Maintaining LATT: Emotional Dynamics and Digital Technology

This chapter delves into a critical understanding of maintaining connections across distance by examining the participants’ experiences concentrating on their emotions, affects, and digital technology. It explores digital emotion through Simondon’s theory of individual and collective individuation, and the LATT couples’ emotional reflexivity (Holmes, 2014) based on self-expressed relationship maintenance. The chapter highlights how high emotional reflexivity points to the commonality of sharing mundane life routines and special events as well as planned exchanges in different time zones. At moderate levels, problematic sides of technology, such as missing the physical touch and spontaneity, and at low levels, the partner’s personality and poor digital connectivity are the focal points. The chapter emphasises digital technology’s enriching and problematic sides, entailing a more multi-dimensional approach for relationship maintenance than a unidimensional digital technology focus, along with interconnections between digital connections and physical mobility.