Posted on 03/04/2023 8:30:15 AM PST by Cronos
I have shared an office and a train home five days a week for 20 years with a chap I’ll call T. He calls me his “work wife”.
He does have a real wife and family. I’m many years divorced. Our relationship is very sibling-ish, and we’ve become, over the years, very close – we share things we don’t share with our “real” friends and family and just by virtue of the time spent together, we have shared a lot of our lives. We have never socialised outside work, aside from at work functions, and have never been to each other’s homes.
The thing is, we’re both retiring this year. And the chances are we will not see each other again, since that’s not the relationship we have. And I know I will miss him.
I’ll miss the everyday closeness, the banter, the laughs, the rants. I imagine he feels the same at some level (we don’t talk about things like that). How does one navigate ending relationships like this? Because I know it’ll end – it’s not that we don’t have all kinds of things in common, but without the framework of work, would we have anything real?
It’s the only drawback to retirement for me. I have other (female) work friends who I know I will see because we do socialise outside of work anyway, but I shall miss T. Any suggestions for finding a way to maintain a relationship, or should I just accept that this is one of the things that retirement does, and let it go?
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Work gives us an excuse to cultivate very close friendships that, outside the “office” may require more explanation or may just not be possible. It’s a safe way, to get very close to someone
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
This Bill Engvall routine sums it up best about the differences between Men and Women:
I was at the gym the other day working out with my buddy. My buddy Joey. And he goes “hey, man, I’m getting a divorce.”
I said “Wow, that sucks. Can you spot me?”
That was our whole conversation!
So then I go home to my wife, and I say “Hey, Joey is getting a divorce.”
She goes “Oh, my God! What happened?”
“I dunno.”
“What do you mean you don’t know? Is she cheating on him, is he cheating on her?”
“Again, I’m not holding anything back here, I don’t know!”
She goes “Bill, someone tells you they’re getting a divorce and you don’t ask any questions?”
And I go “Well, that’s because he didn’t ask me a question! He didn’t say ‘hey Bill, what do you think about me getting a divorce?’, he said, ‘I’m getting a divorce’, which said to me, ‘I require no further input on your part.’”
If he had said ‘What do you think about me getting a divorce?’, I’d have said, ‘Well, you’re gonna be dating again, so you should work on your abs’.
Same thing you do after high school: Keep in touch.
The few true friends I’ve made in my life I was certain to hang onto. Genuine friends are extremely rare nowadays.
I can only imagine it’s much rarer now. I am grateful that I have re-connected with old friends I was out of touch with for years.
Invite the couple over for a cookout or dinner.
Maybe invite mutual friends.
She should make an effort to befriend his wife as well.
Accept them both as man and wife.
If not no go.
Oh come on now!
Some of us men are aging like fine wine.
I just have to stay out of the Florida sun or I’ll be prune wine.
Odd she doesn’t realize the danger in how she views this work relationship.
Some people are selfish. She likes this guy and nothing else will matter.
Interesting comments. I would like to hear the story but this forum isn’t the place for it. I have a similar story but I wouldn’t share it here.
“Many people, who, retire move away at some point to be near their grandchildren, or to move to a home they built for retirement.”
With job changes often every 5 years for younger people, moving to be close to the grandkids is often futile when they change jobs or sometimes get divorces.Then, the person, who moved to be close is without family and maybe friends.
We are seeing an interesting trend with what my wife calls newer widows in today’s post Covid world.
There is a trend of newer/recent widows moving where they have siblings and sometimes semi retired or nephews/nieces.
One of our 80 something widows just moved from N. California to be with her family members about 100 miles south of Portland. She moved to our area with her former husband 40+ years ago. She has a sister/BIL and nieces and nephews in that Oregon area. As of this past Wednesday, she is now an Oregonian with family close by. She told us by phone, that she is no longer awake at 3:30am worrying about being alone.
Another newer widow is considering selling her home and moving to Arizona where 3 sisters and husbands and more nieces and nephews live.
One of our widow friends fell and broke a leg bone this week and is recovering. A daughter is out of country working and a son can’t come here due to his job. So she is basically by herself in the recovery phase. She has a younger brother and a SIL about 2 hours away. They have jobs/careers and can’t come here. However, they have a MIL smaller home on their property. She may go there for her recovery as that area is serviced by her PPO. Those younger relatives had told her, to move in before she fell. If she moves and likes the area, they want her to stay.
