Keeping up with long distance friends
I spent the last week and a half in North Carolina, and while there, I managed to see a friend I have known since college (we were in each other’s weddings) and another longtime friend from my Charlottesville days. Then yesterday, I had lunch with a friend that I met on my first day of sixth grade. The last ten days were a bit of an exception, but it hit me how special it is to have people who have known me through many different phases still regularly present in my life.
I listened to a podcast recently where a speaker on friendship claimed that it takes about 200 hours together for two people to form a close friendship. Two hundred hours! That means even if you see someone weekly for an hour, it would take nearly four years to become close. That actually makes sense, though. As children, we more easily formed friendships because we were in school with our peers for eight hours every day. This also explains why many people develop friendships with coworkers: proximity and consistency.
For adults who move somewhat often, it can require less effort and be more fulfilling to maintain a long-distance friendship than to start from scratch. The investment and history is already there. Instead of working up to 200 hours with a new person, you can continue to invest in the relationships already established.
That said, I am not anti-new friends. But I do love pouring into longtime friendships, many of which are long distance. In today’s world, there are a number of ways to keep in touch, and I have found that certain methods work better for certain friendships. Here are some of the strategies I use to nurture those friendship, and I will note that I do not use all of them with every friend.
1. Special trips
I have a group of college friends that takes an annual trip. We are not great at staying in touch throughout the year, but we carve out one weekend to talk nonstop, eat good food, swap massages, and go for long walks. We have kept this rhythm for about 14 years except for a few Covid disruptions. I think one of the reasons we have remained so consistent is because we designated a particular weekend for our gathering (MLK weekend). When we messed with the weekend, we became less consistent. Usually we will take turns hosting each other(although that has become more complicated as we have had children), but this next time we may try to identify a halfway point.
2. FaceTime chats
The pandemic introduced my husband Dan and me to the concept of a FaceTime hangout, and we have kept the practice. We will connect with a few couples who live far away, and we each have a friend that we will regularly chat with every few weeks. FaceTime feels more personal than the phone, and especially when long distance, it is nice to see small slices of each other’s environments. Plus, FaceTime means no babysitters needed for kids! We schedule the chats for after bedtimes.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Emily Rowell Brown to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.