Commuter Couples - The Rise of the TelePartner
Posted by Steve Munroe | Under Life, Work, travel Sunday Jun 15, 2008
Commuting to work; most of us have done it or know people that do. Traveling mid to long distances to work either each day to a work location or staying over for the week and traveling back home again for the weekend. This has become so prevalent that it’s given rise to a new phenomena - the relationship commute, or the telepartner. This is where you spend the majority of your time at your work location and commute back to your partner at specific times - e.g. the weekend. In the US, apparently more the 3.5 million couples live like this, double the figure taken in 1990.
You would think this would be a tough challenge for most relationships, and yet the figures given by the Center for the Study of Long Distance Relationships (and who knew that existed!) show that such couples are no more likely to break up than couples who spend the majority of their time living together. Indeed, such couples are likely to be no less satisfied in their relationships or more likely to cheat.
The rise in commuter couples has arisen though several factors: the increase in cheap air travel, the rising cost of living and the need for both partners to maintain a career, the rise of women in the workforce and the likelihood of them having their own career goals, and the cheapness and ubiquity of communication channels that enable couples to maintain contact despite large distances.
The increase in the numbers of such relationships provide many new marketing opportunities that have yet to be tapped by service companies. For example financial planning, communications, travel and special event planning. All of these could be tailored to meet the needs of commuter couples and yet very little is on offer at this time.
If you find yourself being a part of this new phenomenon, here are five simple suggestions that can help you stay in touch and keep the embers burning until you find the time to get back home and re-light the fire…
- There are many free, or cheap, VOIP services that will allow you to talk cheaply to your partner wherever you are in the world, such as Skype and Vonage.
- Setting up a unique twitter account where you only follow your partner can replace SMS text messaging. You can also send ‘twits’ via your cell phone for times when you are not near a network connection.
- Free chat tools such as MSN messenger, AIM can get you talking wherever each of you may be. Video chat is also available on some of these.
- Grand central will enable you to have any calls forwarded to one unique phone number, allowing you to be contacted easily wherever you are in the world.
- Virtual assistants from companies such as Ask Sunday or DoMyStuff can help you arrange gift purchasing and delivery in your partner’s local region to help save money arranging it yourself from distance.
Hi Steve,
I love the advent of the commuter couple. My girlfriend and I commute to LA all the time. We actively do it to play our part in saving the environment. She works in Century City and Bloomingdales and I work in Westwood at my startup company - Future Delivery. Great post, I’ll definitely forward it to her so she can read it.
Since we’re both members of BC, I want to invite you to my FD Career private beta:
http://FDcareer.com
FD Career is a website where you can research companies and contribute by adding your comments about companies. This is a very early private beta, so you’ll most likely encounter a lot of bugs. Throughout the summer, we’ll be releasing more features like the FD RPG and FD Answers.
Would love it if you tried it out, added your contributions, and gave me your feedback.
Thanks Steve! Chat with you soon.
- Jun