Maintaining long-distance friendships

[kjc]

Just started my PhD program this year and moved away from my home city for the first time. There are a lot of adjustments but one of the biggest that I wasn't anticipating is how my two best friends have been acting. 

Friend 1- Friends since 7th grade, very close prior to move, she has never lived away from home and is still working on her BS.

Friend 2- Friends since kindergarten, very close prior to move though slightly less so than friend 1, she moved away from home for BA (and we remained fairly close through that time), and has since finished and moved back and started work. 

Prior to moving, I sensed a lot of passive anger form friend 1 that I was moving away, friend 2 sensed it as well. We never talked about it because verbally/outwardly she was always supportive/proud. Ever since I have moved she pretty much dropped me from her life. She will occasionally return my texts but even when she does she is not very enthusiastic. I called her a while back and expressed that I was feeling dejected, she pretty much said that she was sorry I felt that way but that she believed it was unwarranted/I was being dramatic. Communication has been just as one-sided as before I brought it up. 

I have never gotten the passive anger from friend 2, but she also seems very uninterested in me ever since the move. I also brought this up to her, she apologized and claimed that she has been "really busy," but contact/conversations have remained one-sided. 

Sorry if this doesn't make sense. I guess just long story short- 2 friends that I was very close with have seemingly forgotten me since my move. I would imagine this to be less devastating if I was making friends in the new place but so far I have ~2 friends and one of them is moving away in May. I am normally very social and have many friends and now all of the sudden I feel like I have zero. 

Has anyone else had similar experiences? Anyone have any thoughts/advice? 

Thanks! 

[sociologyapp2016]

I can be your friend

[shadowclaw]

My closest friends have been slowly going their own ways since most of them graduated college. We all stayed local for college, but we spread out over the years. One joined the Air Force and moved away, but would try to get together with everyone whenever she came home to visit. We talk on Facebook from to time, and I was able to visit her on my trip from the east coast to the west. But we don't keep very good contact!

Another got married after graduating, had some kids, and while she was always a religious person, during college she became more so and after marriage she became a lot more involved with other families in her church and spent way less time with her old friends. I almost never talk to her anymore.

Then there's the friend who stabbed everyone in the back at some point during high school or college. Sometimes more than once. Interestingly, she keeps fairly decent contact, but mainly because she's addicted to social media. It isn't very intellectual or deep contact. Mostly fluff.

One of my two closest friends worked with me until I started working as a GA in my masters program. After that, we really stopped hanging out because I was so busy and she started a new relationship and job. Plus she lives with a lot of room mates who have been her friends for a while, so she is constantly surrounded by people to talk to and do things with. While I think we will always be close, I'm not sure we'll really stay in good contact now that I'm across the country. My best friend moved away before I did, and we keep in decent contact. She's a bit better at it than I am because I tend to get busy, but she is always there when I need her.

All that being said, I've definitely become more isolated in graduate school. I did make a few friends in my masters program, but I lived too far away to be very social with them outside of school and our monthly biology grad student get togethers. My PhD program is so interdisciplinary that I rarely see anyone from my program around campus (although I'm taking two core courses now so I see several of them weekly). I definitely have that zero friend thing going on. On the plus side, I have a husband to be my friend. I would probably lose my mind if he wasn't here. I do often feel bummed out about my friends, though. Mostly I wish I did more things with them when I had the chance. My best friend lives in NC, and I occasionally curse UNC for rejecting me because it's only a few hours away from her. However, she is trying to convince her husband to move out here. She's not crazy about where she lives and I have definitely sold her on the PNW. So maybe in a year, I'll regain a good friend in close proximity.

I don't have any real advice. There are lots of ways to meet people at school, but it's hard to develop close relationships when you're busy. It's really disappointing when your friends don't seem to want anything to do with you, but in reality, I think they do still care. They just don't know how to be a part of someone's life when there's distance, and sometimes life gets in the way of being a good communicator. Hang in there. It'll get better. Don't give up on those friends, either. They may surprise you.

