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Last Sunday, I spent a lazy afternoon with my boyfriend. We chatted while I made brunch, discussed the books we were reading, laughed at some cat pictures and then settled down with dinner, before bidding each other good night.

We did all of this despite living more than 3,000 miles apart, thanks to smartphone applications and services that helped to collapse time and space. Video chat apps like Google Hangouts, FaceTime and Skype, of course, already make it possible to see and talk to one another in real time. But those formats can be awkward and require both parties to coordinate a time to talk and find someplace quiet with a decent Internet connection — a challenge with busy schedules in different time zones.

I prefer to use applications that already figure into my daily routine, like Google’s instant-messaging application, Gchat, as well as Facebook Messenger, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat. This way, we can talk about travel plans while I’m waiting for the train or talk about what he’s making for dinner while I’m at work.

I’ve found that all of my conversational habits have matured beyond the static phone dates of yore. We are now in constant and continuous communication with our friends, co-workers and family over the course of a day. These interactions can help us feel physically close, even if they happen through a screen.

And because this kind of communication is less formal than a phone call or an email, it feels more like the kind of casual conversation you might have over a meal or while watching television together. These conversations can also be infused with a lot more fun than a regular text message, because they often include cutesy features that let you add digital doodles to video messages, or send virtual kisses or cartoon characters.

The downside is that it can be hard to juggle all the various ways to communicate. But a modern kind of application, including one that we were experimenting with on that lazy Sunday, combines all those interactions — and is designed with couples in mind. This focus on couples is relatively new. The online and mobile dating industry has built many tools and services for single people who are looking for romantic partners and new friends. They’ve evolved from websites like Match.com and OKCupid to mobile apps like Tinder that let people swipe through potential dates and select the ones that pique their interest.

But in recent months, several entrepreneurs have been shifting their attention to people after they meet a mate.

“Tech entrepreneurs, long obsessed with making apps to help you find a relationship, have now begun trying to solve the problem of staying happy in one,” wrote Ann Friedman on The Cut, a blog of New York magazine. Ms. Friedman points to apps like Avocado, Couple and Between as smartphone apps that “keep you close with your partner through the power of a smartphone alone.”

The application that my boyfriend and I were using, called You & Me, is scheduled for public release in early May. It was created by the founders of the online dating site HowAboutWe, which initially built its business around people proposing dates — as in, “How about we go to a trivia night? — as a means for finding matches. The original HowAboutWe dating service was started in 2010 and has attracted two million users to date.

But it had a business-model problem, said Aaron Schildkrout, one of the founders of HowAboutWe. The site lost users — and potential customers — once they were in a relationship. “The couples market is huge,” he said. He and his business partner were getting feedback from “couples who had met on the service but couldn’t use it anymore” and decided to build an application “to facilitate communication and interaction.”

The new You & Me application lets two people send photographs and voice messages and play a selfie-exchanging game called “Halfsie.”

I tested an early version for a few weeks. When I described it to others, they often furrowed their brows and asked me whether people really needed yet another application to talk to people they are closest to.

Sherry Turkle, the author of “Alone Together,” says she believes that using an application in place of real-world, face-to-face interactions is having a detrimental effect on how we prioritize offline communication and, potentially, on our ability to interact even when we aren’t relying on technology as a mediator.

“We’ve given ourselves something so gratifying that we can forget other ways we can communicate,” she said. “What starts out being better than nothing becomes better than anything.”

Ms. Turkle, who is researching the impact of technology on communication, said technology-saturated types could “forget what a face-to-face interaction can do.” She says she is not opposed to messaging applications, but she cautions that their most frequent users should be aware of the potential impact.

In my experience, however, I’ve found the opposite to be true, especially as more and more of my daily interactions with friends, colleagues and family happen through a screen. If anything, the pervasiveness of technology in my life has heightened my desire for actual one-on-one meetings.

Anyone who spends much time online and on a smartphone knows that it’s no substitute for the real thing — it’s just an appetizer that can delight and satisfy until the main course arrives. But that satisfaction is real.Although I am using a vast array of apps to deal with a real challenge — trying to date someone who lives on a different continent — they still hold their appeal when that distance is erased. Even when we’re both in the same city for an extended time, we still use them, albeit to a lesser degree and not to the detriment of spending actual time together.

In many cases, adding the Internet to the mix can strengthen a relationship over all, because online interactions have their own kind of entertaining rapport that can coexist with their offline counterparts.

In her blog post, Ms. Friedman pointed to a February study from the Pew Research Center’s Internet Research project that surveyed 2,252 adults about their digital habits in relationships. Seventy-four percent of the couples surveyed reported that the Internet had had a positive impact on their relationship. In addition, 41 percent of 18-to-29-year-olds in serious relationships said they felt closer to their partner because of online or text-message conversations.

Mr. Schildkrout, at You & Me, hopes to appeal to people who want to build their relationships through the screen as well as beyond it. Although the couples app will be free, he says, the company may eventually add features that let their users ask each other out on prepackaged evenings or events sold through the application. “At the end of the day,” Mr. Schildkrout said, “technology is where some of the most beautiful interactions happen and deepen.”

The jury is still out on whether You & Me will replace the swath of services we already use, but for what it’s worth, I think that Mr. Schildkrout is right. I’ve had some of my most emotionally intimate and honest conversations with friends and romantic partners on mobile devices. And while virtual chats and hugs will never be the same as their real-world counterparts, they can come awfully close in a pinch.