Parenting, as we all know, is relentless. Our to-do lists never end and the mental labor is exhausting. So my question for this week’s thread is this: What do you do to maintain your friendships? How do you stay in touch with your friends, and how do you make the time to see them?
I have a couple of group text threads that are basically my lifelines. I have one with friends from grad school that is the first thing I look at when I wake up and the last thing I look at when I go to sleep. We are constantly venting, asking each other questions, sharing concerns, being silly — and it’s the best thing ever, even though I so rarely get to see these friends in real life (though we do get together at least once a year for a weekend away).
I admit, though, that I’m not as a great about maintaining in-person friendships with friends who live close by. I will think to myself, “I need to reach out to so-and-so to see if she’s free for lunch!” … and then three months will go by and oops, I never did reach out, and then I feel really guilty. I am not sure why this is so hard for me, but it is.
So today I’m wondering what you do to keep your friendships going, whether they’re with friends who live far away or friends who live close by. How do you stay connected? How do you make time to hang out (and/or remember to schedule outings)? What have you found has worked well for you? Or… what do you struggle with? Please share!
I’m old-fashioned, but email. My best friend and I exchange long, long emails that cover everything. As in, when I had an issue where I was being pursued by debt collectors for allegedly having profited from a Ponzi scheme years ago, I was able to read my old emails with her and find a mention of my credit card having been compromised and having to get it canceled and replaced, and use that to track down proof that the card had been used by someone else even though by that time Amex had purged its fraud records.
We hardly ever get to see each other — she has kids and a husband who is traveling for work three weeks out of four, so either she can’t leave her kids or she would like the rare chance to spend time with her husband — but the emails mean that when we do, we are completely caught up and can just go forward rather than spending all our time backtracking.
As a local friend who loves to get lunch with you, just here to say A. available and B. not at all offended we don't do it more often because life! (But I do feel very in touch with you, even if it's the more casual touchpoints of kid/dog/work stuff.) I also swear by the group texts and having some regular reasons to get together with local friends -- maybe we need a standing monthly or bimonthly dinner date??