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Continuous Partial Attention
ubercombatwombat writes "While answering my softphone and checking my mail simultaneously I ran across the following article by Steven Levy. In it he writes about a speaker named Linda Stone and something she called "Continuous Partial Attention." I finally had a phrase for the reason I turn off wi-fi, asked people to turn off their cell phones and put away their crackberrys when I am speaking to a group. I suffer from this too. Starting today I am going to do something about it, brb."
Whenever I and my girlfriend are talking in person we get along amazingly - we discuss interesting things, and find each other to be amusing and fun. But when I try to talk to her online or on the phone, it's impossible.
It sounds like your girlfriend doesn't consider non-face-to-face meetings as "real". If you're not there, you don't exist. There's nothing inherently wrong with this, lots of people are that way. But if you either can't or won't accept this part of her personality, and she's unwilling or unable to change it, you guys should probably just go your separate ways sooner rather than later. Less heartbreak that way, and maybe you can still be friends (and by "friends", I mean "fuck buddies").
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.