Staying in Touch is Hard To Do

I graduated about 5 months ago. After leaving school my friends became spread all over the country. Some moved back to their homes (spread throughout Florida and the Northeast) while others moved to big cities like New York and Boston. While still, some either stayed here in Tallahassee or moved wherever they got a decent job offer. During this time I’ve discovered that it is tough to stay in touch with friends who live in different cities and even different states. But, I know that if you really want to stay in touch it is possible.

Some people are easy to keep in touch with. If you have an effortless friendship that has you texting and writing on each other’s Facebook walls every day, you probably won’t have to try very hard to keep your friendship strong. I am very lucky to have a good bulk of my friends still living in Florida. That means that we get a few coming up to visit for big football games (Go Noles!) while others I manage to see whenever I visit my family or we take a trip to visit the boyfriend’s family. Some of my best friends live in South Florida where, oh so conveniently, my boyfriend is from.

Thankfully, I do have some friends who are still in Tallahassee, but the amount of time I seem to spend with friends has become extremely slim. In college, you tend to see your good friends almost every day. Chances are you live together or extremely close. You might be in some of the same classes or in the same clubs and organizations. If all else fails you probably hang out every “weekend” (for me in college, that  usually meant from Thursday afternoon to Sunday night). As an adult, or a “real person” as I like to call myself, you probably both have full time jobs or one might be getting their masters full time with a smattering of part time jobs to make some money. As a graduate, I’m lucky if I see most of my friends every other week. It seems like priorities change and your commitments are different. I spend most nights and weekends working out, cleaning, cooking, spending time with my boyfriend and puppy and working on personal projects. I just don’t have time to sit around and hang out with friends for hours and hours on end (although sometimes, I really wish I did).

For those friends that live in different states or you just don’t have the opportunity to visit as often, technology is your friend. A couple of my very best friends live over a thousand miles away. That means that we need more than just a text message or a call to keep our friendship strong. That’s where Skype and Facetime come in. I now understand why people with friends who lived far away used to have such robust pen pal relationships. I try to have at least one “face to face” video message session with my good friends every month. These are usually about an hour long and during that time we talk about anything. Usually there is a lot of what has been going on in our lives since we last spoke and just talking about whatever it is friends talk about. From my experience with long distance friendships, it seems like they don’t work if you don’t put in the time and the effort. And if it’s really a good, strong friendship finding time to keep in touch isn’t too hard. Just remember that you’re probably both busy so don’t feel bad if you can’t spend time catching up more than once a month or if a month passes without your “Skype date.”

As we get older and our friends become spread across the country and even the world it’s important to find ways to keep in touch. Our relationships might not always consist of face to face interactions. But with the help of texting, phone calls and video messaging it is easy to supplement those interactions and keep your relationship going. Great friends are hard to find, don’t let distance keep you apart.

How do you keep in touch with far away friends?