Maintaining Long-distanced friendships?
I have a lot of long-distanced friendships due to moving. It becomes my big source of guilt because I'm not good at keeping in touch, though I really do like my friends and I think about them. However, I procrastinate on writing them, on answering their messages. It's not easy finding something to talk about when you just don't share environments. I have two close friends whom I do talk to frequently, but the rest I don't and I always feel guilty about that. They're people I really like. They reach out first, and I'm always so happy when they reach out, but I can't reciprocate as much as I want to. Does this make sense to anyone? Can anyone relate to this experience?
@gregariousAcai1247
hello there! I can totally relate, I'm also the type who doesn't usually reach first and unfortunately this turned some of my friendships cold. But not all of them. I guess the thing is that it really is difficult to keep close when you're apart with so many people and the fact that you manage to keep at least some of your friendships alive is really to be appreciated. If you feel you're not putting as much effort in this as they do you could try to make a "plan" to remember to write to the people you care about say each day at one particular hour when you're free take half an hour to check out on someone :) But don't put toooo much pressure on yourself because sometimes you don't even need to talk a lot and very often to people for the good feelings about each other to still be there. For example I had a very good friend for 12 years and now we moved away for college and we barely talk during the year but when we manage to meet home twice or 3 times each year we're still close and very open to each other. So it depends a lot on the relationship.. but it's normal for some things to fade away, just make sure that the most important ones don't, the special ones.. and with the rest of them as I said, make a catch up plan, try your best but don't make it too hard on yourself..
@cloudTraveler Hi, thank you for responding to me. You post makes a lot of sense :). I guess my problem is also exaggerated since I struggle with making friends and interacting with people, too. I'm not one normal, well-adjusted person who happens to move a lot. I have a lot of anxiety about my social relationships and how I don't know how to maintain them. Sometimes I want to talk to people but I struggle to put words on paper, and it's not because I don't like writing. I do, I just can't write emails to long-distanced normal friends. I just gets really sad when people seem eager to keep in contact, and I just can't keep it up, even though I think about them all the time. I don't even know if that makes sense. But thank you for your persepctives. That does help some.
