© Ollie Crafoord

A friend of mine likes a guy in a different state. Actually, he's in a different time zone. They met on a dating sit, exchanged a few messages, talked on the phone some, played Scrabble on Facebook a few times, and went on a date. Can it work?

The answer is that it depends. It depends on whether they both want it to work or not. Long distance relationships come with a price. Can you pay it?

Carolyn Janszen has some tips online for making those sorts long distance relationships last. Most of the time it boils down to communication – lots of communication. You need live communication, so you talk on the phone or (better yet) you Skype. But that's just a foundation for other forms of communication – notes and postcards, letters, emails, IM's.

In my opinion, the single bigger key is hope, hope that the distance will eventually be removed. Few people make it through a relationship that is permanently long distance.

• Long-Distance Dating
• Wanted: 1 Million Men Looking for Long Term Relationships
• The Long Distance Online Relationship
• Relationship Based Matching; Love Machines