She: You, too. Did you shave?

(When I’m wearing headphones, my lover’s voice comes into my consciousness in stereo. Her soft sound surrounds me. I see her image on my laptop screen. The video allows me to detect certain details in her face that you wouldn’t be able to pick up on the phone. A particular glance denotes a bad day, a poor night’s sleep, something on her mind.)

Me: Yeah.
She: You missed a spot.

There is something old-fashioned and romantic about this new connection. With couples who have just met, there is an undercurrent of lost courting rituals: people are forced to talk and get to know each other without immediately jumping in the sack. Skype also creates an intimacy of focus that’s missing in a café or bar. The Skyper is forced to look at his partner, undistracted (unless he’s busy surfing the Net), and to listen closely to her words; it could be argued that this form of long-distance connection is more intense than face-to-face conversation. Tyee Bridge, a Vancouver writer who used Skype to speak to his partner every day during a month-long separation, concurs: “[Because Skype has] a bit of a delay . . . [it] makes you talk more deliberately, and not respond so quickly to what the other person is saying.” Skype encourages us to be present, to get to know each other, and become close through conversation. As a Skype forum member writes, “Technology doesn’t just speed up information, it speeds up love!”

But accelerated love still presents a problem: as the mind races forward to embrace a lover, the body is left behind. The closer you get on Skype, the more you miss the feel of someone’s skin, their weight beside you in bed. So near, so in your ear, yet so far away. It can be incredibly frustrating. Several months into our physical separation, my girlfriend and I found ourselves joking that we were not having a relationship with each other but with our computers (sometimes I actually kissed my screen and hugged my keyboard).

At other times, I found myself emotionally confused. First, there was the issue of what to talk about. Speaking long distance by phone doesn’t present this problem, because it costs money. So when you’ve run out of things to say, you don’t just breathe into the receiver, you say goodbye and hang up. But because Skype is free, and if my partner is available and so am I, the logic goes, we should be talking . . . and talking . . . Isn’t that what a relationship is about &mdash communication?

Zoe Hart, a mountain guide based in Chamonix, France, who is more on the road than at home, spoke to me about overusing Skype. “Skype makes people think they’re not actually away from their partners,” she said on her way to a climb in Alaska. “People Skype each other every day and think they’re still together. Reality becomes confused. You do not accept that you’re in a long-distance relationship.”

I know what she means. Even when there is nothing to say, I find it difficult to say goodbye.

She: I need to get going.
Me: Now?
She: I have to get ready for work.