Friendship Tips During a Pandemic: A Panel of Experts

Yesterday I hosted a room on Clubhouse—an audio-only app that is still in beta—where I invited two other friendship authors to join me in sharing some of our best tips for fostering healthy friendships even when we’re socially distancing, remote-working, and unable to rely on our normal activities to bring us together. To make the wisdom more easily accessible, I jotted down the tips that we all shared based on some of the latest research, our experiences, and countless interviews with so many of you as we hear what’s working, or not.

May one of these nuggets help inspire you as you continue leaning into the friendships that we all so very much need— now, and anytime!

If you’re on Clubbhouse, come follow us at @ShastaMNelson, @whatsupsmiley, and @Katvellos

Kat Vellos, Author of “We Should Get Together”

• “Add Variety to Your Methods of Interacting!” Try not to rely on only one way of communicating right now— whether that be only zoom, texting, or social media. “The more you can add a variety of ways of interacting— such as writing a heartfelt letter, sending a surprise gift, or going for a walk while talking on the phone, the better it will feel to each of you and the stronger your relationship will be for all the additional ways you can reach out to each other. “You don’t want your relationship to live in only one place!”

• “Ask Better Questions!” We know from research how powerful curiosity is to our relationships so practice asking more open-ended, warm, and inviting questions about new topics! Let’s practice giving permission for our friends to talk about the things that really matter by asking “What is something you haven’t yet had the chance to talk to someone about? I’m available for really listening!” Or, follow up on something you saw on social media by writing, “I’ve been loving all your pictures of hiking, I’d love to talk more with you about our relationships to nature!” Or, replace ”How Are you?” with one of these questions that will help you better communicate either your warm wish or your sincere desire to have a deeper conversation!

• “Experiment with More Unscheduled Connecting.” For many, the idea of being scheduled for a call can leave us feeling more drained than the delight that might come from a “surprise” call. While typically both agreeing to a time can help make the connecting happen, if you’re feeling too tired or like life is too full, try suggesting “windows of time” to a friend such as “I’m free anytime on Sunday between 2-4, feel free to call when you want!” and letting it be a bit more spontaneous.

Adam (Smiley) Poswolsky, Author of “Friendship in the Age of Loneliness”

• “Show Up As a Connector for Your People!” Your friends and network have a lot of needs now that we can easily fill online— from connecting them to each other, to sharing resources with them, to introducing them to a potential job, or to sharing with them a favorite recipe! Be known among your friends as a “matchmaker” who wants to help them. The act of generosity will not only strengthen the bonds of your relationship and leave others feeling more supported, but helping others is one of the best ways to feel less lonely!

• “Learn with Others!” Join a class, a group, a mastermind, or a program where you have the consistency with other people as you all share a common goal. Learning— whether it’s for cooking, music, writing, or business— can be invigorating and fun, while also giving us the opportunity to connect with others on a regular basis so can forge new friendships.

• “Reconnect with 3-5 People!” Write down the names of a handful of people who you want to feel more connected to and put it somewhere you can see it so you are consistently reminded of your priorities and your desire. Seeing their names will help trigger you to reach out to them more often.

Shasta Nelson, Author of “Frientimacy”

• “Be Intentional to Add Positive Emotions.” During the last year, as I’ve been tracking the health of relationships, the biggest drop has been in Positivity— which is not only one of the 3 requirements of every meaningful relationship, but is the one that motivates us to want to be in relationship: we want to feel more love, more enjoyment, more support, more empathy, and more hope. We reach out to others in order to feel better, we want friends with hopes that we’ll feel happier, we spend time with people in order to enjoy ourselves. So let’s not just “hope” it happens but interact with people with the intention of at least starting and ending every conversation by adding some positive emotion with expressing our gratitude, our appreciation, or our love. The more we can explicitly state that we like the other person and leave them feeling seen and appreciated, the more they will want to connect with us!

• “Prioritize fewer relationships over trying to stay in touch with everyone.” If energy is limited, then give yourself permission to simply identify the relationships that feel most meaningful to deepen and sustain right now. It is way more meaningful to have deeper, more heartfelt connections right now with the people you love and trust than to have “updating” calls with everyone. And the good news while we’re all connected via technology is that our long-distance friends can play a big role in caring for our hearts now that proximity isn’t expected for get-togethers!

• “Practice Vulnerability that makes space for both highlights and lowlights.” If your friendships tend to easily go to what’s not feeling good these days, honor those feelings, but maybe then make time in the conversation to say, “Hey before we go, let’s both also share something that we’re proud of ourselves for doing recently?” Giving permission to still celebrate and feel good is so important even in the midst of pain. And similarly, keep giving permission to share what’s hard and stressful in each of our lives even if it’s “not as bad as what someone else is going through.” Our pain and stress doesn’t need to be minimized as much as it needs to be validated!

These are all shared with hopes that you will keep leaning into the friendships that matter most to your life right now. Big hugs!!

And if you’re on Clubhouse, be sure to join me for a Friendship Q/A next Tuesday, March 9 at 11 am PST/2pm EST.

