«Modern nomads»: Friendships on the road

Do our 14- and 16-year-old daughters maintain sufficient social contact if they live in a different place all the time? My husband and I regularly ask ourselves this question. Sometimes it feels like a small sting that digs into our self-image that our nomadic life is basically okay. Relationships outside the nuclear family are important, there's no doubt about that. That's why we regularly talk to our children about how their relationships are going.

Recharge social batteries

«My social batteries are a bit flat,» said the younger daughter recently. We had spent the first few months of this year visiting older family members - including the 98-year-old great-grandmother - and friends in North Friesland and Berlin. Direct contact with people of the same age was rare for our daughters during this time. The summer was more social than the spring, but the girls missed a very special group of friends.

Months often pass in which the nomadic life is enough. But then the friendship batteries need to be recharged in the same way.

That's why we're taking the direct route to Portugal in autumn and skipping the originally planned, slower route via northern Spain. The girls can't bear to wait any longer. In our everyday lives, several months often pass in which family life, experiences on the road and digital contact with friends are enough. But after this long dry spell, the friendship batteries urgently need to be recharged.

Are our daughters lonely?

Our children's social lives are not the norm. Most other young people our daughters' age share a classroom with twenty to thirty peers every day. Meeting up with friends in their free time and doing things together is part of their everyday lives. Does this mean that these young people never feel lonely?

According to a German study of 11 to 15-year-olds, loneliness is a widespread phenomenon among children and young people. The feeling has little to do with the number of people around us. You don't necessarily have to be alone to feel lonely - and conversely, you can be alone without feeling lonely.

Our daughters rarely feel lonely when travelling. They have each other as siblings, we maintain close family contact and they regularly exchange information with their friends via digital media.

In between, however, they long for real, analogue friendship experiences. In other words, time spent and experienced together. It's all about physical closeness, spending the night together and chatting and laughing late into the night. It's about eating ice cream together, listening to music and taking funny selfies.

Lifelong friendships despite distance

I often think about my own friendships. Two people play a special role in this. I have known my oldest friend since kindergarten. We were united by the fact that we both spoke Bernese German in a small village in Basel, which our kindergarten teacher made fun of. This had a superglue effect on our relationship. We were a strong team: we held our own against the rascals on the way to kindergarten. At home, we treated our soft toys together with my doctor's kit.

In both friendships, we were there for each other in the brightest and darkest hours - for decades.

When my girlfriend's parents split up, she moved away. We stayed in touch anyway. And although we never shared a class again after that and later lived in different countries for decades, our friendship runs like a thread through my life. She was our maid of honour and I am the godmother of her first child. We don't need to be in regular contact in order to be completely reacquainted as soon as we hear or see each other.

I knew my other girlfriend from my studies. After graduating, we started to talk on the phone every week. Today, it's regular short messages and longer exchanges in between. I haven't been close to her for over 20 years either, but she is always close to me. She is a central person for me because we got to know each other during a very formative phase of our lives.

Even though I would like to see both friends more often, our relationship doesn't depend on it. In both friendships, we were there for each other in the brightest and darkest hours - for decades. My world would be a lot lonelier without them.

What makes friendships strong

The friends of our girls live in different places in Europe: Germany, France, Portugal and some are also travellers. Even if they don't meet up regularly, some of these connections may last a lifetime. Shared experiences form a strong basis for friendship. This also includes challenging moments such as tensions, disagreements or disappointments.

Arguing and then making up again builds trust. Of course, physical distance also puts relationships to the test and not all friendships pass this test. However, when my daughters see good friends again after many months, it feels as if they have never been apart.

Both girls have old school friends in Switzerland with whom they keep in touch by post. There is nothing nicer than returning to our base in the south of France after a trip and finding a real letter in the letterbox.

Friends don't have to be the same age

Not all social contacts and friends have to be in the same phase of life to be valuable. Through our nomadic life, we get to know many people of different ages. We have a particularly close friendship with a couple - and indeed the whole family.

In terms of age, the two of them are closer to our daughters than to us. Last year, we travelled together for a while. They were expecting a baby. We watched their growing belly and were able to share in their little miracle. During this time, neither the children nor we missed «friends our own age». We will see them again soon, as they are still travelling - now three of them.

As soon as we're able to drive ourselves, we'll be building our own bus and visiting our friends whenever we want.

The younger daughter

Even short, one-off encounters on the road enrich everyday life and recharge your social batteries. Whether it's a nice chat while washing up or a brief, friendly neighbourhood encounter on a parking space.

A conscious decision

Not always living in the same place is a decision we have made as a family. Every decision in favour of something is always a decision against something else. Being free and able to travel means not seeing your friends every day. It also means that one or two friendships become estranged over time.

So wouldn't it be nice to live in a place where friends could come round at any time and we could meet up every weekend? Together we think about what we would have to give up to achieve this. The reality check puts the priorities in a different light again. And the younger daughter already has a solution ready: «As soon as we can drive ourselves, we'll build our own bus and visit our friends whenever we want.»