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 ...
I only keep in touch with one person from college and only because I married her.
Work is work. With limited exceptions, I’ve
never had strong personal friendships with anyone from work.
A few weeks ago I had to go to a trade show. I brought my wife along and she helped me and a bunch of colleagues set up for the big show.
That was helpful and she actually met a few work acquaintances.
I don’t think an occasional phone call - to catch up - would hurt anything. Also a Christmas card each year is nice.
One solution, they could decide to ride the same train once a month it it took them to areas where they could then separate and do personal business. Time it to ride back.
There is a lady I worked with that my wife refers to as a work wife. She had four brothers and was the only girl and in my family there was four brothers and an only sister so we hit it off that way. We treated each other as siblings, picking at each other and playing jokes on one another. She’s married and other than at work we never see or talk to one another except for 5 minutes to buy chicken eggs from her. I’ve never looked at her as a love interest, just another sister and treated her that way and she me as another brother. She loves animals and has chickens, goats, dogs and cats and I have nicknamed her Ellie Mae.
One of the best jokes I ever got on her was at a Mexican restaurant. Her and another lady I work with share a birthday and we went out for lunch for their birthdays and at this Mexican restaurant there is one particular Mexican manager that has the hots for Ellie Mae and as the lunch proceeded I watched him just sit and observer her and I commented to both of them, Ellie your admirer is admiring you sit up straight and be lady like and she proceeded to kick me in the shines under the table and say oh shut up! On the way out as I was paying he tried to engage her in conversation and feeling the need to get some payback for the shines I asked her if she needed some matches, they had books of matches and she said no and I said I know you do because you are always looking for a light in the evenings when you sit around and watch tv in your underwear and smoke cigars! The Mexican managers eyes about popped out of his head and she said I’m gonna kill you and as we walked out did the obligatory punch to my upper arm and you could hear him saying bye my mamacita! The other lady just giggled when he said that and Elie Mae didn’t think anything of it.
When we got back to work in about an hour I had to go take something to another department and I walked by her office she shared with another employee and stuck my head in the door and she was red faced and I said hey you still mad? Not at you, your a jerk still but I would have slapped that SOB if I had known what my mamacita meant! She had googled it. I just laughed and said see ya momma and walked off.
She got transferred to another campus in our system 15 minutes away so I hardly see her anymore. I buy eggs from her now every other week and see her for a whopping 5 minutes.
You can be friends with the opposite sex at work but you must be cautious. With Ellie Mae sexual attraction just never entered the picture even though she is a pretty woman, we had fun cutting up like brothers and sisters but I could see how it might with others.
Speak up nobody reads minds say how you feel.
It was a moot point for me because politics got in the way.
“That statement alone is brimming with sexual tension.”
And I really wonder if she’s telling the whole truth. She propably already succumbed to that “tension”.
“I haven’t kept in touch with anyone from school or any former job.”
I went to a high school reunion last year - it felt like a reunion of strangers.
I could have gone to a movie theater and felt the same level of closeness with the crowd there.
One good friend from work, and he calls about 3x a year. He still works and does different shifts. So, he usually calls. We text funny stuff to each other.
I have 2 other friends from work still in contact, and we basically send Christmas cards and let each other know of what has happened in our lives or text each other about once a quarter.
I’m 84, and most people, who worked with me and when I did are no longer on this side of the grass.
One work friend is 2 years older than me, and we have one other former employee who keeps in contact as noted above.
Out of a high school class of 150 grads. I have one friend still living and we were/are friends forever. We talk live on the phone about 3 times a year.
My wife worked as the head RN in a local family practice for over 25+ years. The group closed it down after the doctor who replaced the former doctor went to the big PPO. My wife tried to maintain contact with those who worked with her and they moved on. She has one friend, who started at the office when my wife did. They still talk on the phone about every 2 months. Their common theme are the adult kids and grandkids.
My wife was close to the former Doctor and his wife, we got together a couple of times a year after they closed the practice. Covid stopped that. They lost a SonIL early in the Covid mess. He was in his late 30’s and great shape.
My wife keeps in contact with women and female relatives, she grew up with. Some, she has not seen physically for decades. She texts and talks to them on the phone.
She has learned, when she hasn’t heard from someone in a year or so. They are probably no longer on this side of the grass.
Two males, her former classmates, one from high school and one from her Nursing Class, out of the blue called and passed shortly afterwards. It was their way of saying goodbye to friends not where they lived. She is now leary when someone calls and hasn’t ever called or its been years.
“I finally gave in to my wife’s complaints. Big mistake.”
You have (had?) a very naive wife. A lot of women don’t understand how easily it is for a man to get turned on.
Better stay away from temptation.
Yep.
Any friendship with the opposite sex can become a romance if you allow it to be. If both are single of course, it does not matter. When either or both are married it can become trickier.
Because at some point unless you have been careful to keep your contacts chaperoned (which you did by taking someone else with you when you went to lunch) one of the spouses is going to start having an uneasy feeling. At that point it can become a right mess.
Over 30 years ago I was single and worked with a single guy and we became close friends. Saw each other through various romantic breakups, had lunches, had double dates with the people we dated, etc. We actually discussed having it go farther, and then agreed that our friendship was more important than romance.
Eventually we went our separate ways, and both married. I learned a while ago that he had passed away. (Some suspect suicide, but I don’t know.)
It may have been a clerical job I guess. My mum was in the same banking role for 30 odd years until the late 90s >
My wife’s former hometown had 2 headbankers’s owners for decades.
The local historical society in her hometown has a monthly newsletter, and they now have pictures. There a recent newsletter showing the current town headbanker. My wife was stunned as the current headbanker looked like the one who died a few years ago.
Turns out the current headbanker is a grandson of the one/we she knew.
A committee chairmanship?
There is no need to make him hate her. :)
Nor I. Basic hermit. Wife not so. We accept our differences.
Most people drop off the face of the earth.
I think you’re spot on with that and I would say golf has similar good qualities. One plus with bowling is that it’s not expensive. It’s sort of like blue collar golf.
Also I would recommend the movie The Big Lebowski which has a bowling side story to anyone who hasn’t seen it. It has a devoted following for a reason.
I read that and thought, what a Northern thing to think, then noticed you were a Georgian like me. I have never ridden a train anywhere in my seventy years.
She says she’ll miss him, so it sounds like she wasn’t planning on keeping in touch with him any other way.
So, what’s her point?
After 33 years of work, I have three fellow men I have kept in touch with. My high school graduating class had 2500 and I have never seen any of them again. In my college career I have met just one man I actually knew while in school. He didn’t remember me even though we had studied together in several classes.
As for this situation, continuing a work relationship with someone of the opposite sex who is married would be highly inappropriate. I was always careful to keep my distance from my coworker’s...or anyone’s wife. There was one incident where nothing was going on but a coworker’s wife used me to create jealousy. I almost ended up in a fight with a very angry man. I never spoke to either of them again.
In most cases it is better not to get close to people you work with. It’s disturbing to find out, for example, that someone has a drug issue, or is having an affair, or is simply an asshole. It’s better just not to know.
Yep, same here w/ girlfriend who is very gregarious. She respects my proclivity for solitary life (except for her) and I never hold her back from her socializing (with lady friends).
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