Long-distance relationships can be incredibly hard to maintain. Especially staying close with your friends and family while living abroad. Even living just a short distance from your family isn’t always the easiest thing.
If you are in a long-distance relationship with family, friends, or even a significant other and need some ideas for things to do that will keep you all connected, this list can help you grow your relationship despite being far away.
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Long-Distance In My Family
As you may be aware, I currently live in South America with my husband, while my family all lives in North America. Despite the 4,527-mile distance, my family and I are pretty close. But we don’t stay that way just because of an occasional in-person visit.
While traveling to see your friends and family is ideal and really keeps the relationship alive, it’s not always realistic. Even when we were all in the same country we really had to make visits in person a priority or find other ways to stay close that didn’t always involve, long car rides, plane flights, or spending our whole paycheck on a weekend visit.
The list we’ve compiled for you below can help you maintain your long-distance relationships without blowing your bank account.
Let’s get into it!
Virtual Cooking Club
You might notice a theme heading into this, but my family and I tend to start a lot of “Virtual Clubs.” Our longest-running club is Virtual Cooking Club.
We started this back in 2021 after some big life changes when we needed something to bring us all close and hold us together. Brought together by the common need of, “You’ve got to eat” we began picking a group cooking challenge to do each month.
The theme of the month’s cooking challenges varies as we have fun picking goofy categories to go with holidays, Birthdays, or even just what we’re most interested in at the time.
We’ve had themes like:
- Fall Rainbow – Incorporate red, orange, and yellow in your dish
- Sushi – Make a roll or a poke bowl
- Clausserole – A Christmas-themed casserole
- Keto Dish – Dealers’ choice as long as it’s keto
- Everyone picks a vegetable and we have to use all of them in one dish, e.g. mushroom, artichoke, and cauliflower was our particular combo.
The list goes on!
We have fun cooking these dishes together, virtually. Sometimes we cook together over Zoom, and other times we just text pictures of our dishes to each other.
We’re always sharing recipes and pictures in our group chat.
If you’re currently in a long-distance relationship and want to stay close, try introducing Virtual Cooking Club! The rules are always flexible, from cooking within a certain date to cooking whenever during that month. Try to change up what’s on the menu and have fun cooking together on Zoom!
Phone Calls, Video Calls, and Texting
This one’s a given, but get on the phone and talk to your family, friends, and significant other. You can’t stay close if you don’t check in.
We are constantly calling and texting each other. In fact, I’ve already had two video calls with my sister this week, one with my sister-in-law, and another with my father, and I’m chatting with a friend tonight.
I understand that that can appear to be overwhelming, especially if you’re an introvert, I am too. But relationships are important to me, so I make sure I get people on the calendar, I text them regularly, or I spontaneously chat with them.
In a similar way, my husband chats with his family almost every day. His family is super close and they tend to call every couple of nights just to check in. My husband has family all over Perú, so there’s a lot of family to check in on.
My encouragement is, if you care about these people, show up and show them that you do.
Exercise and Challenges
This one tends to come and go with the crazies of life, but right now we’re being consistent, so I’m hoping it will stick for a while.
To keep our long-distance relationships growing, we do exercise challenges together. Sometimes it’s really simple, like getting in 10 minutes of movement, and other times we do a Zoom call where we all do yoga together.
Sometimes life is busy when we do these challenges and I only have time to do the exercise by myself and text, “Done! ✅” and other times we chat while one of us is on our daily walk, or we Zoom call during an exercise session.
Life is crazy and we’re battling with different time zones here. It’s totally understandable if you have things you need to do that aren’t happening at the same time as they need to do them. Chatting with your person while you’re exercising is a really fun way to incorporate some important, healthy life changes and to get in some personal time with your loved ones. Even if that means you’re exercising while they’re on the phone eating dinner and chatting with you.
Even if you aren’t in person, physically doing the moves together, as long as you both make the commitment and check in. Having a virtual accountability partner in your exercise can be so much fun and fit into your daily life really well!
Book Club/Podcast Club
This one isn’t something we have a set schedule for like some of the others. Because we all go through books and podcasts at different speeds it tends to take us a while to transition from book to book or podcast to podcast.
But we do have a lot of fun discussing the things we’ve listened to or read. We tend to text each other different links to podcasts or recommend books to each other and then nag each other to, “Hurry up and finish so we can talk about it.”
