Speak Up. Reach Out is Freshered's mental health initiative.
Friends come in all shapes and sizes and stay for different amounts of time. You may have a best friend that you’ve known since you were in nappies, and they’ll still be your bestie when you’re back in nappies in your 90s. You might have a friend who you spent every lunch with at high school or spent all your frees with at university. But sometimes people and circumstances change, and people drift away. Here are a few tips on how to try to keep in touch with those friends who seem to be drifting away and potentially becoming strangers.
Initiate Conversations
Checking up on people more frequently can make them feel as though you really care and may make them more inclined to keep in touch. It has never been easier to reach out to people in your life, as you can text, call or even facetime them with just the click of a button.
If you haven’t spoken to someone for a while, it may be a bit much to facetime them out of the blue, so just shoot them a text. Just a message to let them know you have been thinking about them, asking what they are up to in their life, if they wish to meet up, etc.
It can really be as easy as that. Who knows, maybe they were thinking the same thing. If your friends are drifting way, who says they aren’t feeling the same about you?
Make Plans
Meeting up with people can be a great way to rekindle a dying friendship flame. With good friends, you can sit down after weeks, months and maybe even years apart and once you start talking, it is as though no time has passed at all.
Depending on you and your friend, you can organise a food date, maybe a cute brunch or sophisticated dinner. If you are into more active things, you could plan to go bowling or mini golf.
Whatever you choose, make sure it is something that you will both enjoy and makes the time together worthwhile.
Interact On Social Media
If texting or arranging a meet up is too forward, you can go the even easier route of using social media. You can start liking their posts and commenting, which will let them know you are interested in what they are up to.
When they post on their story, you can message them about it and start a dialogue. You can even add them into a group chat with other friends to make it less intense than a one-on-on-one.
But Remember…
Sometimes friendships aren’t meant to last forever and some friends drifting away is inevitable. People change and their prioritise shift and that is totally fine. You can change and take different paths in life and sometimes that can mean that you don’t have time for some people, or that you just don’t have as much in common as you used to.
If a friendship is authentically fizzling out, not due to any argument, but just because of life, maybe it is best to leave it. Obviously, this is your call to make from friendship to friendship but remember that some people might only need to be in your life for a few chapters, not the whole book.
