5 Ways to Keep a Relationship from Killing Your Friendships

Texting is the closest technology has gotten humanity to ESP. It's easy for buddies to drift apart when they no longer have a bunch of shared experiences, so if you and your homey can't be around each other as often as you used to be, replace some of that physical proximity with a grammatically challenged, text-based, remote friendship. It doesn't matter what you talk about, as long as you and your buddy are keeping each other up to speed on the rest of your life, then you there's less chance the two of you will drift apart. Keep him updated even if you've only been doing boring boyfriend stuff like picking out color schemes for your bedroom or putting out occasional house fires. Now that you're spoken for, you've got new responsibilities. That's why you need to text each other so often that you start to think your best friend lives in your pocket, giving you a vibrational sack-tap every five minutes.

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"You're packing some heat, bro!"

All couples eventually need a break, even when they're so obnoxiously sweet to each other it gives other people secondhand diabetes. When you take that momentary break, remember that your best brohime needs some of that attention.

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Why not find the one thing you both can do together as a way to get away from it all? Have a weekly game of golf, or a boxing match, or a drunk kickball game with your extended family of bros who used to be at the heart of all your brolitical events. If you don't already have an activity you and your homey can both participate in on a regular or semi-regular basis, make one up. Start new traditions. Why do you think masonic lodges exist? One guy started a relationship and left his bro circle behind, so he made up an exclusive club with mandatory hanging out just to ensure his old friendships wouldn't become a real-life episode of Lost. Remember when you were a kid and you built a fort and put a "No Girls Allowed" sign on it? Well, the need for that fort never went away. There's an even more legitimate reason for it now.

You can call your friend and chat, and you can physically leave your house and hang out, but why do any of that garbage when you can plop yourselves down on your couches in your underwear, aprobros of nothing, and fire up the Xboxes to hang out while killing and inappropriately insulting 13-year-olds in Call of Duty? The digital world is perfect for maintaining those close contacts with guys you don't get to see too much anymore.

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Some bros are worth forgetting about.

Want a quick hangout before bed to set your mind right after a stressful day? Romp around World of Warcraft with your friend and mack on some sexy orc chicks the way you used to back when you were single. Log in and play some Grand Theft Auto V online and be the bank-robbing, turf-warring, car-chase maestros you two could never be in real life, even though you know you'd both be great at it if you did. It's all the benefits of hanging out, but better. When you and your bro are both duel-wielding machine guns and laying waste to legions of aliens and smack-talking all the way through, it's like the fires of your bromance never died. Just be sure to make badass one-liners after every kill, and if you are facing each other in a multiplayer match, don't forget to squat over his face for a nostalgic, bro-to-bro teabagging.

Sounds crazy, and many men have tried and failed at making a your-friend-to-her-friend conversion, but if you pull it off, you'll never need to squeeze your friend into your life again. You'll never need to sacrifice girlfriend time just to chillax with your non-sexual bro life partner, sharing a nice red brodeaux. The two can coexist, and you might find that your girlfriend will be the one asking to invite your friend to places. Yeah, she probably won't want to hammer Jager bombs or see the frankly extraordinary dump you just took, but hey -- this guide isn't a genie. So get your girlfriend and your friend together to talk. Take them all out to lunch. Throw a party and have her hold his legs up when he does a keg stand, just figure out a system that's quid bro quo. If you do whatever it takes to make your homey your girlfriend's homey too, you'll all be one big, inseparable battalion of homies who take tons of pictures together, pictures that in 20 years you'll be nostalgically looking at as one of you says, "We were so young, so free ... before the Apocalypse."

Once a year, the Earth makes a full rotation and lands back on the date you got together with your lady. You wine her, you dine her, you take her to a bro...sorry, show. You use the money you were saving to turn your basement into an arcade to buy a diamond necklace at the last minute because you forgot it was your anniversary. That's what you do to keep your lady happy on that special day, but why not apply that same mentality to the Bill to your Ted? Your brother from another mother needs some love too. So take him out and celebrate your man-love with a big, blowout day -- a party of epic broportions.

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Like this, but two dudes.

Stuff your face at a high-end steak joint and puff some Cubans at one of those fancy cigar places in movies where people sit in big leather chairs and drink scotch as though two humans might genuinely enjoy that kind of thing. Have one day a year -- one special day separate from all the other days you'll share -- that is 100 percent about celebrating the blazing hot star that is your mutual dude affection. There's no need to talk about feelings or how you guys miss each other -- just be the most badass, money-slinging mofos you've always wanted to be. Go to a baseball game and eat brats until you get the meat sweats and onion smell leaks from your pores. Go play golf while getting hammered until neither of you remembers why you started playing golf so many years ago -- the game sucks. Just give yourselves one day every year that is 100 percent, undoubtedly, without question, about brahs being wonder brahs who will continue being wonder brahs until maximum broness can no longer be achieved due to death ... which will most likely happen because of something you did together.