Friends come and go but it doesn’t always have to be that way. I’m not referring about a friend as someone you have a common interest with or work with or that you’ve known for a while. My point here is to foster and maintain relationships strong with the few people you can call real friends, they are someone you’ve known for at least a few years and have a deeper connection rather than simply an activity in common or shared political views. A true friend doesn’t have to be like you but he must be interesting.
When you are physically close
Living close to your friends makes maintaining friendships easy. Social bonding are stronger when done in person, thus you just need to both find time to see each other. That doesn’t mean you should meet as often as possible, but you should do so at a frequent enough rate, between once a week and once a quarter. The longer the period without seeing each other, the heavier the encounter needs to be: a daily morning coffee, a weekly drink after work, a monthly movie and restaurant night, a quarterly week-end retreat.
Where you are physically far
Distance isn’t a friendship-killer as long as you’re fighting against it. You should still see your friends that live far once or twice per year. You can go to their place for a few days then have them come to yours for a few days, as simple as that, given you’re within a 1000km radius. Another great reunion ritual you can have for bigger distances is to go on holidays together once a year. Two friends living in California and France can meet half-way in New York, Florida, Guadeloupe, Quebec, Brazil, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia.
When you are digitally close
Sending each other messages from time to time is good basis but the digital allows for more: you can chat over a video call, watch something live together, play video games. Even though it won’t feel as intense as in real life, you’ll still both get a lasting positive feeling that you’ve done something with that person. Having your characters high five in-game is better than a high five emoji.