A still image from artist Xiaowen Zhu's installation Distance Between on display at China Exchange in London's Chinatown.[Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Sean and his girlfriend broke up temporarily — he says social media had a lot to do with it. While they were in regular touch on WeChat, the frustration of watching one another play out their individual lives in photo posts became too much.

"(Social media) is what probably messed things up the first time," Sean says. "Obviously you worry — is she going to go out with someone else? She's having a really nice time and I'm just here in my office facing a computer for 10 hours a day."

"Both of us still use social media, but now we don't post anything. We just feel like it creates too much misunderstanding or miscommunication."

Says Zhu of her long distance relationship: "When we would meet in person it was really weird because he looks different in reality," she says. "It's like when actors never look the same on screen as in person. There is a sort of digital identity and a real-life identity.".

"They (the subjects of the art display) came from different backgrounds, though I was really interested in the similarities in experiences when they were talking about their frustration with technology and the challenge to truly trust someone when you don't even share the same time zone," she says. "You don't know what that person has experienced, it's just based on what he or she tells you."

One common frustration was what she called the "mismatch point" on a computer screen — the impossibility of simultaneously looking at the camera and your partner's eyes. One interviewee disliked it so much she and her boyfriend now just write letters to one another. Those letters, containing the highlights and lowlights of a long stretch of time, contrast with another complaint Zhu heard often — that the ability to talk so often on webcams can make interaction less meaningful.

"We'd Skype all the time and we'd run out of things to talk about," one of Zhu's interviewees said.

In researching her project, Zhu says she learned that while there is no rule or "universal understanding" on how to make long distance work, the ability to endure separation greatly depends on an individual's level of personal happiness:

"If you are happy by yourself and you don't rely on the relationship with the other person to make you happy, then you will be able to make the relationship work."

For Sean, it's about doing it for the right reasons — and about growing up.

"In five years both of us grew up a lot, we think about love in a different way — I don't think about not wanting to lose her, I want her to be happy," he says. "Also — if we broke up again I'd be more OK with it. Last time it was the end of the world — now I know it's not anymore."

To contact the reporter: angus@mail.chinadailyuk.com