Lighter & Brighter Series 05: Your Tips for Long-Distance Friendships

This essay originally appeared in the Monday morning newsletter on 10/25/21.

At the end of last month, I wrote about long-distance friendships and asked you for your best tips for staying close with friends who live far away as part of our Lighter & Brighter series (If you are new around here – welcome! – the L&B series is like a monthly book club discussion… but instead of books we focus on small everyday shifts that makes things easier and more enjoyable. Read past ones here!).

Wow, I received so many great suggestions and tips! Thank you to all who shared!! I think all the great submissions below signal just how essential friendships are. Many times romantic, familial, professional relationships get the spotlight (because, of course, they are important too), but I hope after reading the below, you take away a new idea or tip for staying connected with friends who bring meaning and joy into your life. I know many of the ideas below resonated with me and I can’t wait to start incorporating them to stay better connected to my friends, regardless if they live close or far. My biggest takeaway from the below? A little bit of intention can go a long way 🙂 

Read on for more!

Lighter & Brighter Series 05: Tips for Maintaining Long-Distance Friendships 

• Traditions are key! My friends and I do a yearly girls trip together (nothing crazy, usually to the same spot!) in November. And, we always do a Secret Santa gift exchange during the holidays.
• My way of keeping long distance friendships is to plan trips at least twice a year to see each other even if it’s just for a weekend! We always put the next trip on our calendars when we are together.
• I’ve been going away on a “Girls Weekend” with my five best friends from kindergarten for almost 30 years! It is a weekend we all look forward to all year long and we always make sure to have a “souvenir” or a “memento” to remember the occasion. Those small trinkets are some of my most prized possessions because they help instantly remember memories about our time together.
• Best tips for maintaining long-distance friendships for my friends and me include zoom wine nights (thanks to quarantine, but my group has kept it up!), signing up for leagues together (like fantasy football), trips, and group texts/Snapchat groups. Someone is always updating us on their day! 
• A text group chat can go such a long way to keeping you connected to your long-distance friends and even bring you closer together. 
• When you see or think of something specific to your LDF (long-distance friend), send them a text or give them a call explaining the funny/sentimental/etc. thing that made you think of them. It’s a more personalized way to say, “I’m thinking of you” than a generic “hey how are you” text or, “let’s find time to catch-up” phone call scheduling. You’ll bring an unexpected smile to their face from miles away!
• Send random cards in the mail and schedule phone calls. Yes, while it sounds awful to need to actually schedule time to catch up with a friend, I’ve found it’s so much better than the constant phone tag that happens, and it gives me something to look forward to!
• I really like snap chat because I see pics of what my extended family is doing and I know who is out of town, what they are eating (lots of food snaps) and baking, pics of pets, exercise, books people are reading, evening after-work activities, etc. It’s so quick and easy!
• One of my closest friends lives a five-hour drive away so we stay close by sending tunes to one another from when we were in college and from now. She has Sirius radio so she sends screenshots of what she is listening to, and I usually write back a memory from hearing that song or the lyrics I like. It keeps us remembering all the great times we had and sharing new artists.
• Four of my friends from high school (we went to school in Indiana) now live in Indiana, Colorado, Tennessee and Florida. We swear we will retire together in an old folks home OR maybe buy a beach house and live there a la Golden Girls. Until then we have a permanent ongoing group chat about anything and everything…from adult children or husbands that drive us crazy, to menopause, to dealing with grief. And we get together every year, with a change in location each time. We’ve done a cruise, Mackinac Island, my beach house, or even Nashville to help one of our girls celebrate bachelorette shenanigans! I love them <3
• If something makes you think of your friend, text them and tell them!
• Have a long car ride? Call some of the friends you don’t see every day.
• Make sure to remember celebrating the big moments with a card, phone call, flowers, etc.
• My most important tip is when you are in the same city or if you grew up together and are back in your hometown, make a 110% effort to see them. Even if it is just for a short “hello!,” you won’t regret it.
• My friends and I started a shared photo album with the purpose of sharing little snippets of our everyday lives to feel more connected. A friend might upload a picture of her outfit before she goes to dinner so we can see her cute dress, or I might post a picture of my baking project from the weekend or of a pretty sight on my street. It is kind of like sharing with “close friends” on Instagram, but I love that I can scroll back through all the pictures whenever I am missing my friends!

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