How do you stay in touch?

March 29, 2016 6:33 PM

I have some friends I love who live far away, like other-side-of-the-world far away. The ones who are on facebook give me a bit more to work with, I can see when their kids have a birthday or when they announce big news, but the others? Well, we're drifting apart in a bigger way than I'd like. What do you do to stay close with dear friends you can't see or talk to often?

The last time I saw them was three years ago, and that was the first time in nearly 15 years, and it felt like we'd never been apart. I LOVE these friends and wish we lived closer or someone was rich and could fly over at whim.

I've got the obvious stuff covered, like emailing or messaging more often, so I'm looking for other ideas, maybe something a bit novel? An example is two friends of mine who did long distance book club together by phone and email. Another is a couple of people in my family who cook something 'together' out of the same food magazine every month. They discuss the recipe and send each other pictures etc.

Please give me your ideas and tips in general about staying close to faraway good friends. These are people I keep in touch with individually so I'm not looking for group-specific things.

posted by stellathon to Human Relations (10 answers total)

i text with my folks in this category, like, a lot. they don't tend to be big FB participants and while sometimes we'll use FB's chat options, it definitely feels more intimate on the phone handset. Nobody on another continent, though.
posted by mwhybark at 6:42 PM on March 29, 2016

Texting and skype dates and care packages and handwritten cards.and planning yearly vacations together.
posted by discopolo at 6:51 PM on March 29, 2016

I text with some people, or Skype. With a couple, we both listen to the same podcasts and will text each other about them. My sister and I have talked about picking a TV series and watching it 'together' on Skype, but haven't actually done it yet.
I also have a couple of dear friends who I only see once every few years, who I don't keep in touch with at all between the rare occasions we find ourselves in the same continent. Trying to keep in touch regularly got to feel like hard work and guilt, so we stopped. But we are able to pick up the friendship as if it's been no time at all when we are together, with no hard feelings.
posted by une_heure_pleine at 6:56 PM on March 29, 2016

This is how it is for me with several of my closest friends.

First, and maybe weirdly: Snapchat. It sounds dumb and it's for The Youths or whatever, but a steady stream of silly pictures of someone's day is a really nice way to feel connected. Today, from one of my friends, I got a snap of their dog, a video (maybe ten seconds) of the sunset through a train window, and a snap of supper. Your phone's already in your hand all the time--use it to feel like you're aware of each other's lives.

Second, Skype dates--we'll have supper together (takeout, or lugging laptops into the kitchen to cook together, then sitting down to eat). It's not perfect, but it's still nice. We'll also get on a skype videocall and just leave it open while we do things. Not necessarily doing things together--I'm writing this comment while a friend's on a skype call with me, and I think that she's reading tumblr--but the feeling that you're existing together in the same place does a lot, at least for me.

Third, watching movies or television together. I love Rabbit for this--you log in, and you get a chat room or video chat, depending on what you choose. You also get a launchpad, which will open a browser window within the window, kind of? And from there, you hit up Netflix or Plex or whatever, and whatever you choose will play for both of you. The streaming quality isn't amazing, but it's certainly good enough to watch, and it feels much more like you're watching things together. Strongly rec this one--it's much easier than trying to keep things synced while watching over skype or whatever.
posted by mishafletch at 8:16 PM on March 29, 2016 [5 favorites]

I have a close friend in Australia (I'm in London). We send each other postcards every time we go out of town, even (especially) if it's a non glamorous location.
posted by intensitymultiply at 11:01 PM on March 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

Are any of you writers at all? Some friends of mine wrote rengas by mail (and later published them as a book)
posted by third word on a random page at 1:16 AM on March 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

I use WhatsApp mainly for keeping in touch with my friends back in the states (I'm in the UK now). Looking through our correspondence it's a smattering of

- Random "Hey how are you?" messages when they've got a minute or if I do
- Screenshots of funny things we saw online
- Links to interesting articles or things (clothes, home accessories, etc) we are thinking of buying and need opinions
- Pictures of ourselves on a night out or on holiday (none of us are very active on facebook and we only show the best of ourselves on Instagram so Whatsapp is where all the more casual pics get shared)

I think the main thing is to just do it regularly, whenever you think of them just drop them a quick "Just thinking of you, how are things". Since it's messaging, I don't worry about interrupting them or waking them up, they just get back to me if they can and maybe 40% of the time we end up messaging "live". Once in a very blue moon we'll do a WhatsApp call as well.
posted by like_neon at 2:17 AM on March 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'm in the US and have a good, long time friend who is in Slovenia. A surprising amount of our correspondence has been postcards. It's funny you asked this question today because I had fallen out of touch with him over the winter, but when I got home just now I found a postcard from him in the mail. Do you know how nice it is to get a postcard? They're so easy to write and send. They're inexpensive. They're shorter (and therefore less intimidating) than writing a letter. They combine a picture (visual interest) often with a good story ('here something funny or interesting I did/saw/learned'); you can hang it on your refrigerator or wall; it's the classic way to remind someone - outside of social media/skype - that you're thinking of them.
posted by nightrecordings at 4:45 PM on March 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

I play Wordfeud on my phone with a friend, and also with my mother. The friend is a close one, but we've always lived in different cities and sometimes had fairly long stretches without much communication. I haven't always had super frequent contact with my mom either, even though nothing was wrong and we lived in the same city.

We started playing after I moved overseas, and now these two are the ones I talk the most with by other means too (mostly text messages). I feel like the game is more a reason for that than a result of it. It works well across time zones since it's turn-based, and you have to play within two days to lose by default. So even though there's nothing new to tell or you're not in a great mood or situation for a chat, you play a word or two almost every day and each of them says "I'm alive and well, and here is something I thought up specially for you". It makes me feel that they are present in my life.
posted by Herr Zebrurka at 12:07 AM on April 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

Seconding Snapchat. I had to ask my teenaged sister to teach me the basics of how it worked, then watched a few YouTube videos for "advanced" tricks, but after that I really got into the hang of it and quickly wheedled a few other friends into it. Seeing and sharing the daily minutiae of each other's lives (usually food pics, outfits of the day, something stupid or silly they saw that day) somehow really makes me feel like we're in sync and updated with each other.

A few friends and I also exchange snail mail, but with my best friend occasionally we'll send each other small packets of flat things. Bookmarks, coasters, postcards, even slim books. Sometimes a t-shirt, or small packets of candy. There's an accompanying letter of course, and sometimes doodles. Just those general "wish you could have been with me for this / we could do this together someday" thoughts, with accompanying props, have helped us stay close.
posted by pimli at 3:39 PM on April 4, 2016 [1 favorite]