How Good Are You at Staying in Touch?
I ask this because I’m not, really. Friends I actually still value for their contribution to my life I don’t always stay in touch with. It can be sparse at best, or non-existent in worse cases.
I don’t talk to them… but I still think about them. I can’t say that I properly miss them, because the urge and draw isn’t there… but I do think about them.
And with the number of people we meet as TCKs, there’s no possible way to keep in good touch with all of them.
But nevertheless you wonder if your friendships suffer as a result. It mean, it’s fine and dandy to say “Even though we don’t talk, if we met up it’d be like we never left”, but it hasn’t always been that way, and I wonder if it ever really is.
I have friends who were once very, very close, but who I don’t feel comfortable in conversation with anymore. Over the years, our lives went in different directions.
I ask about this because having just left a place where I love so many people, I wonder if it’ll last.
Daniel Nguyen-Phuoc
Vietnamese in ethnicity, born in Houston, Texas. Lived in Jakarta, Indonesia for 14 years while going to a British International School to finish with the International Baccalaureate. Survived only two years in the University of Michigan before ending up in Switzerland. Graduated from an international (and that's meant in every word) hospitality college. Interesting life, to be sure. But not the only one.Related Posts
8 Comments to “How Good Are You at Staying in Touch?”
April 6th, 2008 at 9:32 pm
I feel the same way. Actually I think you put it in much better words than I have. I think about those who I hold close to me all the time, however there are many I haven’t spoken too in at least 2 years, if not 5 or 10. I sometimes wonder whether they have forgotten me, if I just remember them because I’m so used to having to remember people. But I’m horrible at keeping in touch. I tell my friends that practically when I meet them “one day I’ll be somewhere else and I’m REALLY bad at keeping in touch so you’ll have to be REALLY good at it”… and some of them are!
Over the past year or so I’ve attempted to make myself a lot better at keeping in touch than I have been in the past. It’s worked out fairly well, especially with other TCKs (I think we all know that we’re bad at keeping in touch so we try extra hard with each other). Plus, I kind of think that with TCKs it can be like what you said:
“even though we don’t talk, if we met up it’d be like we never left”
although I have had the same experience as you in terms of not relating.
I think all in all I just hope that those who are really the most important in my life will somehow make it through the instability. Some people have and I cherish their friendship. The others, while they are great friends at the moment, are maybe not meant to be great friends for a lifetime. They can teach you a lot and bring you hapiness but at one point you have to let them go because ultimately, they will probably let you go too. That’s how I see it, but maybe it’s just a self defense mechanism.
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April 6th, 2008 at 11:30 pm
It took me several years to learn how to keep in contact, and to be honest if it wasnt for the internet I just wouldn’t be able to do it.
I have had several ‘best friends’ over the years, but to be honest after I left I did try to keep in contact, but it really is a two way thing.
You learn to cut your losses, I never waste my time on someone who wont save any time for me. Someone you spent everyday with, for months, and they dont bother with emails, phonecalls, meeting up when your in the country, it just gives too much heartache. So now I only spend time on people who spend time too. Unfortunately, it means alot of people I cared for dont keep in contact at all, or barely at all.
of course, the most important people usually do.
It took alot of practice to learn to keep in contact, it was very hard at first, I had to conciously think ok now I’m going to go and write emails to people or something, but after a while it became second nature really. also, you dont always have to send really long emails, you can just send little ones here and there to remind the person you are alive, and they send them back,
i have actually found its almost having a really drawn out chat!! I have used email as a kind of msn thing, jsut sending a line of conversation in each, and this can last up to a month! it’s quite odd, but it works.
I think keeping in contact is not how often you message, or contact, but in keeping the connection between you and that other person, and that only needs little things here and there, which is much better than an incr4edibly enourmous email once a month.
thats just how I feel about it though. Maybe I will have a new system in a few months!!
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April 7th, 2008 at 12:04 am
I use emails like an msn too- especially when I’m in a country where I don’t have internet at home/all day long…it’s worked pretty well with some of my friends.
