Long-distance friendships can be hard to manage. One of your close friends is moving far away and you don’t know if things will be the same after spending so much time together, to now only seeing each other on facetime.
In the 4th grade, my best friend moved from New Jersey to Dubai for her dad’s job. We had been friends for three years prior and I didn’t want to lose her as a friend. She and I were really close and when she moved, I was really sad. We didn’t talk too much because we were young and we can only use skype to talk. Every summer when she would come back we would catch up on each other’s lives. We were always really good friends and nothing stayed awkward between us.
As we got older and got our own phones it became easier for us to communicate with each other. We would text and facetime whenever we could. After a while, we started to miss each other a lot. Only seeing each other once a year for a week or two at a time is not enough. I decided to visit her twice in Dubai. Dubai was a lot of fun but at the same time, it showed that I was putting in effort for our friendship to still work.
What I learned is that to maintain a long-distance friendship is that both parties have to put in the effort to keep the friendship alive. I feel like being apart has made us closer, because the time we do spend together we cherish, and we spend that time having fun and not fighting. I learned that being with someone a lot can make you grow tired of them. Long-distance friendships are amazing if you can make it work. I could’ve easily not made the effort throughout the years, but I did because my friendship with her is special.