[lostcolony]

So you touch on something - work friends are really important only because they're lacking social connection elsewhere.

But...work friends aren't friends. It's very rare to stay in touch if you change jobs. In fact, that normalized relationship is a tie keeping you at a job that may otherwise be bad.

As a reason for why to be in the office, I feel like it's a coping mechanism, rather than real fulfillment of the need. I can't say "better to rip the bandaid off" or similar, but I can say that the 'right' solution is to find connection outside of work. Even if you're in the office, you have to do that for the friendship to persist should you ever leave.

[legostormtroopr]

> It's very rare to stay in touch if you change jobs.

I'm going to disagree here. I have plently of friends who I met through work. Some including former direct reports.

The same goes for many people I know. I don't keep in contact with everyone I worked with - but there are a key few who I'm happy to hang out with.

[lostcolony]

"A key few" - out of how many coworkers? That was my point; you may walk away with a person or two per job on average, but you interacted with, likely had lunch with, made small talk with, far more.

[legostormtroopr]

At 90% of jobs I've had, I've made and kept at least one long term friend (over 10 years).

I've shifted cities, but when I return these are people I go out of my way to meet with.

[Mehdi2277]

I've mostly kept a couple work friends per job but I'm also more proactive than most people on staying in touch. When I was a kid I was awful at it and was a loner and eventually decided I would try harder to stay in touch with people and not let friends disappear because of a move.

But regardless of whether you keep them even with an active non work social life I want also want a work social life. I have your solution but that still doesn't remove my desire to have work friends too. I spend 40ish hours a week on work. I don't want that to be with people that I can't call several of them good friends.

[scatters]

> But...work friends aren't friends. It's very rare to stay in touch if you change jobs

The exact same holds for other situational friendships. Stop drinking, stop going to church, get injured and stop playing sport, and see how long those friendships last. That doesn't make them any less real.

The connections you have with work friends from previous jobs persist; you can catch up about old faces, industry and workplace goings on, and career progression among people who understand the situation intimately.

[lostcolony]

But building connections over more permanent parts of yourself will last more than something that is likely to change every couple of years. Yes, losing the thing you connected over is going to make it so only the best friendships last, but that's just it, you can lose work just like you can everything else. Do people who -don't- go to a bar regularly to drink necessarily have limited social lives? No. Well, same with work.

Work actually makes it -harder- to really connect with people. The norm is to keep personal stuff personal; you don't bring up the difficulties you're having with your SO, and they don't give you advice or commiserate.