The older we get, the harder it is to stay in touch with the people who mean the most to us. It’s incredibly common to form a tight-knit group of friends in college, and then gradually lose touch over the next decade or two as people people move, get married, have kids, or do all of the above. College students are considered adults, but they’re young adults who don’t usually have all the responsibilities of a 35-year-old with a mortgage and twins on the way. College is a great place for making friends, but post-college life can make it really tricky to keep those friends. It will take some effort, and it may not ever be like it was when you were twenty-year-olds having late night study sessions at the pancake house. That doesn’t mean reconnecting isn’t worth a shot, though.
Look for group activities
One of the easiest ways to get the gang together again is if someone in your old friend group is getting married and invites a lot of people in your social circle to the wedding. Most weddings are incredibly social in nature. Sure, you won’t have a lot of chances to catch up during the ceremony (it’s considered rude to sit there and gossip while the bride and groom are exchanging vows), but the reception is another matter entirely. Most wedding receptions involve a little alcohol and a lot of dancing, or vice versa. It’s important to know your limits, but a little booze has a way of loosening people up and even bonding them together.
Make sure to get contact information and make plans to meet up after the wedding as well. It will be trickier if you’re all in different cities throughout the country, but if the wedding is anywhere close to your current place of residence, there are probably other friends in or near your town. Make sure to tell them that you really enjoyed seeing them and would love to grab lunch together when you’re back in town. Then stick with that pledge. It’s way too easy to say, “Call me and we’ll get together sometime!” But then that person doesn’t call you, and you don’t call them, and it’s years before you ever see each other again. It’s one thing to be friends on social media networks on Facebook, but that’s not the same as interacting with each other in real life.
Have inside jokes
Humor is a great way to bring people together. The jokes shouldn’t be too mean, of course, but there’s nothing quite like an inside joke. If your college roommate recited the dialogue to The Wizard of Oz in his or her sleep, then a mere mention of Dorothy or the Tin Man is probably going to be enough to crack both of you up. If the joke is especially funny and a lot of people seem into it, you can even purchase custom t-shirts that reference it somehow. Wearing those shirts in public will confuse a lot of people, but isn’t that half the fun? An inside joke isn’t supposed to be relevant to the outside world, only to a few people lucky enough to be privy to it.
