Things to Do on FaceTime With Your Boyfriend or Girlfriend: 45 Ideas for Long-Distance Calls

Every long-distance couple hits the same wall. The call connects, you both say hi, you trade the day's news, and twelve minutes in there's a silence neither of you knows what to do with.

That silence doesn't mean anything is wrong. It means the call needs something to do. Below are 45 things to do on FaceTime with your boyfriend or girlfriend, sorted by how much energy you've got, plus what to do when you're five time zones apart.

Why a call with a plan feels closer

Long-distance couples are often better at talking than they think. In a 2013 Stanford and Cornell diary study, Crystal Jiang and Jeff Hancock found that long-distance dating couples talked less often than couples living near each other, but felt more intimate in those conversations, partly because they shared more about themselves when they did talk.

The catch is that "just talking" every single night wears thin. A shared activity takes the pressure off. You're not performing a conversation, you're doing something together and the talk happens around it. That's the idea behind every list below.

Low-energy ideas for tired weeknights

Not every call needs to be an event. Some nights the goal is just being in the same room, even if the room is a screen.

1. Do your own thing, together. Prop the phone up and get on with dinner, laundry or homework. Long silences are fine. It's the closest thing to sitting on the same couch.
2. Fall asleep on the call. Plenty of couples swear by it. Turn the brightness down and plug the phone in first.
3. Take a walk together. Put in headphones and walk your own neighborhoods while you talk. Point the camera at anything good: a dog, a sunset, a terrible lawn ornament.
4. Give a tour of your day. Show the coffee shop, the desk, the view from the bus. It fills in the small, boring details that distance usually hides.
5. Study or work side by side. Mute yourselves and work for 45 minutes, then unmute for a 10-minute break. It's surprisingly motivating.
6. Read the same chapter. Pick a book, read a chapter at the same time, then talk about it, or read a chapter aloud to each other.
7. Listen to one album all the way through. One of you picks, you both press play on three, and nobody skips a track.
8. Rate each other's day out of ten. Then explain the score. It's a fast way to get past "fine."

Games to play on FaceTime

Games are the fastest fix for a call that's gone quiet. The simplest ones need nothing at all, and the rest work by link, so the other person just taps and plays. Our guide to online games for long-distance couples covers nine that play on two phones with no app, including live Battleship and Connect Four.

1. Would you rather. Quick, silly and endlessly debatable. Our list of would you rather questions for couples has 100 to get through.
2. This or that. Rapid-fire choices, two seconds per answer. Try our this or that questions for couples with a timer running.
3. Never have I ever. Hold up fingers and put one down for each thing you've done. These never have I ever statements for couples keep it fun rather than awkward.
4. 20 questions. One of you thinks of something, the other gets 20 yes-or-no questions to guess it.
5. Two truths and a lie. Works even if you've been together for years. You'll be shocked at what you never asked.
6. Pictionary on paper. Draw on a notepad and hold it up to the camera. Bad drawing is half the fun.
7. Charades. Step back so your whole body fits in the frame. Pick categories in advance: movies, songs, people you both know.
8. Guess the song. Play the first three seconds of a song and see who names it first.
9. A live board game by link. Battleship, Connect Four or Dots & Boxes. One of you starts a game, texts the link, and the board appears on both phones.

Watch and listen together

Watching something "together" used to mean counting down from three and pressing play at the same time. That still works, but there are better options now.

1. Use a watch-party tool. Teleparty syncs Netflix and a few other services in a desktop browser, so pausing on one screen pauses both.
2. Try SharePlay. If you both have Apple devices, SharePlay lets you watch supported apps in sync during a FaceTime call.
3. Start a Spotify Jam. Spotify's Jam feature lets two people add to the same queue and listen in sync.
4. Do a YouTube swap. Take turns showing each other one video you love. Half the fun is explaining why.
5. Stream a live event. A concert, a game or a late-night show. It feels more like going out than a regular watch-along.
6. Watch the same sky. Step outside at the same time and look up, even if it's 3 p.m. for one of you and midnight for the other.

Cook, make or build something together

Making something side by side gives you a shared result to show off at the end, which beats "what did you do tonight?"