[TakeruK]

I do think it's a challenge to keep long distance friends. And I think just like romantic partners, some people are a good fit for long distance friendships and others are not able to get what they need out of a long distance friendship. So, I think the first thing is to not feel like it's your fault or their fault that the friendship erodes when one person moves away. Like a relationship, sometimes you don't know whether a friendship will actually continue when one or both person moves away. And I think it's also not fair if both parties are not on the same page---that is, you can't force someone to be happy in a long distance friendship if they want friends that are in the same place as them. So, in my opinion, I think it is healthy for people to re-evaluate their friendships as they move on to different phases of their life. Just because you are friends with someone since kindergarten/grade 7/etc does not mean it makes sense for both of you to try to continue a friendship that doesn't actually work. It's okay to decrease the intensity of the friendship and "drift away".

I also think friendships are different relationships when you are older and enter grad school age. Once you graduate from college, people go different ways really fast. Sometimes people have different priorities really fast too. For some, it's their career, for others, it's family, and for yet others, it's some combination of both. We all grow a lot during college and we become different people. After we get to the "other side" and become the new people in our mid and late 20s, maybe what we wanted in a friendship is different now than it was when we were 19. This is also okay. 

I still have two close friendships from my time in undergrad and my MSc program that I keep in touch with more than others. These are probably the only two "long distance friendships" where I would feel like I would be able to talk about the crappy parts of life. With most of my current long distance friends, when we do chat, we keep it very light and positive. I'm glad to have them and to be honest, it's not like I knew these two people would play these roles when I was in the same place as them and not even when I first moved away. I find that the natural pattern of things is that when you move away, at first, everyone tries to keep in touch with each other. But then, as time goes on, people drift apart and eventually, you'll find yourself more interested in maintaining some relationships over others. Hopefully the other party feels the same way and you got a good long distance friendship going. But if it's only one-sided, I think one or both people will end up being hurt.

Finally, now that I am nearing the end of my degree, I find myself thinking about friendship in academia a lot. Especially after the PhD, postdoc positions are often only 2 years in my field, hardly any time to make friends before you're off to a new place. I think this is a very real problem in academia, and it's one of the reasons that academia is a tough place---it seems like the expectation is that we always have to pick up and move. It's one of the big downsides to an academic career for me. 

I think I have come to peace with it though (the friendship part, still stressed/worried about not knowing where I'd be in 1.5 years). With my current grad school friends, I feel that there is an "end date" to our friendship in its current format in sight. It makes me a bit sad---we have gone through so much of the crappy side of grad school together. But I think that after we graduate and go our own ways, it doesn't really mean our friendship "ends". It will just evolve into a different type of friendship, and that is okay. And hey, one perk of academic world friendships is that now I have friends in tons of different places. If you're the couch-surfing type, this could be great. I'm not really a couch-surfer, but one cool thing is that as I get older and more friends spread out, there are more and more cities where I have friends living! Once, I was in the UK for a conference and I had to pass through London, so I arranged to meet up with some friends there in between my flight landing and my train ride later that evening.  So there are certainly some perks too

[St Andrews Lynx]

I can relate from my time as an undergraduate. As others have said, people do change a lot in their college years. Even the act of moving a short way away from my family made me a different person with different outlooks. There are plenty of people whom I still consider "friends" even though I don't see them often at all, or exchange much correspondence with in the interim. And that's fine. 

My advice would be to make sure you go out and meet new people. You don't have to be on a recruitment drive for new best friends - just make sure that you are not isolated socially. Start a new activity (Meetup.com is awesome) or take a fitness class at the university gym, etc. I think it's important to have people to talk to who "get" the grad school experience, even if they aren't your closest friends. It's also important to have people to talk to who can put your grad school experience into context of the "outside world" or whom you feel comfortable talking to about other stuff. 

