This is really more about friendship. I’m leaving my job and I feel a mix of excitement and fear, which I know is completely normal. I’m sad to be leaving behind some incredible people, and as with previous jobs, I hope I’ll stay in touch with a few for coffees, drinks, or meals.
There’s one person in particular who I think will leave a real gap, and he happens to be a guy. The thing is, I don’t have any male friends, none at all. When I was married, I’d chat to my ex-husband’s friends at parties, but they weren’t really interested in me as a person; they were just there because of him.
This guy, though, actually talks to me because he wants to, not because he’s dating someone I know or feels obliged. I'd say we are strictly work friends. We only message occasionally outside of work if it’s about something we’ve already been discussing, and we don’t socialise beyond work events, but we have a lot of deep chats at work about things we are going through personally. Because our friendship exists between those work walls, it feels inevitable that once I leave, we’ll lose touch, and I’ll lose that male friendship altogether.
It might sound a bit silly, but having always had an entirely female friendship group, it’s been really nice to have a bloke to laugh with, talk rubbish with, and get a different perspective from. It would probably feel awkward to tell him just how much I’ll miss what we’ve had over the past few years, though he does know I’ll miss him.
I guess what I’m really wondering is: is this normal? Am I the only person who only has female friends? And how do you even make male friends outside of work? It feels like those friendships don’t always continue unless you’re seeing each other regularly