Hello everyone! I am having an issue connecting with my best friend. We have been best friends since kindergarten (we are 22 now) and have generally always been long distance as we live in different towns (I moved away shortly after kindy). We have been there for each other through the hardest moments of our lives and consider each other family. Now she lives about 8 hours away from me so we rarely see each other but we still talk. My issue is that we don't have much to talk about anymore. We usually talk about the same memories over and over again or things that bother us. When we were teenagers there was always some new boy drama or friend drama to talk about, and now that we are adults (barely adults but adults nonetheless! ) we don't really have "exciting" things happening anymore. Just the usual work, bills, significant others and that's about it.
I know we are entering a different period in our lives and I don't want to lose my best friend because our lives are boring! We are still there for each other no matter what, but talking about the same things over and over again is definitely changing our friendship. She's even mentioned that she feels like we don't talk anymore, and we definitely don't as much as we used to! How can I salvage our friendship? I find it so easy to talk to my SO, why can't I find anything new to talk about with my best friend? I'm not sure if I can even ask this here seeing as neither one of us is a mom! I follow this blog and see so many great ideas from everyone, I'm hoping you can help! Thank you so much!
Having trouble connecting with best friend
Having trouble connecting with best friend
Posted in:
Relationships & Marriage, Sisterhood Stories
3 Replies
Do you have any common interests? The truth is though that all relationships go through this at some point. It sounds really normal because you are heading in to the stable phase of your lives. What really counts in a friendship is if you don't talk for a few months that you can pick up the phone and still no the friend will be there for you.
But if you can if organise a girls weekend together. Go away together, share an experience/adventure.
When you factor in the direction flights take, I live almost 4000km away from my best friend and have done so for the past 8 years (sucks), we've been the best of mates since we were 16 (22 years ago lol, we're so old) and have managed to maintain a strong relationship. First, there's always stuff to talk about. Work, opportunities, have-a-bitch-session (that is what best friends are for!) etc. We also talk about family, hers and mine, she asks how my partner and son are, I ask if she's met any one particular recently, we discuss mutual friends and how they're doing, pets, our community and mutual interests (for us it's music so new bands for the other to check out, upcoming gigs we dream about going to and planning big ones that we might just book holidays for to go). Which brings me to the next one. Catch up. Once every 12-18 months we catch up and usually behave quite poorly lol, gives us something to talk about next time. Whether it's catching up at her mums, attending a concert together or just the two of us booking a nice place and relaxing for a few days we always make that time to invest in our friendship.
I've two really long term friends (30+ years). Our friendship has gone from intense daily contact in our late teens and early 20's, to little contact while we all travelled and dated all over the world, to a more steady but infrequent phone fest (pre FB) as we established families. Once we hit 40 and we had a bit more $ and time we made a rule - when two gather the other must travel :) These girls weekends (with partners sometimes) are fantastic and have brought a new depth to our friendship. We are not day-to-day besties but we are the deepest of friends who trust each other completely and can discuss ANYTHING as we've known each other through all our tragedies and triumphs. Each of us live as far from each other as you can in Oz and still be on the mainland (about 4000km to each point of the triangle) and we still FB and phone between visits. Keep trying - your long term female friendships are what can save you when the going gets toughest :)