Tech offers shortcut to long-distance romance
Hugs, lamps and wearables can help
LOS ANGELES – When your love is hours, miles or oceans away, what can close the distance and make you feel like you’re right next to each other?
How about a pillow that makes you feel a heartbeat away, a lamp you can touch that will light up wherever your long-distance love is or even a T-shirt that will send your hugs. Yes, these are actual products.
As with everything it touches, technology has redefined the modern relationship, specifically the long-distance relationship, allowing love birds to always stay connected across the miles.
“It is a fundamental human need to need to feel loved,” said relationship and technology expert Michelle Drouin. “This is just one more medium by which people can convey the love and affection they have for other people in a way that humans really value.”
If you’ve been in a long-distance romance, you’re likely among the 1 in 4 internet users who has used tech to maintain the relationship. And even though nothing can really replicate the true feeling of being with someone you love, tech keeps on trying.
Drouin notes it is important for partners to communicate their boundaries when it comes to technology and to find the product that best fits their needs.
Here’s a look at some of the options either on the market or in the works – the PG version. (This is a family publication, after all.)
Apps about you
We’ll start simply with the apps before we get into, well, the more out-there innovations.
There are a number of apps available
to smartphone users that help long-distance couples stay updated on each other’s lives since they can’t be there in person. Apps such as Between or Without provide a space for couples to send pictures and messages to each other, keep each other in the loop with dual-calendars and even provide weather information about the city their significant other is located. These apps are customizable to each couple, so it feels like a space just for the two of them.
In long-distance relationships, sometimes what you miss the most are the simple things, like watching a movie together. Rabb.it lets you watch movies, TV and YouTube videos together and message each other about it on their app — just about as close as it can get to watching TV in the same room when you’re hundreds of miles apart.
Wearables to feel connected
While phone apps and websites can help you stay connected, wearable technology can help you actually connected. Touch can mean so much in a relationship. So, with that in mind, bracelets you and your partner wear can let you physically feel when you’re thinking of each other.
Bond Touch bracelets ($98 a pair) use haptic technology, which offers tactile feedback as in Apple Watches, to vibrate and light up with a personalized color when one of you taps on the bracelet twice. In the Bond Touch app, you can see “touch conversation” history, when your partner’s battery is low and where they are.
Hey Bracelet ($115 a pair) uses technology to mimic the oh-so-romantic feeling of someone squeezing your wrist. The app is similar to Bond Touch in that it allows you to send your location and scroll through your contact history.
The creators of Hey Bracelet also have a tile called Hey Touch that attaches to clothes, accessories, keys and more, and mimics 200 touch sensations you can transmit over distance. Its website also says there’s more to come.
On the pricier end, HB Rings ($595 each) function similarly to the distance bracelets by allowing you to feel your significant other’s heartbeat by tapping a ring. It sends real-time heartbeats and saves them. You can also opt into a “surprise me” function prompting the ring to randomly select a time to send a realtime heartbeat.
This next device takes pillow talk to another level. It’s called Pillow Talk (approximately $172), and it combines the long-distance heartbeat monitors with a speaker that goes under your pillows so you can hear each other’s heartbeat when you’re sleeping. You each wear a wristband to bed so Pillow Talk can send real-time heartbeats.
While this could be a cool way to replicate the feeling of sleeping next to your partner, there are some complications with the design. The speaker connects to your phones via a head jack cable, so if you have a current iPhone, better reach for that dongle. And if you’re in different time zones, you could still make it work, though the app also doesn’t have a record feature. You could keep the speaker connected and carry it with you. (Just note that a pulse spike while racing for a train or during a workout could inadvertently mess with your partner’s restful sleep.)
So does hearing and feeling your loved one’s particular internal rhythm strengthen your emotional bond? Nope.
Relationship and tech expert Drouin says there’s nothing beneficial to adults. The gesture is largely symbolic.
Let your love light shine
This was probably our favorite of all the products we tried. Friendship Lamps ($150) are a way to show someone you love you are thinking of them.
The premise is simple – when you miss someone, you touch your lamp and the other lamp lights up wherever in the world it is located. You can also change the color of the light to convey a special message.
While initially we wondered what the point of tapping a lamp here to turn it on there could be, we found it’s like a sweet little surprise every time it lights up.
Multiple companies make these lamps, and they have become mainstream enough that there are even options on Amazon to choose from.
Sometimes, you just need a hug
One product called the Hug Shirt claims to re-create the sensation of receiving a hug with warmth and heartbeat sensors. To send a hug, you hug yourself while wearing a Hug Shirt, and the sensors record the strength, duration and location of the hug to your smartphone app. Your loved one then feels vibrations and warmth through the sensors in the same locations if they’re wearing their own Hug Shirt. Even if you’re not wearing the shirt and your partner is, you can send them a hug over the app.
The shirt is rechargeable and washable and doesn’t have wires connecting the sensors. It is unclear if they are still being sold.