 

[hippyscientist]

Okay so I'm going to pipe in to this conversation. I've lived in many countries around the world and have friends from all of them, which certainly makes it a challenge! We are so lucky with Factime/Skype/iMessage/WhatsApp/Facebook etc etc that we can keep in touch so much more, and be more involved in our LDF (long distance friendships) much better than we used to. However, like TakeruK mentioned, some people are cut out for distance, and other's aren't, and that's totally okay. Some things I've found useful:

• Videochat - it doesn't have to be regular or often, but it can be invaluable for those deep meaningful conversations that are just too much effort to write out. Time differences can make this tricky, but in the US it should be manageable (and I videochat with my Aussie friends all the time, you can do it!). 
• Use a messaging service like Whatsapp/iMessage something. When you're together, you and your friends text about silly things. We all do it. We make jokes about something on the TV, or walking into a lamppost, or leaving your house without shoes because you were in a huge rush. KEEP DOING THIS. It's the silly, insignificant things that keep a friendship going. 
• If you're the one to move away, do something nice for the friends you've left behind, especially if they're insecure about you going. I have a great friend, but she's limpet-like and always wants to be around me. When I moved away (5 hours, it's not that far), she felt pushed aside and neglected. I ended up sending her on a spa day (they had a special offer on) and sending her texts at predetermined times throughout the day to tell her where she was going next. She loved it and it showed her that I knew all her favourite things.
• Make time to listen to your friends too. A lot of our friendships are based on shared experiences, and the support system when something you experience goes wrong. When we have a new beginning in our lives (like starting grad school), it's very easy to get wrapped up in what you're doing. "Oh I spent hours in the lab today processing this", "Ugh my advisor is such a pain he never makes it in on time", "I just wish they would pay me already", "how are undergrads so stupid?". Your friends aren't going to be going through similar things, and it's important to acknowledge they have things they want to get off their chest too. However, saying that, you'd be surprised at how many things translate out of academia. The things we complain about are time draining, being overworked, being paid too little, people oriented or just people being idiots! A lot of that applies to the work place, family life (if you have friends who are stay at home parents), and just everyday life. Find the common ground, even if you're 10,000 miles away.

When all things are said and done, if you've tried your hardest and your friends are still pulling away, that's a sign to you that they were once a good friend and that the friendship may have run it's course. That's okay. You can end friendships amicably. The important thing is that you and your friends are happy, if it's as friends, or parting ways. Friendships take time and effort, two things we don't have a lot of in grad school, and LDFs take even more of both, but the right friends are worth it.

Edited January 10, 2016 by piglet33
spelling

[random_grad]

It certainly is hard to maintain long-distance friendship with people who are not used to that. Most of my friends have dispersed all over the world after high school, so we've all struggled with that. There has been people who, like your friend 1, have completely ended relationships after the move.

With one of my best friends from high school we've tried all sorts of things, and letters (really, written by hand letters) were quite efficient for a while. We were able to share a lot of personal stuff like this, add a few interesting cards we saw in the city or during recent travels, maybe a drawing of our own - this allowed staying close over several years before we could meet again and reconnect in reality.

With another friend email has been great. Facebook messages too, esp. if a person posts a lot on facebook about their life.

Personally, I don't think skype works too well for maintaining friendships. It's more for family. Friends tend to feel less obligated to connect regularly on skype and everyone's busy anyway.

I've found that it's hard to meet people outside of academia via adult events such as meetup because once they know you're a grad student, they understand that you will graduate and move soon. I sensed that a new friend I met like this (and who is not in academia) felt betrayed when I said I would not be accepting the PhD offer from the school in the city we both lived in. That person really didn't understand how one could put career before friendship.

And then there's a few other good friends who are just like me, zero friends (in the sense of their geographic location) aside from their spouses, and with whom I am very close yet we speak perhaps once every few months by email and meet once every few years. I feel a strong connection with them, and I think they do too, and for each of us it's sufficient to speak rarely like this.

I think there is a certain amount of socially imposed guilt associated with having zero friends in the city where you live. Aside from the inconvenience of not having someone to help you out when you're sick, I think this does not have to be felt as something bad. If you don't need that, then why try to conform to the social norm of having lots of friends? The problem begins only if you really need that to be happy. It took me some time to realize that, but I have let it go and am much happier now that I accept this situation.

For your situation, perhaps it would be an option to lower your expectations in regards to the amount of day-to-day details you would share with your long-distance friends. But this does not mean it's the end. Invite them over for spring break!

Edited January 10, 2016 by random_grad

[funkydays]

On 1/10/2016 at 0:26 AM, kjc said:

Friend 1- Friends since 7th grade, very close prior to move, she has never lived away from home and is still working on her BS.

