Chapter 2: Lessons in friendship featuring Mae Martin and Sabrina Jalees

Maintaining friendships abroad can be difficult. Discover how Mae Martin and Sabrina Jalees successfully do it.

Friendships face a lot of obstacles as you age, but none more challenging than moving.

Before we pack up our things and leave for another country, let’s first discuss in general how these relationships change over time. I’ve been blessed to have friendships lasting over two decades, but they have faced some interesting challenges over the years. There are many factors that cause change in a friendship that require re-evaluation and re-negotiation.

A major factor is life transitions that lead to a shifting in priorities. Friends may get married, have kids, move away or become primary caregivers to aging family members. Furthermore, collective interests might change. Those hobbies, passions and activities that once bonded you may no longer be there and or begin to shift.

Another factor, I have witnessed, is the impact of COVID-19. I saw how the pandemic made some friends more nervous, with some no longer enjoying places where overcrowding occurs - like a bar or concert venue.

I have faced many of these changes with friends, but one of the biggest challenges I’d need to learn to navigate was my departure.

Geographical distance, in my opinion, is the biggest friendship test. When you’re in close proximity, it’s easier to get together and also witness these friendship changes in real time clocking tone and body language. This IRL interaction gives you an opportunity to adjust. When you move abroad that becomes more challenging as interactions become more message oriented, which is difficult to decipher.

There is also the feeling that those living elsewhere are deprioritized for those who live nearby. You might experience a decline in communication going from messaging every few hours to once every few days to weekly or biweekly. That diminishing communication can be hurtful, but it’s also important to know people’s lives change and priorities in general shift.

Some will say social media is a perfect way to keep in touch and stay up to date on a friend’s life. I don’t disagree, but there is this weird social media catch 22 that happens. While it’s easier to be present by getting glimpses into one’s life, it also creates an out of body experience. You start to feel like a ghost, haunting your friends as you watch them move on without you, continuing traditions, trying new things and adding new members to that circle. That feeling is especially hard when you’re trying to establish yourself, find new friendships and build new traditions.

There is also the matter of you experiencing growth. This issue made me panic when friends planned visits. I knew we had all respectively changed, but how much change occurred and would we still be compatible? What would that grand friendship reunion look like? Would we be pining for a past selves? Not to mention, travelling with friends is a whole other complex issue - trust me I have friends I adore, but despise their travel personas.

In January 2024, I interviewed Canadian comedians Mae Martin (they/them) and Sabrina Jalees (she/her) for IN Magazine. It was in promotion of their Canadian Audible Original Benefits with Friends, which sees Martin and Jalees dive into must-have conversations that redefine what it means to connect with your best friend. Their friendship started as teenagers and has lasted decades even though their busy work schedules and lives in different countries with different time zones kept them apart. Yet, they’ve managed to make it work.

Here is an exclusive excerpt that never made it to the final publication.

Stephan (SP): I love that you have both lived all over the world and still keep your connection strong. As someone who just moved to a new country, I struggle to understand how to keep that connection with my BFFs. What advice do you have for me about keeping that connection strong when you’re separated?

Sabrina Jalees (SJ):  Oh, we've got good advice. Where's your best friend?

SP: Everyone's in Toronto and I'm in Europe.

SJ: Oh my God. Okay, different time zones.

SP: Different time zones. I'm living a different life. A European life where I just drink at any time of the day.

SJ: Yeah. Yeah Okay. So you're winning and everyone's jealous.

Mae Martin (MM): I think for me living in so many places, the friendships that have really endured are the ones that don't get mad at me, and I don’t get mad at them, when we don't talk for a week or two.

Then you put in focused time…and have a long catch up on FaceTime and then make an effort [to see them] when you're in town. But you can't be like, “Oh, well, I haven't heard from them in a few days. I guess they don't care about me anymore.”

SJ: There's fairy tales that people buy into with friendship that there's going to be some psychic bond or some consistency with the sort of fever dream of what it is when you first connect and collide. When we first met our job was to run around after school and go see comedy together. We had all of this time and now you grow up and there's other jobs and things and relationships…The friendships that have really lasted are built on a foundation where we're not looking for reasons to doubt each other's love, it's there.

And that's the thing. I know if I needed Mae, they would be there. I know there are friendships that have fallen apart because it’s the other way around. I've got a kid or I'm working on a show, I'm not in the same time zone and I can't be there with immediacy. It starts to fall apart when people start questioning the meaning, beyond just the fact that we're all busy.

There like eras, not to bring it back to Taylor, but there's eras.

MM: Yes, there's eras and you have to let people evolve. If you haven't seen someone in a year and you have your big friendship reunion hangout, then you've got to meet them where they are and be excited about where they are and not want an older version of them.

SJ: And luckily…

MM: Luckily, our eras have lined up nicely.

SJ: And you know what two peas in a pod don't do? Turn the eras into errors.

MM: Oh my god…and you can expect more gold like this.

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