There's a distinction being missed here: The research isn't at all about validation of relationships, but rather about working toward validating a theory of how a relationship's split geography might affect communication quality. Similarly, I'm not trying to validate anyone's relationship by posting, but rather noting (with a positive approach) that individuals might unwittingly be creating and experiencing better quality of communication by virtue of the distances in their relationships.
That's not to dismiss the cultural pressures that a lot of people face when pursuing a long-distance relationship. Per the author:
'... this topic is understudied because the public and even many scholars firmly believe that geographic proximity and frequent face-to-face (FtF) contact are necessary for developing mutual understanding, shared meanings, and emotional attachment in romantic relationships ... . LD relationships obviously stand in contrast to these cultural values, and hence are viewed as problematic or atypical relational states. ...
Counter to these intuitions, a limited but growing body of research which has compared LD dating relationships with geographically close (hereafter referred to as GC) ones has consistently found that, on average, the relationship stability, satisfaction, and trust reported by LD couples are equal to or better than those reported by GC couples ... . Importantly, the quality of LD relationships is apparently not driven by the amount of communication involved. Compared to GC couples, LD couples spend less time together FtF and have only an equal amount of mediated communication ... . Distance may shape the communication goals LD couples want to achieve and give rise to corresponding changes in cognition and behavior that tend to stabilize the relationship ... .'
Those cognitive and behavioral changes result in measurable differences in perceptions of stability, satisfaction and trust compared with face-to-face relationships -- running counter to what many participants in long-distance relationships are told. (I didn't particularly have that experience with my friends or family, but I'm certainly aware it occurs.) The increases in perception scores are not to be equated with special; that would be intellectually dishonest.
In fact, no one here used the word special, nor does the scholarly article. 'Special' -- whatever that's meant to imply -- isn't quantifiable; it's subjective. But in defining the terms of the study (e.g., trust) as much as possible and creating a scoring matrix, a subjective concept such as intimacy can be measured with some degree of objectivity. (One of the difficulties posed by social sciences is that hard numbers are difficult to come by; there will always be some degree of bias inherent in humans' inability to completely divorce themselves from cultural creation of connotation in language. The goal is to minimise and report with that bias in mind, which I think the author does well here.)
Back to the author: 'Future research must address the issue and examine how the intimacy process may operate differently across a wider range of LD relationships.' Another acknowledgement that this bit of research does not validate anything or anybody, but rather begs for more research on communication processes and intimacy development.
Further, the research suggests nothing about what happens after an LDR turns into a face-to-face relationship. But I would posit that it's not wildly out of the question that the initial communication structures and approaches built by the LDR would last to some extent once the nature of the relationship changes. Once patterns of interpersonal communication are established, they tend to form the basis for later patterns. (I know I'm asserting that un-cited, but I don't have time to get on JSTOR at the moment to pull up references and their PDFs.)
