us in love.
It’s not just the falling in love
It’s not just the falling in love, but the growing the love that matters. We have hard days like anyone else. But we’re both dedicated to growing our relationship - and growing as individuals.
I like to think of what we’re creating as an agile relationship. It will falter and there will be difficult times. The good news is that you can create and use systems, engage community in social networks and harness technologies to work through the difficulties…include and grow with your community online and off.
Here’s to the first year. And to many more.
{Was this interesting to you? Follow us on Twitter - he’s @jlongtine, I’m @gwenbell. We’ll have updates leading up to, during and after our wedding day. And visit our site - http://gwenandjoel.com - for more insights into who we are and what we’re up to.}
2008 started in Chapel Hill, NC. Patrick was in from Japan and we rang in the New Year dancing at Hell, an underground club frequented by the hipster kiddos. The day after Patrick returned to Japan, I flew to Boulder. It was colder in Boulder than Chapel Hill. I bought a proper winter coat that week. And I met Joel on January 2, 2008. That week I went and saw the house that I used to live in - the one that burned down in the middle of the night. There was a funny sign out front.
I went house/apartment hunting. I stayed with a few friends in the first couple weeks of the year. And I got down to work for TechStars.
I might have sang a lot of karaoke during those weeks. Read more…
It has been a travel-filled year. San Francisco three times, Houston twice, lots of fun cities in between. Oh, and I moved to Boulder this year. And on that day met Joel Longtine. In October we got engaged. 2008 was a year of travel. 2008 was a good year.
There’s probably a much shorter title in there somewhere but I can’t find it right now. Just wrapped up Hands on Kirtsy: Houston with people who created an energy that was palpable in the room. Met with wonderful folks. We learned a lot together. I’m in Houston only a few more hours (like, 36 or so) but it’s going to be jam-packed full of fun people and action. Love, love, love this wonderful place. Thanks to everyone who came out + sponsored tonight (MomHouston, Saint Arnold, what what!). Rock.
(In the slideshow you’ll find the other, equally amazing group from Hands on Kirtsy: NYC from just a few short weeks ago. Fantastic, fun. The world shrinks by the moment with social media.)
Patrick got in from Yokohama yesterday. He came bearing gifts from Japanland.
Although all of the gifts were cool (including loads from Muji, perhaps my favorite store on the planet) I was distracted. Like a kid at Christmas, nuts about the wrapping paper, it was an empty bottle that captured my attention.
Japanese design gets it. This bottle? Gorgeous. The tea inside, good for your body. According to the label it has 8 traditional Chinese herbs and 4 natural tea leaves.
The bottle is slim (to fit into your bag), makes good use of white space, shows a stylized photo of what’s inside. Two indentations on either side of the bottle make it easy for gripping. It’s human-friendly.
We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations. -Charles R. Swindoll
She was my mom. And she died sixteen years ago today. So I’m thinking about her today.
Let me tell you about her, what I remember of her.
Her name was Celeste. I’ve always thought her name was so beautiful. Celeste Bell has a certain elegance to it that still ricochets around my head when I speak her name. When I think it.
She was about five foot six as an adult and petite, which earned her the childhood nickname “Itzy.” It stuck. Her childhood friends still thought of her as Itzy until the day she died, probably many days after.
There is so much I can’t remember that I try not to think about. It’s easier to think about her preferences than the sound of her laugh, for instance, which I can’t remember at all.
She loved Cocoa Krispies. She loved Pepsi and the doctors eventually made her give it up. She loved to have her hair brushed, not combed, by one of us.
My mom was a spitfire, a firebrand, a woman with seafoam green-blue eyes that could melt you with a single glance.
I can’t remember her pregnant, but I can remember her picking off the dead skin on a burn I got from spilling tomato soup down my thigh. I screamed, kicked, cried. Hot tears poured down my face as she held me tight in her grip…this is for your own good, she was saying. Something like that.
Who remembers the exact words?
Through the years people have tried to set the record straight about her for me. This is how your mom really was, said one of her former lovers. This was the real Celeste. Even at thirteen, with a forked tongue I’d spit fuck you keep your stories to yourself. I know who she was.
And indeed, I know who she was. I know she could see through walls so we’d better be good. I believed that. Truth about our mothers is we believe what we want to believe. Keep your stories about my mom to yourself, I have mine about her and those strands of memory are all I have left of a woman with a spirit so huge she could swallow the entire world.
She did swallow the entire world. Mom told her mom, my grandmother, to stop turning up the oxygen. My grandmother couldn’t bear the thought, turned the oxygen up a little more as mom slept.
This really happened. Who knows why these things happen.
Green oxygen tanks in the basement taller than I was at the time. Nosebleeds that turned my world upside down. So that even today I sometimes listen to the squall of a passing ambulance and stand still, petrified to imagine the suffering at the other end of that journey.
She died around 5:30 in the morning on November 30th, 1992. The night before I had massaged her upper body while my grandmother massaged her lower half. She was skin and bones. We used unscented lotion that I can still smell.
Bill Clinton had just won the election - mom had a Ross Perot button and, to the best of my memory was a big fan. Although that could be because she thought he had huge ears and a funny voice.
Mom won’t be at my wedding next year in March and I selfishly wish she could be. I selfishly wish she could meet my husband-to-be, see his eyes fill with tears as I talk about her.
It’s a funny thing, death. Meet it once and you always know its presence. You always know its promise. It will come. It won’t be pretty.
What can we do now, today, with this moment? That’s the question I constantly find myself asking. How can I practice like my hair’s on fire not knowing when a diagnosis might come. There’s this hokey Tim McGraw song (and, I just discovered, equally hokey video) about this man who gets diagnosed with something and then he starts really living. I’ve decided I don’t want to wait until the day the x-rays come up positive. Today is good enough for living to the fullest. Now is the right time.
She died just after Thanksgiving, was buried December 3rd, just a few weeks before Christmas. The holidays are a time for celebrating and we mourned. We mourned the only way we knew how. For a woman who fought until she spoke her last five words: Oh God, oh my God.
The holidays may be a time to celebrate life, but for me, they are also a time to remember those who are suffering, dying, have died. Try as I have to cordon off this death, it visits me every year around this time. The days get shorter, the weather turns dark, moody. I think of a woman with seafoam green-blue eyes, reflect on life with her and since. Honor her spirit by breathing deeply, saying a tiny prayer and sending out compassion to you and to all beings, everywhere. May I and all beings be at ease.
All the words and images contained in this website belong to Gwen Bell. If the images belong to someone else, they are credited (and if not, please call me on it).
I take full responsibility for all comments and opinions I share on this site.
