Long distance with high school friends
I feel extremely grateful; while most of high school consisted of not my finest moments, I made some of my closest best friends during high school. Going to college I had the worry I would lose these close friends as everyone told me it’s inevitable and I’d make new friends. While I have made new friends, that doesn’t mean I am willing to lose my high school besties. In my opinion, if you want to still have a relationship with high school friends, you can. A best friend break up is not inevitable unless you have the mindset it is. However, that doesn’t mean you won’t have to put work into the friendships. My friends are spread pretty far across many different states and universities; here is what I’ve learned in maintaining my high school best friends in college.
One of the most important factors I have learned about in keeping my besties close is to embrace change. I most definitely am not the same person I was in high school (thank god) and I know my best friends aren’t either. One of my favorite things is getting to hype up my friends and express my excitement when they are changing and becoming who they want to be. Embracing change together in a friendship is one of the best ways a friendship can grow and become stronger. This involves supporting your best friend when change happens, such as changing career plans or getting into a relationship. Just as I want support for all of the changes I have made for the better, my best friends want support too. One of my favorite moments with my high school best friends in college was when one of my friends came up to visit me during the school year and got to meet my partner. Not only was my friend stoked to hear my practically undateable self was in a relationship, she embraced it and came up for a visit wanting to meet my partner.
When I first came to college I was very overwhelmed with moving to a different state, spending more time on my academics, and living with someone I had just met. College is super hectic for everyone and in those early days I wasn’t super great about keeping in touch with my best friends. However, the great thing was my friends completely understood as they were going through the same thing and we were able to give leniency to each other. Understanding a response might not always come right away or you may not talk as much as you wanted to is perfectly normal. A true best friend will understand when you have multiple midterms in a week and have not yet responded to the TikTok they sent you a day ago.
One of the final best friend life lessons I have learned in college is while leniency is important, you need to be making the effort to reach out. This doesn’t necessarily mean hour long FaceTime calls each week. I often send weekly check in texts to see how things are going and set up times to have a more in depth conversation. Not only that, but making sure to see each other plenty when you both happen to be back in your hometown is a key way to keep the friendship close.
While all friendships are slightly different and have varying needs, these are lessons me and my best friends have learned while navigating college and supporting each other. No longer do I feel the stress and worry about losing my friends, like many told me I would. I now only feel support from my high school best friends. If you’re worried about losing the people who mean so much to you, know it doesn’t always happen and there are ways to avoid losing high school best friends.