I heard the phrase “you can’t make old friends” a couple of years ago, and it really stuck with me. The friends that you have from elementary school, high school, college . . . they are just a specific kind of special that can’t be replicated. Friends who have known you in all iterations of your life should be protected at all costs!
But if you’re like me, your oldest friends might be spread all over the country — making the times that you talk (and see each other) few and far between! There were a good number of years where my core group from high school sporadically texted and rarely had the opportunity to see each other in person. However, in the last couple of years, we’ve almost become closer than ever.
Here are the three things that my friends and I do that I credit with revitalizing our relationship as a group and keeping us going strong for 30 years.
3 Ways to Strengthen Long-Distance Friendships
1. Marco Polo
Have you heard of Marco Polo? It’s a video chat app that I credit to reconnecting my oldest friends. Basically, you record a video of yourself talking and send it to a Marco Polo chat group.
I convinced my group of girlfriends to join a couple of years ago and we’ve been chatting with each other literally every day since! Prior to that, we’d go months without texting each other. Now, we are so caught up in each other’s daily lives — I know the fun things they are up to that week, that their kid is sick (again!), the big meeting they have at work, what they’re making for dinner, I could go on and on. Marco Polo truly helped me reconnect with these relationships that are so incredibly special to me.
2. Annual Girls’ Trips
I know that sometimes it seems really hard to think about leaving your family for a long weekend. Maybe you just had a baby, maybe money is tight, or maybe you feel like your husband can’t handle everything without you.
If you can swing it, I think you should make every effort to meet up once a year for a girls’ trip. There is truly nothing better than being in a house with your best girls, reminiscing about the past, telling the same inside jokes you’ve had for 20 years, and fully relaxing without having to take care of anyone else. Find somewhere that is easy for everyone to get to and enjoy hugging each other as much as you want!
3. Celebrate Together (Virtually!)
One of the hardest things about not living near your best friends is that you miss out on big life milestones. But just because you can’t go out to dinner to celebrate a friend’s birthday, visit their new baby in the hospital, or make Christmas cookies together, it doesn’t mean that you can’t show up for each other.
Coordinate group gifts to send to a new mom, ship ice cream to a friend going through a hard time, or have a holiday party over a Zoom happy hour! This past Christmas, we did a “Favorite Things Secret Santa” and opened our presents on Zoom in our Christmas jammies! It was such a fun way to celebrate Christmas together when we couldn’t do it in person.
My friendship with my oldest friends is truly one of the things I am most proud of in my life. Anything I can do to keep our relationship strong, I will do — because you can’t make old friends.