How to Reconnect with an Old Friend When You’ve Been Out of Touch

"Losing touch with our friends" is one of the most common regrets of people at the end of their lives. But here at GirlFriendCircles, we don't want that regret! We know that our relationships are investments-- and that we have to stay in touch with some of those people we've developed the most frientimacy with in order to keep the benefits feeling supportive, safe, and satisfying. Huge thanks to GFC member and rock star counselor, Tricia Andor, for sharing her story as encouragement to us all! May we each take the time to reach out to a friendship that matters! -- Shasta

The Reconnection That Almost Didn’t Happen

By Tricia Andor

I returned Dawn’s call on a Tuesday, and we reconnected for two hours of talking and laughing. We hadn’t spoken for three years, which is just part of the rhythm of our friendship. Sometimes we’re in-touch, sometimes we’re not. Maybe that’s bound to happen when you’ve been friends since preschool, but it’s a cadence that’s always been fine with me, and I think fine with her too.

After our conversation, a delightful little thought started percolating. It would be great to connect in person. Dawn should come out this weekend for a visit! The weekend was only three days away, she lived nine hours away (in Nebraska), and it was Easter Weekend, so there were possibly a few obstacles.

However, I knew my friend well, and quickly marked off each potential hindrance.

Dawn was actually a fan of last-minute get together plans. We’d done the last minute “wanna do lunch today?” countless other times, even when we lived an hour away in different towns. Check! I knew she didn’t exactly live on a shoestring budget, so the expense of a trip likely wouldn’t be an issue. Check! And, she wasn’t that into organized religion, so it seemed unlikely that she’d have conflicting religious commitments for the Easter weekend. Check!

Every obstacle -- crossed off!

Well, every obstacle that is, except one.

There was one last annoyance nipping at my heels: Connection Perfection.

The Voice of Connection Perfection

Connection Perfection sidled up and quietly whispered:

“You’ve lived here one and a half years and you still have unpacked boxes under the stairs? Sheesh.” “What? You haven’t even painted or decorated the bathrooms yet?!” And then, going for the jugular: “(Gasp!) You have no baseboards! Still?”

Connection Perfection caused me to fear that Dawn would look at my not-quite-finished home and conclude that I was inadequate. It made me want to chuck the delightful idea of inviting her out like a hot potato.

Connection Perfection is not our ally. It makes us think we’ve got to get our life perfect before we reconnect with an old friend. It makes us feel nervous, inadequate, and sometimes even ashamed.

It says things like, you’ve got to write the perfect email to reconnect. Or, you have to lose weight before she sees you. Or, don’t even think about having people over unless your house looks like it belongs on Pinterest.

Solutions

No need to fear, though. We can outmaneuver Connection Perfection!

Here are the 3 things I did that you can do too:

• Think about your actual experience with your friend. Has she ever been anything other than happy or receptive to receive an invitation from you to connect? Has she ever been critical of your emails, your body, your home, etc. in the past? Does she expect perfection from you?

• Surround yourself with people who are also exercising courage in their friendships. I’ve read Shasta’s books and am a member of GFC, and both reminded me that it’s perfectly normal to feel a little nervous when extending an invitation. They gave me the support I needed to follow my instincts and invite my friend out for a visit.

• Distinguish the feelings that come from Connection Perfection from those that come from excitement. Both can elicit feelings of nervousness, hesitation, or fear. Connection Perfection, however, also tends to bring with it negative appraisals like, “I’m going to be judged,” “I’m going to be exposed for the fraud I am,” or “She’ll see me as inadequate.” It tacitly expects our friend to be a harsh, unforgiving judge, whereas the excitement brings hope and possibility. “That’ll be fun,” or “Something great is about to happen” are the appraisals of excitement.

My Outcome

I invited Dawn for the visit. She flew out, and we packed in activities and connecting, and had a fabulous time.

Tricia, in between her husband, and her friend, Dawn

We laughed and talked personal growth and politics at the dining room table. During my husband’s and her golf game, we chatted and laughed uproariously while zipping from hole to hole in our golf cart. We went out for dessert and caught up about our families. She, my husband, and I lounged Saturday morning, watching favorite comedy bits on Youtube. We meandered around a fine art gallery, and made ourselves at home in two cubist leather chairs in the middle of the room, swapping sordid stories about a few choice teachers we’d had growing up.

Best of all, Dawn and I got to connect face-to-face at this point in our lives. A lot had gone on in three years. I showed her my new town and home we’d moved to, she shared about her divorce, and I got to meet her new boyfriend through FaceTime.

There’s no one in the world like Dawn, and certainly no one who has her place in my life. She’s incredibly quick-witted, upbeat, and expects that situations will turn out for the best and life will be good. She’s the most self-confident, least neurotic person I know.

The whole weekend, Dawn -- of course -- didn’t have one iota of judgment about any not-yet-finished aspect of my home. On the contrary, I just felt supported, known, and believed in. I can’t believe I might have let Connection Perfection keep me from building all of these rich new memories with such a good, long-term friend -- a friend who, by the way, was too busy connecting with me to even notice, let alone care about my non-existent baseboards.  