This works with widowers. A good friend’s wife died about 2+ years ago. They had downsized to a one bedroom apartment on a second floor with no elevators before she died.
He had a knee operation, and his daughter and SIL converted their garage into an inlaw home. His job is to feed the dog when his daughter and SIL take a trip. He had considered moving back to the Denver area to be near a sister. I warned him about the crime in that area.
His sister is now thinking of moving out here to live with one of my friend’s and her niece. They would be in walking distance from each other and the family members here and a short cab ride to medical offices and the local hospital. He still drives short distances.
In this case, it’s an employee — I run a small business— who does excellent work, but is prone to missing a lot of work due to mental health issue
Takes about 2 years to forget them...
There's a better life and friend in your future...
The lavish & exciting lifestyle of living on Retirement Savings and Soc Sec keeps you too busy to think about "former" work acquaintances...
It would definitely derail any potential romance!
I had a friend couple who retired and moved from California to South Carolina. He hired an architect to build a custom house for him and his wife, with enough bedrooms for the kids to come visit. Sort of a family "compound" on a lake.
Their best friends (another couple with no children) moved there about six months later. The kids never came to visit, and our friends finally decided to sell the house and move to Arizona to be close to some other friends who relocated there from California. Their friends who followed them are still living in South Carolina.
Our friends had a new home custom built in Arizona and are quite happy there. The friends whom they followed have since moved away somewhere else closer to their family.
Go figure...
-PJ
I worked for 25 years with a multitude of people, and supervised many of them. My situation was a bit different in that I was a female officer, and Sergeant in all male prisons in NY State. When I first started working at Auburn prison in 1980, most of the of younger officers didn't want us there, and didn't talk to us. Either did much of the brass, but at least there were plenty others who had time on the job, and didn't feel threatened by having females working along side of them. I never much socialized off the job with any of them as I was divorced, and had two sons to raise on my own.
I was a Sergeant for 13 years in two different prisons. For the majority of those 13 years, I was the only female Sergeant in the prison. I worked the 3-11 p.m. shift by choice and had seniority on the shift. I got along with all of the officers because I supported them, and backed them up. The officers appreciated that, and told me they would rather have me as their supervisor than most of the male Sergeants. The male Sergeants were too willing to overrule an officer's decision, and give-in to the inmates.
The job itself wasn't really conducive to making too many friends, or socialize much with anyone. Most of the male officers on the day shift, would leave work, and head to the local bar, where they'd sit and drink, and talk for hours about what went on at work that day. I could never do that, and chose to use my down time to pursue my interests, such as working on college degrees, reading, and indulging my interest in traveling through the South, and researching the Civil War. I'm sure I bored plenty of my co-workers with my ramblings about my travels, and research. The guys I worked with on the afternoon shift were more down to earth, were hunters, and had other interests, and hobbies than just sitting in a bar.
I've been retired for almost 20 years, and during those years, there is only one person I have kept in touch with, and that is another female officer I met at Auburn when I first started. She also went on to be a Sergeant, and Lieutenant, and has been retired for almost 15 years. She has been married for many years, has three grown-up sons and has six grandchildren. Once a month we meet at the casino near me, have lunch, and then go play the penny slots. Besides phone calls, that is about the extent of our relationship.
As George Washington once said: "Stay clear of entangling alliances."
Or he would murder someone, just like in Midsomer.
Agree. Just wanted to let it be known it’s not only women who grow old and ugly!
I can understand the motive. Which is more then I can say for some of them.
I tend to get recruited by the pastor's wife. She grabs my collar, the world goes dark and I come to with schedules in my hands having apparently volunteered to organize the Children's Easter Program.
Why does everyone think their child is a natural singer?
I mean.. I love mine but only Oldest Son can carry a tune in a bucket. The rest of us are strictly part of the choir.
In many ways, a lot of the problems we have in this country is the result of an overabundance of compassion, especially what I call “pathological compassion”
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I thought the same thing. Leftists have pathological empathy or deranged empathy. They lack empathy and compensate by having empathy in inappropriate and stupid ways.
Two people can be in a dispute. Leftists feel empathy for the guilty part and it blocks empathy for the other person.
empathy disregulation
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