If you move away you have to accept that friends may not visit you regularly

[OnlyLoveCanBreakYourHeart]

My best friend is moving out of the area. I will visit her, but we won't see as much of each other as we do now. Last time we met she went through her friends list and said she thinks most people will visit her regularly. I didn't say this to her, maybe I should have done, but I have another friend who I am no longer in contact with who also moved away and thought friends would visit her. None of our group are in contact with her anymore, it's just too far to go for a day trip. It's hard enough to find a lunch date we can all do! What do you think MNetters? Neither of them intend to come back to the area their friends are to keep the friendships going, they think people will visit them.

I agree with this.
Also, nowadays lots of people go away to uni, meet friends there, then all move to various different places after uni. It’s completely normal to have friends in different places 🤷🏻‍♀️. One of my closest uni friends lives in Edinburgh, one in London. I’m in the Midlands. It seems so bizarre to me that people think you have to live in the same town to stay friends.

Well, I agree, but the assumption of proximity is still very much a thing for some people. I've lived all over, but spent seven years in a village where virtually all the children in DS's class had at least one if not both parents having gone to the same school, and grown up locally and stayed. (We were the only foreigners in the village, and it took my years to realise how unusual this was.) It was a very difficult place to make friends because as far as everyone else was concerned, they had always known everyone, so had had very little experience in even introducing themselves to strangers, because there were no strangers.

But what really struck me in this assumption that, having arrived, we would always stay, was when the father of one of DS's friends said, as they ran ahead of us down the street aged 6, 'Oh, one of these days, they'll be one another's best man!' People seemed really taken aback when we left (the country, not just the village), and no one keeps in touch.

You are bound not to see each other as much as you do now, but that doesn't need to be the end of your friendship.

I went for years without seeing much of my two oldest friends. Distance, work and children meant that it was too difficult to see much of each other. I went for years without seeing one of them, as she lived further away.

However, we always kept in touch and now we are in our 60s, we see much more of each other (3-4 times a year).