1) Friendship of Utility: Affection is based on usefulness, and if usefulness fades so does the relationship.
2) Friendship of Pleasure: Affection is based on pleasant enjoyment of the other, often in shared circumstance such as sport or hobby. When the enjoyment changes or circumstance ends, so does the relationship.
3) Friendships of Goodness: "Now those who wish well to their friends for their sake are most truly friends; for they do this by reason of own nature and not incidentally; therefore their friendship lasts as long as they are good- and goodness is an enduring thing."
#1 and #2 are common, #3 is rare.
For example, I grew up in the USSR and I saw how my parents' colleagues were practically all very close friends. Both my parents worked in academia. Someone's birthday was usually a big noisy gathering of the whole department of the research institute where they worked, plus some more friends from previous organizations and of course some classmates. Yes, at times it was that insane!
Looking back now I realize what has been lost. Why though - I have no idea.
But there are 3 other aspects, specific to your location/economic system, which do not apply (and mostly never applied) in the US/West:
- people did not move around the country for jobs like they do in the US
- salaries in Eastern Europe/USSR were public and the same for the same position/responsibility.
- bosses' salaries were perhaps 30% higher (certainly not 300+% higher, so everyone was in the same socio-economic class, facilitating camaraderie
I think there's two parts to this - the Russian attitude of maintaining a few, deep close friends and everyone by and large staying in the same city their entire lives.
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/tenure.nr0.htm
>The median number of years that wage and salary workers had been with their current employer was 4.1 years in January 2020
It's difficult to make friends in this environment and this is a relatively recent change: https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/1984/10/art2full.pdf
I think most people find it simultaneously wonderful and extremely boring to be at home with kids for extended periods, so quite a few seize any chance of having a conversation with another adult. The playgrounds are full of bored parents, and everyone has one or more tiny, human conversation starters.
Kindergarten is pretty good as well for meeting people. When a three year old is invited to birthday party, they kind of have to have a parent along for the event.
Somewhat specific to my locality (Sweden), there is 15 hours per week of free kindergarten for kids with stay-at-home parents. In my city there are specific drop-off and pickup times for those children, which means that six times per week you meet relaxed and slightly bored other parents, who have kids in the same group as you. This essentially always means that you hang around the yard for a bit and socialize.
Three new friends in two years, six if one counts spouses. That is the same amount that I made in the preceeding ten years!
It was less of an event and more of a community of acquaintances who were good at welcoming strangers. Many of us became good friends.
Space was public venues, and once folks got to knowledge other, other suggestions of who had access to space came up pretty easily.
Today, I’d probably pick something semi different like airmeet and use it for a virtual meetup to gauge interest.
Sometimes restaurants or libraries have dedicated rooms that can be booked.
They're usually not on meetup, and often only on their own websites and/or on Facebook.
I found this helpful: https://outline.com/aAmy53
And you know what the crazy thing is? I just don't care about stuff like sports, but I'd happily go to a game if I liked the people I was with, for the the chance to hang out. But omg I just don't care about so many of the things that seem to bring people together.
That's the curse of the mild introvert, I guess.
Like others here I tried finding local friends through groups, other dads, school events, etc but get nowhere. I’m honestly considering either switching back to a small cultish company or moving to a smaller town both of which have their own problems but... guess I could try softball
It doesn’t exactly make me happy others have this same problem but I’m glad I’m not alone.
If I had to attribute what the difference was:
First company: Almost everyone was within a 10 year age difference of each other, and even those few that were older were still "young at heart", for lack of a better term. Everyone enjoyed each other's company and would frequently meet up after work, even go party together at bars and clubs on peoples' birthdays, etc.
Current company: My ex-boss had a unique knack for bringing the team together. I don't know what specifically he did that contributed most, but the entire team ended up becoming friends. Since he left, things haven't been the same with newcomers into the team, while most of the oldtimers have left.
Without out-of-work activities & bounding, friendly coworkers don’t transition into friends. I’d suspect remote work makes it very difficult to form a permanent friendship with a colleague.
I thought this was the norm, not the exception. I'm not in touch with of my past colleagues anymore. Reasons: a) we never hanged out outside the office (besides, beers on Fridays from time to time), b) changing jobs usually means changing cities, and using Twitter/WhatsApp/Facebook/Email is something that I find useless if you want to keep in touch with people; for me it is in-person hang outs or no touch at all.
I noticed this in other people too. Their entire social circles revolved around work. People had weddings that essentially only co workers went to.
Those years were the loneliest of my life.
What did you change to turn this around?
The hardest thing for me, still, is I'm working at a company that has a similar vibe to an SF tech company with a lot of people moving here or our other office for the job. That sets up the transactional/ephemeral relationships from work. It's very hard for me to distance myself from getting self worth out of my work and relationships at work, but I must do that. The "I must do that," is an insight from therapy.
a lot of us are lonely and it makes everything sensitive, maybe your colleagues don't stay in touch because they think you didn't stay in touch
it's subtle and fragile and I think we should find more strength within ourselves
What I've found is that I tend to try to friends with my co-workers because I'm around them constantly. And I don't try to make friends anywhere else.
Lately, I've been realizing that even though my coworkers like me, and I like them, they are not really my friends. Nobody who leaves the company stays in touch with me. I almost never have contact with them away from work.
I share my hobby stuff with them during work hours, and they seem to enjoy hearing about it and engage with me, but none of them would actually want to join me in those hobbies away from work.
This has me thinking that I should spend less time trying to engage with them, and more time trying to find local groups that share those hobbies.
So, contrary to the article, I don't think "the loneliness of the modern office team member" is actually a problem. I think it's a big hint that they need to seek relationships outside of work instead.