Friend 2- Friends since kindergarten, very close prior to move though slightly less so than friend 1, she moved away from home for BA (and we remained fairly close through that time), and has since finished and moved back and started work. 

I think it's always understandable that when you move away from your home city, you'll feel a little disconnected with your friends.  They are in an established community and so they don't necessarily "see" the one-sidedness of their relationship with you. Does that make any sense?  I think it's hard to maintain the same relationship you had with your friends especially if they haven't really moved outside of the circles of their home town.  Long distance friendships are hard.  If these are truly important friendships to you, then put in the effort and try to adjust your expectations.  If the friendship was meant to last, then you two will adjust to some middle ground to stay in touch.

Your situation has happened to me when I left my hometown as well and many of my friends have never lived outside the town.  I realized that we were at different places in our life: they were establishing theirs in our hometown, but I was just starting in a new place.  And for friends who have never experienced "new place", it's hard to relate to or maybe someone might even feel like you "escaped" while they are stuck.  In any case, I think it's important to remember that you're at different places in life, so it's understandable that you and your friends would not be on the same page in terms of support.  It takes time and adjusting for that to happen.  

Like @piglet33 said, videochat is your friend.  Schedule a time to update each other on your lives and such.  I usually skype with my best friend once a month and text occasionally.

In any case, take this as an opportunity to meet new people if you want (at or outside of school).  I guess I have a slightly different experience with meetups than @random_grad ... I've met some really great friends through meetup outside of academia, and it doesn't feel like anything has changed since I've moved away (other than not seeing each other, but we frequently email/chat like before).  It takes getting used to, meeting strangers and finding the right group, but if you want to meet new people in a new city, I think it's a good starting point.

There's no real easy answer to this, but I hope this and everyone else's answers to you illustrates that you're not alone in this.  Best of luck.

[kjc]

On January 10, 2016 at 0:24 AM, shadowclaw said:

They just don't know how to be a part of someone's life when there's distance, and sometimes life gets in the way of being a good communicator. 

I think this^ has a lot to do with it, especially for people that have pretty much never had long-distance anything relationships because they have never lived anywhere else. 

 

On January 10, 2016 at 0:49 AM, TakeruK said:

So, I think the first thing is to not feel like it's your fault or their fault that the friendship erodes when one person moves away. Like a relationship, sometimes you don't know whether a friendship will actually continue when one or both person moves away. And I think it's also not fair if both parties are not on the same page---that is, you can't force someone to be happy in a long distance friendship if they want friends that are in the same place as them. So, in my opinion, I think it is healthy for people to re-evaluate their friendships as they move on to different phases of their life. Just because you are friends with someone since kindergarten/grade 7/etc does not mean it makes sense for both of you to try to continue a friendship that doesn't actually work. It's okay to decrease the intensity of the friendship and "drift away".

And hey, one perk of academic world friendships is that now I have friends in tons of different places. 

I also really like ^this/these piece(s) of advice. It doesn't do me any good to feel bitter about this, and maybe it is just time for it to happen. 

On January 10, 2016 at 11:21 AM, piglet33 said:

When all things are said and done, if you've tried your hardest and your friends are still pulling away, that's a sign to you that they were once a good friend and that the friendship may have run it's course. That's okay. You can end friendships amicably. The important thing is that you and your friends are happy, if it's as friends, or parting ways. Friendships take time and effort, two things we don't have a lot of in grad school, and LDFs take even more of both, but the right friends are worth it.

I have ended friendships amicably before, I guess I just didn't think these were the type to go that way (not that I have given pup yet). But I am finding it helpful to remember that sometimes the healthiest/best thing is to let a friendship "drift away" as mentioned above. I guess the best course of action is to see where things naturally go. 

 

Thank you everyone for the great replies! It is nice (in a way) to hear that I am not alone in this, and all of you make some excellent points! I suppose I will just see how things go (and try out some tips- like meetups and Skype). 

[tudor3x8]

I moved from coast to coast when I transferred for my undergrad. I always joke that your true friends will come out when you move- they're the ones who will do the most they can to keep contact, to visit you, to see you anytime you return. I've had everything from the best friend who's flown out to see me twice in a year to the friend who will say we're hanging out in our home town, just five miles away, and then accidentally "fall asleep" when we were supposed to meet.

