Long distance friendships: how do you stay in touch?

These day, a lot of women I know have a best friend...one that lives far away. Like, in other continents far away. And yet they remain close.

So how do you stay in touch, connected, when there’s a five hour time difference between you? When you’ve just hit your REM cycle, but she's about to start her work day?

Well, the answer to this one is twofold, in my opinion:

Scheduling and commitment.

Scheduling is easy; because if you live in different cities/countries, you WILL have to plan on the times/dates to chat. There’s just no getting around that.

Commitment is a little more challenging.

There’s folks out there who don’t believe friendship (or marriages) need any work. It should all “magically take care of itself.” Because if it’s “this much effort, then it wasn’t meant to be.”

I don’t know where that mindset comes from, but it’s garbage. I have never had one single friendship that didn’t involve work and commitment. And if either of those elements weren’t there, well, the friendship sure didn’t last. I’ll tell you this: I’m no longer friends with anyone from college. Not even my roommates.

In 2023 I travelled to Italy. In my tour, I met a woman, M., and her mom. We hit it off. We did a lot of stuff together. We had serious fun while drinking wine.

And on our last day, we hugged and I told her: “you don’t think we’re going to stop being friends just because we’re going home, do you?” And so, enter WhatsApp.I’ve seen photos of her pregnant, her beautiful baby growing, and heard about the terrible storms that ripped through her city. We don’t chat every day. But she’s there in my Instagram and Facebook feeds. Often. And we message privately.

But the important thing is that we both make an effort.

Friendships don’t survive just because you wish it. You need to put the work into it.

If you’ve met someone that’s really become important to you, I encourage you to make the effort to stay in touch. And talk about it. Because it always takes two to make it work.