Everything I Know About Friendship
on keeping long-distance friends. part I of a series on friendship
As I stood with Annie, Emma, and Helen waiting for our Flixbuses in Brussels on Thursday at 1 a.m., we delved into the deep conversation topic of friendship. All of us are recent college graduates and have thus had to deal with the geographic diaspora of our closest friends away from our college town. For Annie and I, this has meant leaving our homeland and moving to Germany, where we find ourselves distanced from our loved ones across an ocean.
I asked these girls what their keys to a successful post-college friendship were. “How often do you call or text each other?” “How do you plan for the next time your group reunites?” During that late night heart-to-heart, we discussed what happens when friend groups lose members, how people you became so close to morph into toxic ex-friends, and how to manage realistic expectations for communication.
In my first year post-college, I’ve lived a very different life from most of my friends. I had the amazing opportunity to move abroad and pursue my intellectual interests. It can be amusing to think about how different my life would have been if I had stayed in the U.S. for this first year, working a conventional 9 to 5 job. Sometimes I feel that people can misconstrue the excitement and adventure of my life, which belies the isolation I experience from being on my own in a foreign country.
It’s a universally acknowledged fact that our society is suffering from an epidemic of loneliness. Last year the U.S. Surgeon General announced that 50% of American adults struggle with loneliness. When people struggle with loneliness, their risk of anxiety, depression, heart disease, and stroke goes up by 30%. Their risk of dementia increases by 50%. As human beings, we are intrinsically designed to connect. I’ve always felt that the ability to connect to others, regardless of physical distance or differences, is one of my greatest strengths. In the last year, I’ve had to adjust how I keep these connections, but I think I’ve fared rather well. So I wanted to share some of my greatest learnings.
How I Maintain my Long Distance Friendships:
1. Make a recurring time to connect with another person.
Decide on a recurring time that works for you and your friend(s). It can be one hour each week, every two weeks, or once a month. Add that date to your calendar, make sure it repeats every period you choose, and be flexible. Every time you meet or talk with a friend, end with discussing the next time you’ll reconvene.
The more of a routine you establish with a friend, the less stress it puts on each individual. It also gives you something to look forward to. While living abroad, I set up a recurring time to talk to a friend in the U.S. that fit into my Wednesday lunch break which happened to be when she woke up. I always looked forward to the mid-day catch up as a break in my busy day and she told me that her work days were always more productive after we talked in the morning (for her). Another friend and I called every other Wednesday night. Because we both live on the European continent, the time zones are much more accommodating so we’re able to decompress together after each of our work days.
Even amidst our busy lives, we all have room to schedule a short call. It’s these small moments of connection that make a big difference. There’s one way to stretch time: giving our full attention. I encourage you, during these calls or FaceTimes, to give your entire focus to this person(s). Don’t have another app open in the background or devote your divided attention to other text messages. Be present in conversation, and I guarantee you will get the most out of this dedicated time. You’ll be surprised by how time comes to a standstill.
Alternatives to the weekly FaceTime.
A weekly or monthly text - When I first moved to Germany, I set up a letterloop account to stay in touch with my college friends. Letterloop is a service that creates customized newsletters for your friend group by sending each member the same set of inquisitive questions. You each respond to the list of questions, decide on how regular you want the newsletter to be sent out (we did monthly), and at the end of each month you get to read a customized newsletter that encompasses everyone’s answers sharing tidbits from their lives. I’ll note that it is a paid service and we unfortunately did not acquiesce to paying the monthly subscription fee so it quickly faltered after our free trial. But it is a great concept and you could easily organize something similar through email or text if you so choose to.
2. The power of sending letters
It was only a few decades ago that we did not have the technologies of iMessage and FaceTime at our fingertips. À la Pride & Prejudice, people had to travel by horse and carriage for days to deliver a message. Also taking inspiration from my parents’ days of long distance courtship where they lived on different continents, I was smitten to learn that they mailed letters to each other during this time.
