How to Stay In Touch With Friends When You Move Away

At some point in life, we all have to make an effort with friendship. The number one best thing about university, is the people you meet. But after three or four years of living in each others pockets, it then becomes incredibly hard to imagine a life where they’re not at your side in under five minutes. If you didn’t go to university, you might move away from your town or city and find yourself in the same situation - or, at the very least, your friends might move away themselves. Either way, we all come to a point where not all of our friends surround us the same way they do at school.

Although I haven’t moved around in the same way some of my friends have, I did move when I was 11 to a completely different part of the country and started at a new school. I then moved to (and back from) Italy when I was 18, and spent 4 months in France where I made friends with people who live hundreds of miles away. Not to mention, of course, university. 

Yet despite my moving about, I have always retained my core friendships. I still have my friend Collette who I met when I was three, there’s a group I’m still friends with from school, and I still have strong friendships with the people I met in Italy and France.

The truth is, we have no excuse in the twenty-first century to not pick up our phones and see how each other are. We can use text, Facebook, Whatsapp. You don’t even need a phone call to retain a friendship these days. So the main way I’ve stayed in touch, is literally keeping in touch with them. If you see they’ve had a shitty week, send them a message. If you read something on Twitter which makes you question how they are, give them a call. Keep in contact in the most literal form and you will be able to retain your friendship.

Very much within the same ball park, is making sure it’s a two-way street. Make sure you’re putting in equal effort, and not expecting your friend to do it all. Equally, if you feel like you’re the only one putting in the effort - maybe it’s time to reevaluate. Friendship is a form of relationship and the only way to really make it work is if you’re both putting in an equal amount. This doesn’t actually mean talking 24/7 all of the time. Different friendships work different ways, I have some friends who I talk to every single day and then I have some who I won’t talk to for weeks but each of us will just randomly check in to see the other is doing okay. My best friend and I call each other and basically don’t expect the other to pick up, but whenever we get the chance we call each other back, this can honestly go on for days before one of us finally picks up. But the effort is there, and the love is there and making a friendship work doesn’t mean you need to be stuck together like glue.

Only you will know what kind of friendships you have. The world is a much smaller place now but staying in touch with the people you love still requires work. Being an adult means no more school or seeing people every single day, life is busy and can get in the way, soon enough you’ll end up with half the friends you once had, but all of them 10x stronger. 

I hope you all had wonderful weekends and are enjoying the new blog theme! 

Love, Alice x

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1 comment

  1. I lived in different countries, and it's amazing to have friends everywhere! Even though it's not easy to stay in touch when you move or travel a lot, you always have Skype and Whatsapp, so you have no excuse... #realfriendship

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