Dawn sent me a thank you right after her visit

---

Tricia Andor: With a master’s degree in clinical psychology and sixteen years experience as a Licensed Professional Counselor, Tricia Andor uses the best psychology-based tools to help smart, caring people-pleasers get more time, energy, and self-confidence. Get her free guide, How to Say "No" Without Being a Selfish Jerk. 

How to Deepen the Long-Distance Friendship

Unfortunately, many, if not most, of the people we claim as our best friends don't live near us. I haven't seen statistics to back up that claim, but since we're moving, on average, every 5 years, I think it's safe to say that chances are high that we have moved away from friends we've loved dearly. And all too often, it doesn't matter how many monthly lunches with local friends we schedule, it's hard to feel as close to them as we do with those long-distance friends with whom we once logged massive hours getting to know every day in school, at that job, or when we lived as roommates.

For those of you familiar with my 5 Circles of Friends-- I call these dear friends our "Con

firmed Friends" and they frequently reside in the middle circle because we are too intimate with them to warrant them being on the more casual left-side, but we often aren't as consistent with them as we'd need to be to feel as close to them as we do with our right-side friends. This post is about how to move them to the right, into greater frientimacy.

How to Deepen the Friendship

So what if you actually want to develop a closer relationship with these long-distance friends? What if you want to keep building the friendship, rather than just do the minimum to maintain it? What it you want to feel like you know what's going on in each others lives more often than your infrequent phone calls or more deeply than what you can read on social media?

There are three requirements to all healthy relationships, as I teach in Frientimacy: How to Deepen Friendships for Lifelong Health and Happiness:

1. Positivity: The relationship, to be meaningful and healthy, must bring more joy and satisfaction than exhaustion or stress, in fact research suggests we need to keep the ratio above 5:1.
2. Consistency: The relationship, to be meaningful and healthy, must be repetitive and have some regularity to it because this developing history is what fosters our trust in each other.
3. Vulnerability: The relationship, to be meaningful and healthy, must incrementally and appropriately increase in sharing as our consistency increases with each other. It is through vulnerability that we feel seen and known.

And they are just as true for long-distance friends as they are for local friends. (Bonus: They also are the same three requirements for starting friendship as they are for deepening it!)

Specific Ideas for Applying the 3 Requirements to Our Long-Distance Friendships

I can guarantee that any relationship that isn’t feeling as meaningful as we want is because at least one of these three requirements is lacking.

So how we can practice these three requirements from a distance?

Positivity:

• Send an encouraging card: Take 5 minutes to send a little tangible love through the postal system telling your friend why you admire her.
• Recall a good memory: Find an old photo of you and your friend that will bring a smile to your faces, and text it to her with a little note of gratitude for the history you two share.
• Refrain from giving advice: Most of the time, when we’re sharing, we just want validation and affirmation.  Advice can leave us feeling judged or defensive. When you do have time to share, make a point to respond to her in a way that leaves her feeling better about who she is and how she’s navigating her life.

Consistency:

• Embrace texting: Even the shortest text exchange in between get-togethers reminds us gives us the sense of the other person being close. When you think of her— text her and tell her.
• Schedule a regular time to catch-up: We feel far away from long-distance friends when so much time has passed in between conversations that we’re convinced it would take hours to catch-up. Instead, see if she’s up for scheduling a reoccurring 30 minute call every 1st Monday evening of the month, or every Sunday afternoon.
• Prioritize the Slumber Parties: We don’t need as much consistency to maintain friendships as when we are building them, but it is still in time together that we can create new memories; so no matter how broke we are, or how busy we feel, we have to visit each other to protect and deepen the love we've already developed. These overnighters can be a game-changer for deepening that relationship.

  

Vulnerability:

• Get to the heart of the matter quickly: We may not talk to, or see, our long-distance friends as often so let’s not waste our time by asking all the typical update questions and risk us not sharing what really matters. Instead, suggest, “I know we don’t have a ton of time, but maybe we can each share one highlight and one lowlight since we’ve each see each other?” By leaving it open-ended, we give each person the chance to share in the life areas they want to, while inviting honesty.
• Risk being an "inconvenience": We so often talk ourselves out of calling each other when we feel down because we don’t want to be a burden or intrude on their busy lives, but it’s only by calling and saying “I just needed a friend” that we will feel the benefit of having a good friend, give her the permission to call when she needs, and help bond the relationship deeper by letting her help.
• Invite her "bragging": Part of vulnerability is sharing what we're proud of... this can be hard because none of us want to be seen as bragging.  So make it easier and ask her: "Share with me something you're really proud of these days?"

Just because there are miles between us doesn't mean that we can't keep developing these friendships.  In fact, because we've invested so much in each other at one time-- and have the benefit of already feeling close to each other-- we're smart to do everything we can to protect those investments!

What other ideas have you tried? What sounds meaningful to you?

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