Across space and time: long distance relationships

In the span of a lifetime, we meet various people. Some more fleetingly than others. It's not necessarily the length of time we meet them that determines their influence or impression on you. No. Some you meet only be for that brief moment (a glance, a kind gesture in passing) but they've left an indelible mark on us. However, once that moment is done, the connection between you and that person, is over. Can geography and time really separate people? Does that mean that long distance relationships and relationships where one partner travels frequently, are doomed from the outset?
I've experienced several long distance relationship and at their demise, I always wonder what went wrong. I never really considered geography to be an issue. Not a serious one. Wasn't there emails, chats, instant messaging, texting, VoIP and all these other wonderful means of communications? Plus, wasn't travel more accessible and more affordable? If I didn't want to drive, I could take the train or fly, or if feeling really indulgent, hire a driver. Besides, didn't John Donne write several centuries ago something to the effect that absence makes the heart grow fonder? (see A Valediction Forbidding Mourning) I recall each visit to my lover, how excited I felt. Because time was so little and thus so precious, we rarely fought. Time was spent drinking each other in and enjoying one's company and compressing all those activities lovers usually do in the span of a week into a weekend. Came Sunday evening, I already missed him. I wanted time to rewind back a bit so that we had a little more time to spend together. However, I didn't miss him terribly Monday thru Friday. My own little bubble of world amused me enough and our daily communication sufficiently satisfied me.
Not in the last relationship. Between me and him there was over 400 miles. There might as well as been an ocean -oh wait, I've tried those long distance relationship as well. In any event, J and I had an established ritual. Even if we were in the same time zone (being in different one complicates matters as I've learned from experience), I woke up each morning to a wonderfully written email. I would reply back during the day. And we'd exchange maybe a few emails throughout the day. There would be the occasional phone call. If this was the honeymoon phase of the relationship, I was definitely falling and falling hard for J. I went and visited him as well. Each visit was sublime. It didn't matter what we were doing, I was enjoying his company so much. At the end of each visit, I felt a twinge in my heart, a deeper yearning. I didn't want to go. I wanted to stay. I wanted to be with him and do those things that couples do on a weekday, like a a spontaneous dinner, a weekday evening visit to a museum exhibit, furniture shopping, going for a run in the morning, ... but in the end, the yearning didn't suffice. Then the relationship floundered and came to an end.
I don't know the wise man who said that time heals all wounds. How much time? Some people claim that the formula is half the time you were together. Others say, one week for each month you were together. Some even go as far as the same amount of time you've been together and that can be a LONG time!
Out of sight, out of mind, right?
One of the benefits of the long distance relationship (ldr), is that you don't live in the same city. By virtue of that, there is no potential of awkward run-ins. You each have your support system, that is if your lives have not meshed completely, and you haven't shared common friends. The difficult part are memory markers. Over the course of the relationship, the shared memories have to be slowly deleted and as much as I would love to believe that there's a Lacuna clinic to erase them, only time can do it. As can space/distance. So I'm trying to forget everytime I cook pasta that J's favourite food is Italian, or when I go get sushi, that he also likes Japanese, or when I bake that that he likes Bavarian pies. Or whenever I plan trips, I try not to think in terms of places we wanted to go together. One by one, I'm letting go of the past memories, and the future plans. But I think whether long-distance or local, the only and true way to get over someone, is to find someone else you care about more.