Renowned author C.S. Lewis once said, “Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another ‘What! You Too? I thought I was the only one.’”
This sentiment couldn’t be more true with military spouse friendships. These friendships are forged fast, strong and built on a shared lifestyle that makes us outliers to the rest of the population. With family and other friends far out of reach, military friends stand by your side through some of life’s best and worst moments, including deployments, promotions, weddings, childbirths, graduations and unfortunately even deaths.
So what happens when that inevitable day comes and the moving vans pull away from your current duty station and heads towards the next? Do you leave those friendships and memories behind? No way! While maintaining military friendships across the miles may take more effort than just walking down the street to your BFF’s house, these unique relationships are worth maintaining.
There are lots of ways that you can continue to feed these relationships from a far using technology and some good, old-fashioned attentiveness!
1. Schedule Video-Chat Dates
Skype and Facetime are the next best thing to being in the same room as your best friends. When we lived in close proximity, we never missed an opportunity to celebrate milestones, throwing each other birthday parties, baby showers and more. Once we moved to the country’s four corners –plus Hawaii! – we continued to celebrate from afar with virtual baby showers and video-chat dates.
Leading up to our virtual baby showers, we order our presents to be delivered to the mama-to-be, and then on a pre-defined date and time, we all jump on Skype and watch her open the presents – just like we would if we were in the same room! Coordinating schedules and time zones can sometimes be a challenge, but it is all worth it once you see your best pals’ smiling faces on the other side of that screen! These virtual times together give us all a chance to celebrate, catch up, and refill our heart’s metaphorical friendbank.