Dear Ex-pert

My best friend and I have been inseparable for the last four years. Our friendship has always been so easy because we have lived in the same house since we were 18. I’ve never had to dig to find out how she is because I have always known every detail of her life.

Now she’s got a dream job in another city and is moving out of the flat we share. I am scared our friendship will lose its intimacy. How can I maintain and protect the friendship between us despite her living two hours away?

From

Soon-to-be-forgotten

——-

Dear soon-to-be-forgotten

When someone you’re close with moves to a new city, it’s always going to feel scary. You’ve spent years cultivating a friendship that works for your exact circumstances, falling into familiar rhythms, and building something that’s uniquely tailored to the two of you. If someone moves, they disrupt that – placing themselves outside of your routines and the safety of your perfect platonic bliss.

As the person who is being left behind, it’s easy to feel like your friend will be living a more exciting life than yours. You imagine them sipping sangria on a European piazza while you rewatch Superstore for the fourth time, chomping on a reheated stick of garlic bread.

If that resonates with you, you might feel yourself clinging onto your current patterns – trying to maintain the intimacy that you once had and minimising the risk of change. 

I hate to break it to you, but that will never work. When someone moves to a different city, it’s impossible to replicate the relationship that you had before.

Especially when you live with a friend, it’s easy to have passive time together chatting at the breakfast table, post-work, or sat by the telly. But now that you’re in different cities, all of your interactions will have to be intentional. Time will have to be carved out, someone will have to call, and you won’t have your shared context.

You go from living as friends to having to maintain a friendship – and that can feel unnatural. But the good news is that if you intentionally set out to preserve your friendship, it will connect you even more. It’ll show how much you care about each other when it’s tough, not just when you’re on top of each other.

Think about the things that you enjoy doing together and work out how they’ll translate at a distance. Even if you can’t sit and watch a show together, you can still debrief about Danny from McFly’s cheating allegations. No, you’re not going to be able to cook together, but that doesn’t mean you can’t sit and eat your garlic-bread-girl-dinner over FaceTime.

If you invent rituals for your new and evolved friendship that make you feel close – even if it’s a different kind of closeness than it was before – you’ll be just fine. So figure out what makes sense for you, and make it work at a distance.

Yours

Ex-pert