Ebbing, flowing, moving, growing.
I love friendships. I love talking about friendships, and reading about friendships, and dissecting friendships. I love being a part of them and starting new ones. However, inevitably it seems, there comes a point where either I or my friend must leave and move. Sometimes this is due to the nature of our friendship – always knowing that we’d be in the same spaces for the short-term before then having to move apart again. Other times, this seems more of a surprise – maybe down to my impulsive urge to keep trying to move to Italy, or they might find a job, or move out, or move in with family. Preferably, this is always somewhere inconveniently far away. And thus, we enter the territory of long-distance friendships.
In my time, I’ve gathered an array of long-distance friendships around me with varying styles and success rates. You’d hope at this point I’d perfected them, but I think from what I’ve learnt, there’s never any guarantee of how these friendships move forward. On some level, each friendship is as unique as the people in it, evolving and moving in different ways depending on their character and personality just as much as mine. Sometimes, no matter my determination, there comes a point where I have to admit the friendship has drifted (I like to think not irreparably so, but it possibly would take quite a bit of work to get it back on track). Yet, there are some key things I feel I’ve become more comfortable with that help me manage long-distance friendships.
First of all, and probably most obviously, friendships change shape when they’re drawn apart. How you act and arrange your life around your friend is different when they’re in the local vicinity, compared to a 2-hour + train journey away. You’re not going to hang out every week and tell each other every little bit of your life. There are things you’ll miss, and they’ll forget to tell you and you’ll forget to tell them. New people will enter their lives and yours, who become your weekly go-to’s and hear the things you used to talk to them about.
Instead, it’s up to you to decide what this stage of your friendship looks like now. For some friends, I still call them monthly and give them the highlights of what’s been going on, keeping tabs on their lives and what they look like now. Others are less reliable communicators (and equally, I can be too), so instead we revert to intense days of voice notes sharing updates and existential thoughts on life before resuming radio silence for the next couple of months. I have some friends that messaging is even rarer, the only way to keep in touch is to physically visit each other or meet up somewhere halfway. It’s only in person we can resume from where we last left off, preferably in the company of a decent slice of brownie or a suitable brunch offering. There are the few where I do still seem to have a pretty steady flow of messages, however, these aren’t the life updates of mundane life – usually, they focus on shared hobbies, asking what books have most recently been read, what they think of an artist we both like or anything new that they’ve cooked. These are different conversations and communication patterns to those you’d be used to in a physically close friendship because distance doesn’t afford the same luxury.
With this, it’s worth noting there’s an added level of effort required for long-distance friendships. You’re not going to run into your friend as often or be able to embark on half-made plans. Meeting up requires forward thinking, looking at diaries and often the cost of transport to get there. If you’re putting that initial effort in, you then want to know what you’re going to be doing, the additional costs there to prepare for, how long will you be together, and other logistical information that you can more often wing when you’re local. Even outside of in-person meet-ups, effort has to be made to continue replying to messages and sharing your life with someone, explaining the important things and why they’re important. As you grow and change as people apart, you have to decide to bring your friends along with you – they can’t see or intuit how live events shape you so well from afar, so it’s up to you to fill them in.
The hardest part for me is recognising that some friendships won’t survive the transition to long-distance, or even if they do, they may have an expiry date. If you’re unwilling to see the shape of your friendship morph or to put in the required energy, it’s easy for bitterness or anger to slip in. There’s not the in-person reassurance you’re used to, the affirmation of your place in their life, especially when you’re both working out what that is now. It’s far easier for miscommunication to arise – who hasn’t misread the tone of a text, reading seething passive aggression between the lines, where none was intended. Your messages can also be read in the same way, and if neither party is brave enough to go back to the source and ask for their true intention, this can escalate and get out of hand. Depending on your style, this could lead to an explosive falling out, far worse than many romantic break-ups. Or, the friendship could quietly fall limply over the finish line of its existence. They stop prioritising your phone calls, and you stop answering their texts with your life updates. Eventually, your last message was 5 years ago and it feels weird to call them your friend anymore.
I think there must be something hardwired into humans to dislike endings. Particularly with relationships, we interpret the end as a failure on the part of those involved. Friendships can feel the same. If they end, were you really ever that close? Did they really mean as much as you claim they do? But long-distance friendships can often be an exercise in letting go and acknowledging good things don’t always last forever. That doesn’t make them any less good. For me, Nietzsche (I know, who thinks of Nietzsche as someone to get friendship advice from) captures the heart of this joy and sadness tangled in long-distance friendships, acknowledging the end may be coming, but embracing the present moments we have together.
“We were friends and have become estranged. But this was right, and we do not want to conceal and obscure it from ourselvves as if we had reason to feel ashamed. We are two ships each of which has its own goal and course; our paths may cross and we may celebrate a feast together, as we did – and then the good ships rested so quietly in one harbour and one sunshine that it may have looked as if they had reached their goal and as if they had one goal. But then the almighty force of our tasks drove us apart again into different seas and sunny zones, and perhaps we shall never see each other again; perhaps we shall meet again but fail to recognize each other: our exposure to different seas and suns has changed us. That we have to become estranged is the law above us; by the same token we should also become more venerable for each other – and the memory of our former friendship more sacred. There is probably a tremendous but invisible stellar orbit in which our different ways and goals may be included as small parts of this path: let us rise up to this thought. But our life is too short and our power of vision too small for us to be more than friends in the sense of this sublime possibility. – Let us then believe in our star friendship even if we should be compelled to be earth enemies.”
I dedicate this to my long-distance friends, my star friends. I love our celebrations when we rest in the same harbour – the holidays together, the brunches, the catch-ups, the karaoke, the book swaps, the dinners, the being with you. For those who have persevered with me (particularly through my impulsive urges to move to Italy), thank you for your energy and effort and for keeping this friendship alive and kicking. For those who have sailed onward to different shores, I hope you’re well, I think of you often and if our orbits ever synchronise again, I’ll be glad to see you again. Part of me wishes I didn’t have long-distance friendships, instead that we all live around the corner from each other. But until we can all choose to move into the same nursing home, I’ll enjoy the friendship we have at this moment.
If you liked this post, you may also enjoy my thoughts on women (yay!) or songs about friendships ❤
Rebekah's Ramblings 