Thus, I have taken to this old-fashioned—some might call anachronistic—practice of mailing postcards to my friends and family. For every city I travel to, I buy two to three postcards. One always gets sent to my sister or parents and the others to a different friend each time. Writing postcards offers me an opportunity to pause and reflect on my trip, connect with people living far away, and practice delayed gratification because you never know when the person will receive it (Shoutout to DHL for always delivering my postcards in an average shipping time of 2 weeks). It’s been a fun way to share my love of traveling with the people back home who get to follow along in my excursions.
I’ve been told that not only do my friends deeply appreciate receiving them, but it also provides them a helpful reminder to check their mailboxes. Plus, people love collecting postcards! According to a 2020 study by the United States Postal Service (USPS), 65% of individuals acknowledged that receiving a handwritten letter boosted their morale. I’ve enjoyed writing postcards so much that I’ve decided to continue it when I move back to the US, to become pen pals with the friends I made in Europe.
As a child, my elementary teachers and I developed a habit of sending each other postcards whenever we went on vacation. Over time, their postcards adorned my walls, giving me inspiration for my future travels. I hope that the next time I see my friends and family in person, I’ll also get to see the postcards they amassed from me, serving as a physical token of nostalgia from this adventurous period of my life.
3. Give them a call. Just do it!
If recurring, scheduled calls aren’t your thing
Calling a friend is just one of many small efforts that help make a long distance friendship flourish. This might be a light task or slightly uncomfortable one depending on the type of person you are. Many young people do not feel comfortable reaching out to strangers, asking for help, and building relationships. Some may be concerned about burdening and inconveniencing others. But these concerns are often mistaken and exaggerated; we build things out to be much worse in our head when we succumb to overthinking.
I’m known among my friends for my spontaneity in calling—I’ve talked to friends at all hours of the day. I also enjoy seeing my phone screen light up at the unexpected call of a friend. The surprise we feel from this reception catalyzes greater appreciation. Research finds that the more surprising a reach-out, the more magnified our appreciation. We deeply underestimate how much friends like hearing from us and when we call friends not because we need something from them but call “just to say hi”, we build more meaningful relationships.
A casual check-in gets lost in our busy schedules today where everything is planned to the last minute in our calendars. What’s the worst thing that could happen? You call and your friend doesn’t pick up. If they see the missed call notification, chances are they’ll call you back or text to arrange a better time. We’re prone to a negativity bias that makes us falsely predict how a friend will respond to our efforts to connect. We rely on a set of assumptions of “Oh they don’t have time to talk” or “They don’t want to hear from me”. The good news is that people tend to like us more than we think and hence want to hear from you. Even our busiest friends make time for us if they’re equally invested in the friendship. The more you call a friend, the more comfortable you grow with this repetition, and your exposure to your friends’ lives increases.
the ebb and flow
I’m reminded of this study I once read that explained how maintaining long-distance friendships was looking at the times when you don't talk as flexible, not fragile. Friendship can ebb and flow. If we have an ebb, let's not assume the friendship is over and never re-engage, but instead, assume that this is part of the life story of the friendship. There's going to be moments where we're spread apart, and then there's going to be moments where we come back together again. As Dolly Alderton writes in Everything I Know About Love, “Let your friends abandon you [for a relationship] once. The good ones will always come back.”
Our generation is unique in that we rely on our friends for emotional and physical support more than we have ever before. This doesn’t mean we have to have a ton of friends or stay best friends with every person we’ve ever met. Stay in touch with the friends who you feel excited to talk to each time you call. When it comes to friendships, quality over quantity is always the way.
To my long-distance friends: thanks for picking up my sporadic calls. Thank you for always providing me with a lift in my day. I never feel too far away from you. The love we have for each other has stayed the same, even if the format, tone, and regularity of our friendship has changed. I can’t wait for the next time I see you.
podcast recs:
take the New York Times’s quiz, ‘What’s Your Friendship Style?’
further reading:
Love the rec about postcards :,) I’ve been keeping up a snail mail back and forth with relatives and friends from home ever since moving away for college!! absolutely treasure my postcard collection