It’s something that we’re really enjoying right now, and it’s definitely keeping us close, but I do find it takes a lot of time. If you’re going to join a virtual book/podcast club, make sure you really set aside time to devote to it.
My sister finds these really good podcasts…but they’re three hours long (although, she always suggests listening to them at 1.5 speed and it does help!). I usually try to listen to them while I’m sewing because I can concentrate on the podcast and I don’t have to think too much while I’m pinning together panels of fabric.
Alternatively, my brother usually sends us 40-minute podcasts to discuss, or I have a friend who often suggests a really good book she just read.
Game Night
Having a virtual game night is a great way to keep your long-distance relationships thriving!
We’ve been playing trivia games together since we were kids, so it was very natural for us to introduce game night into our virtual relationships. We love to play You Don’t Know Jack, Fibbage, and especially trivia. Usually, about once a month we get together to play You Don’t Know Jack during a Zoom call.
My sister is the queen of hosting trivia nights! So much so, that to encourage maintaining long-distance relationships, we created some trivia that you can play with small or large groups, virtually or in person. You can download a free version here! Or check out our shop for a full version, featuring 80+ of questions!
What can I say, trivia is a big part of keeping our relationships thriving while we’re all long-distance.
True Colors
Don Lowry developed the True Colors personality profile technique in 1978. The original intent was to use the colors blue, orange, gold, and green to identify the strengths and problems of these key personality types to group at-risk adolescents into four main learning styles.
Today, True Colors is often used in work settings to help employees learn to identify the strengths and weaknesses of fellow coworkers, to better strengthen how we work together in day-to-day environments.
As siblings, this was a lot of fun to take and discuss. We were able to take the quiz and learn about each other’s strengths and weaknesses, which really helped with our communication and understanding of how each other handles certain situations. It’s helping us to grow closer as a family!
Virtual Design Club
I like to call this one paper doll dress-up or “Virtual Design Club”. During this, my sister and I get on a call and design her a whole new wardrobe. From mind and vision to paper and fabric, to reality.
This one happens quite often lately. I’m usually sewing her something, and we tend to hop on a quick FaceTime to discuss how the fabric should sit, or I send her videos of the sewing process. The long-distance is no match for our virtual design club! We can do anything as long as we have some imagination and a fabric tape measure.
We have a lot of fun creating things together! Check out the latest thing we designed together for her – this square-neck gathered dress turned out so good!
Friday’s Music Day
We started this one recently where we text in our group chat the one song that really stood out to us during the week. I then put all the songs into a shared playlist so we can all listen and groove to our crazy, mix of music while we get through our last workday of the week.
I don’t know about you, but sometimes by the time I get to the end of my work week I’m tired of all the music I’ve already listened to and I need something new to help me push through the end of the work day. That’s how this came to be!
The playlist is fun! You go from things like classical jazz to country music to rap. The transition isn’t great, but that’s what happens when you have so many people with different tastes in music.
Our only rule, you can’t repeat a song you’ve already shared. That way we get new music each week, and it really helps us all get to know each other better. Music really speaks to who people are and what they’re feeling. Getting to share our favorite song of the week really helps us grow closer despite the distance.
Snail Mail – Thinking Of Yous
I don’t know what it is about getting something in the mail – but it just makes me so excited! Especially here in Perú, getting mail isn’t very common here and often gets lost, so when something does come – I’ll be smiling all day after that.
One of my favorite things has always been sending (and receiving) snail mail. It always makes my friends so excited when I send out some postcards and I think it’s a great way to stay in touch and show others your thinking of them. Texts are quick and easy to send out, but snail mail takes more effort. Sending mail to friends and family, whether long, handwritten letters, cool cards, postcards, or care packages, these are great ways to stay close in a long-distance relationship!
Well, that’s all I have for you today. I hope these tips help you with your long-distance relationships! There are so many fun things you can do to grow closer with your loved ones, that don’t involve paying for plane tickets or travel chaos.
Do you have any tips for growing your long-distance relationships? Share them with me in the comments! I’d love to try new things!
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P.S. Looking for a fun activity to play while traveling to your next adventure? We put together a great freebie that you can play with your seatmate on a plane, train, or long bus ride, download your free trivia here.
Playing trivia is a great way to participate in fun activities with your friends and family, even when you’re 4,591 miles apart or constantly on the go. It helps you keep your long-distance relationships growing and is sure to provide lots of fun!
