Long Distance Friendships & My Inner Circle

I grew up in Minnesota my whole life. I spent my first 18 years there and made the best friends a girl could ever ask for – many of which I am still extremely close to. I then attended Notre Dame where I met students from all over the world. I knew 2 acquaintances that also went to ND, but besides that I knew not a single person. Unlike some state schools, most people at ND weren’t from the area, so people would spit out states or high schools they went to and, well, no one knew anything anyone was saying. We were all strangers, and I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything. After Notre Dame, I moved to Washington DC where I again didn’t know a single person. I moved into a house with four strangers all of which hold such a special piece of my heart because they helped me grow in ways I didn’t even know I needed to grow in (a post for another time). I left Washington DC and moved to Chicago to start graduate school. I knew more people in the Chicago area, but again started school with strangers from all over the country. Finally, my fiancé and I moved to Dallas, and besides one friend, we knew not a soul.

With each move, I accumulated more and more friends, strangers became family, and slowly but surely, countless cities across the country felt like home. With each move, I know that I will get an open invitation to form new friendships and foster new relationships. However, with each move I also constantly have to be far from new friendships and loved ones. This can be a tough scenario to find yourself in: expanding your circle, practicing long-distance friendship, and remaining open to connection.

Over the years, I have learned to latch on to and lean into long distance friendships- it’s something I have simply had to do in order to stay close to so many people I have grown to adore across the country and world.  It’s almost heartbreaking leaving people year after year, but I have learned to see the true gift in all of the chaos. What a treat it is to find best friends in all corners of the world. And what a challenge it is to learn how best to communicate, appreciate, and love different kinds of people thousands of miles away.

The honest truth about distance is this: you learn quickly who you are going to stay close to, and who puts in the energy to stay close to you. I feel like the old saying “you’ll find out who your real friends are” is often said with a negative undertone. However, I am saying it with a refreshing and out-of-your-control connotation.  It’s not so much the fact you “lose” friendships, but truthfully you simply continue to talk often with some, and less often with others. None of this is good or bad, its simply fact. You may not keep in touch with some people for 4-6 months and when you hang out during a holiday break, you pick up right where you left off; the shared humor is still there, they still have their small quirks that feel cozy to you, and you are able to piece words together for hours and hours and hours just like old times. Others, it feels a little bit more forced, you have developed new lives that seem just a bit too distant from your previous friendship, and you piece words together for maybe an hour before you’re kind of ready to be done with the dinner; it’s still an important relationship to have, it is still serving you, but it’s just different.

Let me repeat myself, none of this is bad. This is reality. You will stay close with some people, and not so much with others. In fact, anthropologist and psychologist Robin Dunbar looked into social networks and the layers of closeness we have. He found that our most intimate layer of connectedness, the most emotionally close and meaningful layer can consist of roughly 5 people. The next layer consists of 10 people, the third consists of 35, and finally our most outer layer can consist of about 100. This simply means that we as humans have the capacity to have many people in our lives (~150), but only 5 are actually deeply and intimately connected to us. Only FIVE! Now some of you are like “But Marisa, I have a million friends shut up.” Sure, that’s probably true! But generally, we as humans very much have a limit to the number of true and legitimate intimate relationships we can handle at any given time. And I suppose I should make this crystal clear: these “layers” are NOT a hierarchy. The most intimate layer does not directly correlate to your top 5 best friends in the world, or the people who will stand by you on your wedding day, or the people that will be the godparents to your children. The inner circle means that at any given point, we as a human being only have the capacity to share ourselves abundantly with a few people. These people can change with seasons, can ebb and flow, and may in fact change all together throughout the years.

For years I tried to stretch my “5” to 20 people. Having found so many people to love with each move and new experience, I just wanted to expand my inner circle, rather than critically analyze it and adjust expectations. I wanted to stay up to date on 20 people’s lives, I wanted to share my life with 20 people, I felt the need to call 20 people every week to stay in touch, the list goes on and on. Though this may be possible for a brief moment, it is not sustainable (at least for me, and I presume most everyone else). It slowly makes those close to me actually feel less connected. It makes those close to me feel less meaningful. That inner layer of meaning, connectedness, and emotional vulnerability actually becomes muddied and gray and diluted of meaning. Then compound this with the inherent challenge of keeping in touch with people who are far from you.. well, you see how this can get very messy and confusing and fragile, quite quickly.

So, throughout the years, I have learned to be gentle and accepting of my relationships with others. I have found 5-10 people that have consistently remained my inner layer for years. I keep in extremely close contact with another 10, say happy birthday to the next 35, and simply think about and send good vibes to the other 100. I only have so much time and emotional space to allow so many people into any given part of my life. And that is ok.

Now, how do you deal with shifts in these layers. How do you look back 5 years and realize that someone who used to be in that most intimate layer is now actually in the “100” layer. That must be a painful reality to experience, right? WRONG. Again, for years, I was like “Oh my gosh, she was my best friend in high school, and now I just send good vibes to her once a year?? What the hell is that! I want to be best friends with her again!” But, with distance, and life, and everything else, there will be shifts. Yes, some friends since first grade will literally remain in the inner circle until you guys are 90 years old. That’s a special and unique kind of friendship. However, most people fall in and out of layers, and we all (yes, me too) need to accept and lean into this, rather than fight it. Some seasons of life, that inner circle will consist of one single person. In really scary seasons of life, you may not feel like anyone is in your inner circle. Other times, it may feel like 10 people are. Your inner circle in college may look 100% different than your inner circle now. That is ok! If you are naturally letting your emotional energy and intimate connectedness be where it feels it needs to be, despite knowing that person for a month, or for 10 years, I think you are doing it right. 

So, today, who are your five? Ask yourself that same question in a month. Is it the same or different? Whatever the answer might be, it’s ok. Ask yourself that same question in a year. Is it the same or different? Whatever the answer might be, it’s ok. Are your friends in the same city as you? Is that what you need to feel intimately close to them? That’s ok. Does distance make your heart grow fonder, and you find that you aren’t feeling connected to a single person in your new city? That’s ok too. Lean into it, adjust when you have to, and remain open to change.

Remember, it’s never “losing” friends, it’s honoring your emotional capacity to share yourself abundantly and meaningfully in whatever season of life you find yourself.

Rooting for you.

Marisa