Keeping the Ball in the Air: Contact in Long-Distance Friendships

ABSTRACT

As people continue to be more mobile, maintenance behaviors for long-distance friendships will continue to be a part of the relocation experience. In this qualitative study, 25 women age 45 and over, who had relocated a number of times, were asked to talk about how their friendships had transitioned to being long-distance relationships and what current maintenance behaviors entailed. Communication was a major theme involving electronic mail (e-mail), Christmas cards, telephone calls, and visits. Results from the current study suggest that maintaining the perception of the existence of a well-connected social support system could be accomplished with a single, annual contact. Further, the long-distance friendship biographies explored in this study provided characteristics of friendship maintenance behavior that could be grouped into three main categories forming a proposed typology of long-distance friendship maintenance.

KEYWORDS:

• Women friendships
• relocation
• communication
• friendship maintenance
• typology