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April 7th, 2008 at 2:11 am
I’m like this too. I’ve met so many different people in my life who I thought were really cool, but when it comes to keeping in touch with thousands of miles between is tough for me. It’s not that I don’t care about them, I think about them a lot! But it’s just that I am too lazy to write a long email describing what’s going in my life. I’d rather talk to them consistently and that way I don’t have to write such long emails, letters, etc. but it doesn’t always work out that way. I’ve even done this with my family abroad, which I would like to change, but know I won’t. I usually only talk to them when they happen to call my parents (they never really call ME, per se), or when I call them. OR, even worse, when I see them and I don’t even know when that will be. (my grandma cried the last time because of this)
What I’ve found to have helped is facebook, oddly enough. I’ve found one of my favorite cousins on there that I had lost touch with, some old friends, etc. It at least helps that I have a way of staying in touch with them, and I can know what’s going on in their lives, and vice versa.
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April 7th, 2008 at 4:31 am
Prior to facebook I never kept in touch with anyone I was absolutley horrible about it, by my 4th country (grade 9) I didn’t even really try to keep in touch with the people around me, and am still trying to keep in touch with those that go to the same school as me that I no longer take classes with.
I’m fairly odd as far as TCKids go in that I did have a place I felt was a home base, but it wasn’t a country or a city, it was just a summer camp that I went to every year (going back for year 14 this year, as staff now obviously). No matter where in the world I was I knew that come summer I would be going back “home” to camp. Even the friends I made at camp I found that I didn’t keep in touch with over the school year, although I talked about camp frequently.
Facebook has probably been what has helped me start to get back into contact with alot of my friends, I have friends on facebook that I haven’t seen in as much as 12 years that I still talk to on a semi-regular basis. I do feel as if I don’t always have lots to talk about with them but just knowing that they are TCKids as well gives us common ground to talk about
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April 7th, 2008 at 8:40 pm
Tony,
I feel the same way about summers. My whole life I always went back to my town in the south of france, where my grandparents lived and where my dad lived starting when I was 7. For me, this is “home” even though I haven’t returned in 5 years.
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April 8th, 2008 at 9:13 am
i’m like you dan, i am a bit useless with keeping in touch, thank god for facebook. but even then…
on the one hand, i don’t see it as that big of a deal. i figure, we’ll link up sometime again so lets not push it. on the other hand i know it can hurt the person on the other side if i don’t write or call.
i also feel a bit shitty when it is a really good friend i lose touch with (and i make a concerted effort not to do that anymore because i have found out that the older i grow the more precious my friendships are and the harder it is to make real friendships) but i have also been in situations where i have grown apart from really good friends while we lived in the same town. so sometimes it was just meant to be.
but i must say am proud of myself because my really close friends i have known forever. out of my 5 bridesmaids i have known one of them since i was 11 (so 20 + years) 2 of them since i was 13, and the other 2 for about 5 or 6 years. i think that when i feel a proper connection with someone, we both make sure to keep connected enough (sometimes we go months without anything) to always be able to call each other good friends.
it helps when your friends live in really aweome places. then you WANT to go visit them!
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April 8th, 2008 at 5:13 pm
I’m actually pretty good at keeping in touch and try to email people every so often or catch them on IMs or if they’re in town catch them. Even if it means once a year.
I think this stems from the many letters I wrote while growing up to penpals. And it just became a habit to keep in touch but this was before the internet days.
I’ve stopped writing letters since the internet era took over people’s lives LOL
I believe strongly in this thing called 缘分 (Yuan Fen) which is a Chinese way of saying predestined relationships. If you have “yuan” you and the people you meet will eventually meet again at some point in the future and I believe that all of us have some degree of “yuan” with others regardless of how much you know each other.
I think as TCKs it is definitely difficult to keep in touch and remain “involved” in other people’s lives but instead of focusing on trying to be “involved” I think we should focus more on the relationships we have with these people. That shouldn’t stop us from keeping in touch.
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