Dana Colomina

Kelly, Amy, Marisa, Eliza, Tyla, Anna, Kelsie. Those are the names of my closest long distance best friends. I met them across many periods of my life, from middle school to my New York City era post college. I love them with all my heart. But I still can’t help but feel like the radiance these relationships once possessed naturally begins to dim as time spent in person is reduced. 

I was talking to a few friends about this recently. Can you have a best friend in another state or country? The friends I was speaking to said yes, they currently have best friends in other countries. The friends I was speaking to are also all originally from different cultures and all hold quite different personalities, so I do think for the sake of my little survey, the demographics were decently well distributed. 

In our conversation I was the only person that thought that you cannot have a best friend in another state or country. Let me explain my thought process. I think it comes down to a version of your love language, or something similar, and what you want or need out of a best friend-type relationship. 

Of course, like many people, I enjoy receiving all love languages, that being said, quality time is very important to me. I discovered that in a bit of a reversed manner; the periods where I lacked quality time proved how critical it is to me. Perhaps it has something to do with my extroversion, but spending time with people generates so much energy for me that if I also love that person, whether it be as a best friend or otherwise, then I feel so full and alive post in-person time.

Personally, I can’t feel a strong connection with someone I am not spending time with in person. I feel somewhat better when I speak to loved ones on the phone, but it does not even begin to mirror the dopamine levels that are released in my brain when I can perceive someone with my eyes. The way I know this to be fact is because those people I mentioned above are people that I treasure dearly and even living in another country consistently make an effort to keep in touch. But it feels like work. I know that love and friendship is often work, but it really feels like work. I just want them to be here with me cooking dinner, sitting on the couch, and babbling about nonsense for hours on end. Rather, when we speak on the phone, it feels like a chore. I do laugh and feel warm affection for them while we speak, but afterwards I more so feel good that I accomplished the task, rather than gained connection. On the other hand, when I receive that quality time that I so crave, my mind is at ease, anxieties clouding my brain drift away, and I feel perfectly content. It is almost like a non-feeling of “wow, there is nothing to worry about and I can just enjoy.” For someone with an often concerned brain, this feels like a holiday.

Aside from one’s biological love language needs, my second point still remains unanswered. Whether one can retain a best friend in another state or country may very well depend on what one wants and needs from friendship. When speaking to those aforementioned friends, their needs in friendship were largely around having someone to talk to. I completely agree that I love telling my best friends everything, but I feel a void in my heart when I can’t experience life with them. Don’t get it twisted – this does not mean I require experiencing huge things with best friends all the time, like weddings or vacations, but the company of those you cherish makes mundane, day-to-day activities special. 

My friends and I are characteristically silly, weird, and probably annoying to the objective observer. But the way we make each other laugh in small daily moments is paramount to the depth of our feelings for one another and the trust in our relationship. I do believe it’s very possible to convey humor and affection over text or over the phone, but there is beauty in the middle, unexplainable moments. There is beauty in the tripping over the rug in the house and your best friend howling laughing. There is beauty in your best friend witnessing an unbearable interaction between you and a guy that is hitting on you at the bar. There is beauty in your best friend applying aloe to your back after you get wildly sunburned and drawing out letters in aloe for you to guess. These interactions build intimacy in the small moments that can’t be pinpointed, they build trust in a subliminal recognition that this person loves all of you and derives joy from experiencing the nuance of life with you.
I understand perfectly fine that people move away and it’s important to maintain those best friendships that first developed in person, once you both move onto the next chapter of your life. But I still maintain that although for me they remain friends that I love dearly, they may no longer fill the specific role of best friends. The best friends in my mind now are those that experience the nooks and crannies of humanhood with me regularly and embody the feeling of silly yet deep elation in the mundane.