How to Maintain Long-Distance Friendships

“There are friendships imprinted in our hearts that will never be diminished by time and distance.” —Dodinsky

For those who know my friendship with my two best friends, you’d know that we are very close knit.

Even with Sarah living 1,500 miles away, we’re still the best of friends.

A lot of people have asked me within this last year if I’m still close with Sarah even though she’s half a nation away.

After hearing my response, people were actually surprised that we hadn’t lost touch and are still best friends.

The fact that people told me that they needed to call up their own friends more often made me sad.

Today, I wanted to talk to you about how to maintain long-distance friendships.

For me, I’m the kind of person who would rather have a handful or two of great friends than a lot of friends. Like fashion, friendships are all about quality over quantity.

When I found out Sarah was moving to the New England area for her career almost two years ago, I’ll admit that I was sad at first. However, I knew in my heart that our friendship would be more than fine. I knew that we’d both figure out how to make our long-distance friendship work.

If you want to maintain a long-distance friendship or revive one, here’s what we did:

TALK ABOUT IT.

Before Sarah left, she, Rachel and I sat down together and hashed out all of our feelings. We talked about how each of us felt. We also shared our individual dreams and where we wanted to go in life.

This wasn’t a one-time conversation either. We talked about long-distance friendship a lot. Maybe it was to mentally prepare ourselves. Realistically, we wanted to be very upfront about our feelings and to know each other’s goals.

BE INTENTIONAL.

When we sat down to talk about how we felt, we were very intentional to voice what we wanted to happen in our friendship. We all agreed that we would never let distance diminish our friendship. Moreover, we agreed that we would not stop talking to each other just because we have different schedules.

Even with living in different time zones, we came up with a game plan to FaceTime each other once a week to chat and catch up. In our game plan, we also planned out the first six months of travels to come and visit each other. Again, being intentional is what has maintained and strengthened our friendship with each other.

STAY CONSISTENT.

I have to admit, it is hard without Sarah physically being here. However, I’ve learned that to maintain long-distance friendships, it takes hard work. And this includes trying to find a way to prioritize relationships with work, travel and your own personal life. Absolutely there are days where one of the three of us can’t make the call, but we make it a point to reschedule it to the next day if it’s possible.

Aside from FaceTiming and seeing each other when Rachel and I fly up or when Sarah flies down, we text each other. A lot. It’s funny because we all share funny jokes, articles and fun experiences that happen to us throughout the week. We do this to keep our friendship in “real-time” as much as possible.

For those of you who have a long-distance friendship and are scared you’ll lose it, don’t worry. Just sit down with each other and talk about it. Be very intentional on how you want to strengthen your relationship with each other and stay consistent! Consistency is key because you’ll come to realize that it’ll seem like you’re not that far apart at all!

If you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment, send me a message! I truly hope this helps if you have a bestie that’s about to move away.