Hi everyone,
I met a friend through a game last July. We started off only chatting in-game, but moved to using Discord after getting to know each other a bit. Since then, we’ve chatted pretty much everyday and have nearly 200k messages sent between the two of us.
He’s become one of my closest friends, and I can’t imagine how my life would be without him. But I feel like we’ve reached a point in our friendship where we’ve shared so much about our lives and interests that we struggle to come up with new topics to talk about.
Although I don’t mind just chatting about random stuff in our lives, I kinda miss the deep/emotional conversations we had early on. We’ve resorted a few times to looking up lists of topics or questions to ask each other but forcing conversation just feels artificial and boring. Our best conversations have always flowed naturally from one topic to another. I feel silly writing about this after just one year, with many people having friendships that last their entire lives.
Unfortunately my friend is in Europe and I live in the US, so it’s not likely we’ll meet up anytime soon… Anyone with similar experience with keeping a friendship feeling fun and exciting, particularly long-distance ones, I’d really appreciate if you could share your stories!
2 comments
First things first, because you are long distance, you are not a huge priority in this person’s life. It’s a cold harsh truth but you need to accept it going forward. But you can still be a good friend to this person. Here’s how.
First, Strive to interact face to face on a video call once in a while as opposed to simply just text messaging. People will always subconsciously associate you with your face to face interactions. They represent who you are and what kind of social skills you really have. You will stand out considerably from lots of people who only text/message. Face to face interactions give people a strong impression of you, especially your positive vibes. People remember those kinds of things.
Find ways to add to this person’s life. What are your skills, hobbies, talents ? Can they benefit this person in any way or form ? Offer to help them in some aspect of life. People look up to those who bring value and directly impact their lives.
Finally, don’t spend every single day obsessing and talking to this person. Don’t get attached to the other person. A lot of people ruin their friendships because they get needy and desperate and chase the other other person for their time, attention, validation, reassurance, approval, especially when that other person isn’t giving those things for whatever reason. Avoid this major mistake. This person as I said is not going to be talking to you all the time and is probably busy now with other priorities. You should be genuinely busy yourself. Don’t obsess over that person. Pursue your own goals and hobbies and talk to other people on the side besides just this one person. Find something you enjoy and keep doing that overtime. People are hardwired to be repulsed by neediness and desperation. They gravitate towards those who are self confident and are well rounded in life such that they are not so dependent on other people. Chase excellence, not people.
It’s very difficult tbh. Even in person friendships get to that point, of not seeing each other daily. At the moment you can vibe in the voice server, you can keep adding games to play together, and even sharing daily pics of interesting things you saw on the internet or on the street that day, but it’s hard to keep that momentum going for the long run, unless one moves to the others location because there is limits of what you can do online. I’m guessing one stays up late at night to chat? That also might also affect things. I’m not saying your friendship will end! I’m just saying that, from personal experience, friendships tend to mature and the old 3-4 hours daily convs, turns into a once in a while couple hour catch up (or gaming session).