Friendships always change throughout life. You drift away from your school friends who were the centre of your life in year nine. The friendships which seem amazing at the start can become a bit toxic and need cutting out. You gain new and unexpected friends. People come and go in your life. Some stay around for a while and some stay for a lifetime. But what about when you move away?
Although I’ve made friends where I live, my two best friends live in England. And whilst I’ve spoken about my long-distance relationship, I’m actually in more than one when I think about it. My best friends and I are in a long-distance friendship.
Things change
As friends, our lives have transformed in the past year and a half. We left the student phase of our lives and began exploring what we want to do with the rest of our lives. There have been so many changes. Not just me moving abroad, but also, new relationships, starting our careers and travelling the world. Our friendship could have easily been disrupted because it was formed on a living arrangement. After this came to an end, our friendship could have too.
With my friends, the distance can be harder in certain ways but much easier in others. I mean, I don’t exactly miss the physical affection or love from them. However, they also don’t have an obligation to visit me as often as Nick does which can make it harder. A long-distance friendship can be just as complicated as a romantic one.
I won’t pretend that I’ve not worried about our friendship. What if they become closer without me? Especially as they just spent four months travelling together. This isn’t something that I worry about with Nick because he (hopefully) doesn’t have another girlfriend to hang out with. I hate the word, but the FOMO and jealousy is real when I see my friends spending time together.
However, that’s just something I have to deal with. What did I expect? That they’d just pause their friendship until I moved home? They are still going to hang out and have fun, even without me being there. And yes, they probably are much closer now. They see each other more often than once or twice a year.
But not our friendship
The daily dealings of our friendship is undeniably different. We’ve gone from living together for three years to graduating university and moving away from each other. Eating dinner together, watching Love Island on the sofa, drinking too much and exploring Brighton, was what our friendship used to consist of. Now, we don’t speak every day. Nevertheless, the group chat is always there for a gossip or advice and we never stop tagging each other in random things on Facebook (usually Shrek related).
We’ve only seen each other three times in the past year and a half. A sleepover in Kingston, a flying visit in Dubai and a glorious week in Bali. Our first reunion was after nearly a year apart! That’s a lot of time in a friendship. As soon as we are back together, our friendship falls into its natural groove. It is like no time has really passed for us. We don’t stop talking, the ‘inside jokes’ are there and we eat a bit too much.
We might not see each other regularly and our lives are changing, but nothing has changed between us. Not really. Our friendship has remained the same at the core. It’s just evolved and adapted seamlessly into a long distance friendship.
I want to say thank you to them for not allowing the distance between us to change our friendship at all. They’ve just supported me, like I knew they would. Love you both!
Has anyone else struggled to deal with changing friendships?
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Let me know what you think?