1. Cook the same recipe. Send the ingredient list a few days ahead, then cook it together on camera and eat at the same time.
2. Have a bake-off. Same recipe, two kitchens. Hold your results up to the camera and judge each other ruthlessly.
3. Paint along with Bob Ross. His episodes are free on YouTube. Nobody's painting will look like his, and that's the point.
4. Build the same Lego set. Order two copies of a small set and race, or build at the same pace and compare.
5. Race through the same jigsaw. Two copies of a 500-piece puzzle make a good weekend project.
6. Plan your next visit. Open a shared doc and plan the days, the food and the one thing you've both wanted to do.
7. Write letters at the same time. Write a real letter on paper, mail it the next day, and wait to see what they wrote.

Conversation dates for when you want to go deeper

Some calls should just be a good, long talk. These ideas give the conversation somewhere to go.

1. Work through a question list. Pick ten from our questions to ask your long-distance partner and take turns answering.
2. Try the 36 questions. Psychologist Arthur Aron's 1997 study used 36 increasingly personal questions to help strangers feel close. Couples use them as a structured deep-talk night.
3. Rose, thorn, bud. One good thing about your week, one hard thing, and one thing you're looking forward to.
4. Show-and-tell from childhood. Dig out old photos or a favorite object and tell the story behind it.
5. Swap your top five. Songs, movies, meals, places. Then defend your picks.
6. Quiz each other. How well do you really know their coffee order, their worst fear or their first concert?
7. Make a someday list. Places to go, things to try, a dog's name you've already agreed on.

FaceTime ideas for special occasions

1. Open presents on camera. Mail the gift with a "don't open until we're on a call" note.
2. Do an anniversary dinner. Order delivery from the same chain in both cities, dress up a little and eat together.
3. Decorate for the holidays together. Put up your trees or lights at the same time, and swap ornaments by mail first.
4. Celebrate New Year's twice. If you're in different time zones, count down at midnight for one of you, then again for the other.
5. Count down to the next visit. Do one small thing each night for the last week: a song, a photo, a question.

What to do when you're in different time zones

A big time gap changes everything. One person's 9 p.m. is the other's 6 a.m., and a long nightly call stops being realistic.

1. Use the overlap. Find the hour you're both awake and protect it. Even 20 minutes a day beats one exhausting two-hour call a week.
2. Play async games. Some games let one of you answer first and text a challenge link, so the other plays whenever they wake up. The nine long-distance games that play by link include several that work this way.
3. Keep a voice-note diary. Leave a two-minute voice note each night. They'll have it with breakfast.

For more ideas built around time gaps, our virtual date ideas for long-distance couples include plans sorted by how far apart you are.

When the call goes flat

Some calls just don't land. You're tired, the connection keeps freezing, or one of you had a bad day. A few things help:

• Answer the small stuff. Relationship researcher John Gottman calls them "bids": small moments like "look at this" or a sigh that's asking for attention. In his research with newlyweds, couples who were still married six years later had turned toward those bids 86% of the time, against 33% for couples who divorced. Over FaceTime, that means looking up from your phone when they show you something.
• Share the boring parts. A study by Laura Stafford and Andy Merolla found that long-distance partners tend to idealize each other, and couples who idealized most had the hardest time when they finally lived close. Mundane details like the dishes, the commute and the bad mood keep the picture real.
• Call it early. "I'm wiped, can we do ten minutes and a proper call tomorrow?" is a perfectly good call.
• Switch to a game. When talking feels like work, a five-minute game resets the mood.

Pick one idea from this list for tonight and one for the weekend. The point isn't to fill every call. It's to have something ready for the nights the conversation runs dry.

Related reading

• 21 Games to Play Over Text With Your Boyfriend or Girlfriend (No App Needed)
• 100 Would You Rather Questions for Couples: Funny, Romantic and Deep
• 95 This or That Questions for Couples: Quick Picks for Dates, Travel and Long Distance
• 75 Never Have I Ever Questions for Couples (Funny, Flirty and Clean)
• 70 Questions to Ask Your Long-Distance Boyfriend or Girlfriend (Fun, Deep and Daily)