Can long distance friendships survive the miles?

countrygirlexplores

In a simple answer, yes. A long distance friendships can survive the miles. However, that would make a pretty boring blog post, so here is a bit of my own advice, from a lot of experience!

The chances are that if you’ve been travelling, somewhere along the line you’ve made friends with someone. It’s also likely that that person lives thousands of miles away from you on the opposite side of the world. Even as the quite socially awkward person I am (I’m working on it, honest). I’ve managed to acquire a few long distance friendships and here are a few of my tips for long distance friendships.

From going on a Contiki trip to working in America for 3 months, I have friends that are literally all over the world. From California to Australia and a lot of places in between. I know how hard it can be to remain friends with someone that quite literally lives on the opposite side of the world and long distance friendships really can be hard at times.

Stay in touch!

It sounds obvious but these long distance friendships aren’t going to last if you don’t speak to each other and stay in touch. If you really want to remain friends, make an effort to keep communicating with them. I have so many people on Facebook that maybe I spent a few days with maximum and we’ve never been in touch again since that friend request came through. Maybe it is unrealistic to think you’ll be best buddies with everyone but at least a few people wouldn’t hurt!

In addition to this, learn things about them and their life at home. Granted with most friendships this will just come in time and you won’t have to ask 20 questions to find out but it’s still nice to know what’s going on in their life and take an interest even though you’re thousands of miles away.

Consider the timezone difference.

Timezones exist, remember that! Don’t be surprised if they are always messaging you at 3am in the morning. Time zones can be great but they can also be an absolute pain. If you’re awake in the middle of the night and need someone to talk, the chances are a long distance friend will be awake, after all, it’s more than likely going to be a reasonable time with them. Just stay patient with them and don’t get annoyed if they’re not responding, they’re probably just asleep!

Visit Each Other.

With a long distance friendship, you could almost say that a reunion is the ultimate goal. This might be a bit of an expensive one but if you really are friends, try and go and see them and spend time with them! I’m not saying you should fly to Australia once a month to see your bestie but maybe once a year wouldn’t be too bad. Plus, if you go and see them, it’s likely they’ll come and see you at a later point!

Story time! I’m friends with an American guy who promised me a trip to Disneyland so when I was booking my flights home from the US last summer, I knew I wanted to go to California so I could see him, so that’s what I did. (and yes, he took me to Disneyland like promised). Fast forward 6 months and I managed to talk him in to coming to England, so I had chance to see him again, so yeah, in my own experience, it works!

Make the most of your time together.

Following on from that last one, when you do eventually see them again, make the absolute most of it! Try and spend as much time together as physically possible! When I went to California, I was out with my long distance friend from about 8am until gone 11pm and it was honestly one of the best days of my entire America trip! (That’s probably because of Disneyland though). If you don’t make the most of your time together, you’ll most likely end up regretting it and thinking about all the time you could have spent together. Make memories together, and think of all the fun times you can talk and reminisce about later on.

Video Chat

Now in my personal opinion, I’m saying this is optional which is why I’ve left it until last, but others would probably swear by this tip.

Video Chat. Yes it’s nice to see your best friends face once in a while, and speak to them on video call but I am not a huge fan of it myself and it’s not something I do often. Out of all my long distance friends, I’ve had one or maybe two group video chats with the girls from camp and that is it. We still all talk really often and not video chatting with my friends doesn’t make any difference to our friendship. Plus, especially with the further away friends like Australia or California, working out a time when you’re both free to video chat is extremely difficult with timezones. It’s either late night for you and early morning for them or the opposite way round. I’m not saying don’t video chat, go ahead and FaceTime and Skype to your hearts content if you enjoy doing that! I’m just saying that in my opinion, I don’t think it’s completely necessary and you can still have really strong friendships without it.

Thanks for reading! Is there anything else you would recommend to people with long distance friends? Leave your thoughts in the comments below!

Laura – CountryGirlExplores x