The illusion of the work friend.

...and what to do about it.

Photo by Marvin Meyer on Unsplash

I think we’ve all been there. You spend so much time with your co-workers that they feel almost like a second family. Work spouses, work siblings, and work kids. The bond is real.

Lunch conversations may start out with one of you teaching the other about office dynamics and politics. You talk about how to deal with tricky managers and mean customers. And then, conversations expand beyond work. You tell them all about your kids, your family, and your exes. You learn about theirs, too. Your world outside of work may start to intersect. Game nights, baby showers, birthday parties, book clubs.

You think…they get me. It’s an “in the trenches” kind of feeling. We are on the same team, you think. We are friends. Real friends.

And, you are. Sort of.

It all feels so real until one of you leaves the company. In this hypothetical situation, let’s say you are the one who changes jobs. You promise to stay in touch. Of course, you do. They are your friend. Definitely more than “just” co-workers.

This kind of friendship, no longer propped up by the benefit of proximity, requires more work, but you both seem up for it. You start texting, plan coffee dates, and are intentional with maintaining contact. They keep you up-to-date on all the happenings at work. It’s nice in a way to stay in touch vicariously with your other old co-workers. You can sympathize with their work issues. Hell, you’ve lived it and left. You get it.

And then, six months have passed. Your curiosity about your last job has long puttered out. Your friend may or may not see this in you. But, like ruts in the road, it’s hard to resist talking about the main thing you have in common. Well, had in common. The conversation becomes one-sided and more superficial. It’s like each day of distance snips another thread of connection between the two of you. Before you know it, the friendship is hardly a friendship at all.

How did we get here?

I’ve certainly been through this work friend fizzle myself. I felt sad that it didn’t work out with these people. I also felt confused about how something so genuine and real could fade out so quickly. It begs the question, “what did I do wrong?”

Maybe you didn’t do anything wrong.

The power of proximity is stronger than we often appreciate. Take this classic psychological study by Festinger and colleagues all the way back to 1950. They asked around 300 students who lived in a dorm at MIT about their closest friends. As it turned out, the closer a person lived to you, the greater the likelihood that you would list them as a close friend. One door away? That’s a 41% greater likelihood of being a close friend. Each door away dropped their odds of being your close friend by 10%. Again, each door was a 10% drop. What?!!

Work offers intense proximity. Depending on your job, you may be spending hours a day with them. I’m writing this essay from an exam chair at my dentist’s office. There is a constant friendship chatter happening around me. They all seem to like each other and have curiosity about holiday plans. Proximity inspires closeness. Distance does not.

Why do I mention this study? Well, I hope that you give yourself a break about your changing friendships. Just as you may be feeling more distant from that friend, you may be making other ones at your new job. Your friend may be doing the same thing as you, finding another work spouse.

Before I switch to talking about strategies to manage the transition from work friend to friend, I want to share the findings of another study with you. Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst asked just over a thousand people about their social connections. Who helps you with home repairs? Who do you talk to about personal issues? And on and on.

Seven years later, he followed up, asking participants these same questions. Only about half of the friends identified in the first interview by participants were named in the second one. Only about 30% of close friends still held that position at the seven year mark.

There is such a temptation to judge ourselves and our friendships for not lasting “until death do us part.” When we run a post-mortem of the friendship, we tend to blame ourselves unfairly. Maybe, sometimes, there is truth to that assessment. Conflict and ruptures need repair. If we don’t have proximity forcing us to have these difficult conversations, then we risk the demise of the friendship. To protect the relationship, we need to be intentional about having uncomfortable but important conversations.

That said, many friendships don’t end with a bang but with a slow puttering out. In those cases, the end of the relationship may be more reflective of the natural course of how we operate as humans. There are a lot of reasons for friends drifting apart, proximity being a main cause.

Photo by Helena Lopes on Unsplash

What do we do about it?

Well, I suppose there a few different considerations here. Let’s say you have a work friend that you really want to keep. That calls for building a foundation that extends beyond work. There is a bit in a Seinfeld episode in which George Costanza panics about “worlds colliding.” Yeah, you are going to need to do that.

You need to meet each other’s people. Their friends and family. You need to spend time together in each other’s homes. And most definitely, you need to avoid defaulting to conversations about work. Search for other common interests. Find other activities that can bring you into proximity on a relatively regular basis like an exercise class or a monthly book club. This way, when life gets busy, you two will naturally bump into each other with some frequency to reconnect.

The other very important aspect here is being honest with yourself that friendships evolve, change, begin, and end. There is a freedom that comes from accepting the reality that most relationships have an ending point. It doesn’t mean we don’t care about each other. It means that we are making space for other people in our lives. And, that’s OK.

Some questions to consider as we end.

1. Which of your work friendships are most important to you? What intentions can you set to help bridge the divide between work friend and friend?

2. What stories do you tend to tell yourself about why your friendships end? How accurate are those stories?

As with my other posts, feel free to suggest topics in the comments. Again, please share a few sentences so that I can give a more detailed and interesting answer than “it depends.”

Take care,

Jenn

References

Festinger, L., Schachter, S., & Back, K. (1950). Social pressures in informal groups; a study of human factors in housing. Oxford England: Harper.

NWO (Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research). "Half Of Your Friends Lost In Seven Years, Social Network Study Finds." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 27 May 2009. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090527111907.htm>.