It's not your fault if either happen. If you did the most you can, you did what you can. People also change over time. I transferred to a university where everyone was smarter, more driven, more amazing in every way than I was. It really opened my eyes to see how things were at home. Whereas the bulk of my friends from my university have great jobs or are in grad school because they are driven, I go home to friends who are still trying to finish their degree/dropped out of school/are getting married. It's tough because they're all great individuals, but neither of us understand each others' lives anymore.

As one poster said, it's important to reevaulate friendships. It doesn't mean drop friends because you think you're better than them/they're not doing enough for you. But if the friendship is completely one-sided, or in the OP's case where a friend seems upset that you are doing something you are passionate about in your life, then it's time to decide if it's something you want to keep.

[Cat_Robutt]

If it isn't too late, I'd like to say a few things, although everyone here has done a fantastic job of covering ground in both depth and breadth! I'm currently teaching Interpersonal Communication as part of my teaching load, so I'm going to delve into Julia Wood's description of friendship (summarized) here:

Friendships, relationships in general, can be difficult. They take things graduate students, and adults, have little of to spare: time and energy.

With a solid friendship, the investment of both must be equal, or an unbalanced dynamic is created where one person is doing much more work and the other is mostly reaping the benefits without investing their own time and energy into making the relationship flourish. We have several levels of friends––friendly strangers, casual friends, friends, and close friends. Generally, we have 1-5 close friends at any given point, and we maintain these friendships in a variety of different ways.

We either do things together or we talk together, and this can affect the relationship if one party is physically removed. Distance can breed distance, or it can make the heart grow fonder. If you have friends you mostly did things with––working out, watching movies, going out––it may be a bit harder to maintain a friendship on an intimate level. If you mostly talked together––met for lunch, drank coffee and chatted about life, shared frustrations and excitement––it may be a bit easier to maintain over long-distance, since most of our tech-enhanced communication is based around talking.

We may also have friendships where both parties are more dependent, needing more communication in order to feel validated by the relationship. More activities or communication is required, unlike a more autonomous friendship where you may go months without talking, but when you do, you have a 4-hour conversation and it feels like no time has passed. Neither of those are wrong, but if the unspoken rules about how you communicate change, then the climate of the friendship can also shift unexpectedly without one or both parties knowing why, or how to fix it.

And, yes, there are friends who are just not good at communicating via long distance. I'm highly autonomous in friendships, and my closest friends are as well. We're scattered across the globe, and don't regularly talk, but when we visit or chat things are fantastic. With more dependent friendships, those tend to fade when proximity does as I'm not super diligent with sending regular texts, answering phone calls, etc. Your style might be more independent or more dependent....and that may be different from your friends' styles.

It can be challenging to make new friends as well, because our friend groups can solidify when we become adults. Going to meet ups, finding things like book clubs, free yoga, campus events, all of those can be tools to find someone who has some similarities with you. If you are introverted (like me), it becomes even harder. If you're at an event, look for someone who looks out of place, maybe not speaking with anyone or looking a bit uncomfortable. A friendly face, even an awkward one, can draw out a fellow introvert and cause a conversation to flow well.

Sorry for my rant! I just get excited by communication and also know how tough it can be. Hope at least a small bit of this helps.

[Morrijay]

I can't speak to the anger or passive aggressive stuff, but it's definitely a hard adjustment to make. It's really the only reason I like and still use Facebook. It's actually great for maintaining those long term and long distance friendships. 

[kjc]

On February 26, 2016 at 10:28 AM, Cat_Robutt said:

If you are introverted (like me), it becomes even harder. If you're at an event, look for someone who looks out of place, maybe not speaking with anyone or looking a bit uncomfortable. A friendly face, even an awkward one, can draw out a fellow introvert and cause a conversation to flow well.

 

Thanks for the really great insight @Cat_Robutt! Relationships can certainly be complicated, and I am still working out how to navigate this, but I think you make some excellent points. In particular, I like the above tip... it might be a little more fruitful than my usual tactic of trying to find a dog or cat to pet at the party! Lol.