2015 was a weird time for me. I don’t remember a huge chunk of the year, honestly, but what I do remember is that I had gotten married in March 2013 (the first time!), and we didn’t have the capacity to take a honeymoon at the time, so we went to Paris in February 2015 — about two years later. This was also supposed to be the time we would “try” for kids, which is a fancy way of saying having unprotected sex. We “tried” for maybe a few weeks, including Paris, and then it eroded. Long story there; not for this post.
Well, actually, somewhat for this post. Because, sometime around April 2015, my ex had a late period deal which turned out to be nothing, but for some reason we had to drive from Fort Worth to Irving (maybe 20-25 minutes) for her to see a doctor to confirm that it was nothing. So, also for some reason I don’t or can’t remember, I wasn’t allowed to go into the office, so I was standing outside scrolling my phone, as one does.
It’s a long-since deleted photo, but I had two old co-workers named Matt and Melisa hold up Post-It Notes, where one said “Hi” and the other said “Ted,” i.e. a totality of “Hi Ted.” They were based in Seattle and I was based in Texas. I thought this was cute and some good co-worker love stuff, so I shared it on Facebook.
Now here’s a salacious side arc to the story: a few things happened at once, i.e. I wrote this post on the power of friends at work (A), then I shared the Post-It Note photo on Facebook (B), then my friend, who would die two years later, told me the woman in the photo was cute (C), then nothing happened with a potential pregnancy (D), then my ex-wife and I got divorced about two years later to the month (E), then the woman in the Post-It Note photo also got divorced (F), so we had a brief fling (G), then we both married other people (H), but all the while I felt good that I really raised the bar for my deceased friend thinking that woman was cute (I).
Follow that bouncing ball? It’s a fun one. The guy in that photo, Matt, once told someone after I got piped at that job that he didn’t know me. We worked together every day for 17 months. Can’t win ’em all, I guess.
This all heads into some Northwestern research
The research is on friends at work and keeping friends from one job as you move through to other jobs. This is notoriously hard. When you leave a job, there’s a natural inclination that you are “out of the tribe” of that job, and that’s even more true if you got fired/laid-off from one job. Plus: people focus on their current co-workers, their family/spouse, and some core friends. Once you leave those orbits as a “former co-worker,” you don’t really factor for people socially, although maybe they see you at a wedding or someone’s birthday party or whatever.
Case in point: I worked at this place in ’18-’19 basically FTE (although there wasn’t enough full-time work to be done, admittedly), and I got fired from it. I wasn’t a good employee all-in, so it was deserved. The place had 55 employees, and most are based in Fort Worth, where I currently live. I see some of them periodically at events, bars, restaurants, what have you — maybe less since COVID. At an outdoor arts festival in summer ’19, I saw two former co-workers, and both of them basically completely ignored me. These are people who, a year earlier, would ping me 16 times in 1 hour to get something from me. Life is weird. Context is weird.
Anyway, back to Northwestern.
Here’s a power quote right up top in that article:
“There’s a tendency to neglect one of the most important aspects of our well-being, which is our connection to others,” says Roese, author of the bookIf Only. “We’re finding that people frequently regret losing these personal connections.”
Amen and preach. I literally think about this shit 10-15 times/day, if not more. Wrote a ditty a while back on the expectations of adult friendship, which I think everyone perceives a little bit differently, and then once wrote something about how people change core relationships as they move through life, relative to work, location, kids, kids’ friends, etc. I wrote the second one and went to a wedding party at a brewery, put away my phone for three hours, and came back to be raked by a bunch of people on Twitter missing the point of that article. The only point of that second link is that, well, as you get older and move and have kids and your parents age and you shift priorities, your core relationships sometimes change as well. I think many of us experience that, but we don’t often discuss it, which can be hard.
See also:
For Roese, this means people should work harder to maintain the relationships that mean the most to them—and not just by liking someone’s vacation photos on Facebook. “What we see is a longing for a close connection,” he says. “In the age of social media, we can call lots of people friends, but what people miss when they’ve lost [that close connection] is a friend close enough to share intimate life details with. This is common with friendships that were important to people in their twenties and that fall away in their forties or fifties. People in their twenties might not realize how many life forces will push them away from their friends as they get older.”
Preach. I do a whole podcast about this, if you ever want to listen. Here’s a good example of an episode about making friends if you move in your 30s. (I moved twice in my 30s. Shit ain’t easy.)
OK, so what do we do?
Well, there’s a fundamental difference between “long-distance relationships” (romantic) and “long-distance relationships” (former colleagues), because in the former, there are way more time commitments and overlaps, i.e. scheduled nightly calls or whatever. You don’t typically do that with former co-workers, or even college buddies. You might, but I’d argue it’s not typical. I might be wrong. Maybe I just have shitty friend habits.
There’s also gender differences, as noted here:
There is an interesting gender difference in the literature on how people keep friendships, Roese explains. Women are better at preserving one-on-one connections, known—to social psychologists, anyway—as dyads. “Dyadic connections are a specialty of women,” Roese says, “whereas men tend to be better at forming small groups, such as sports teams. Men need an extra nudge to preserve time for one-on-one friendships.”
This is why you see more middle-aged depressed guys than we want to admit exist.
OK, so what do we do about all this? Here’s my best guess.
- Be conscious about keeping in touch with former co-workers: Invite them to things, send them articles, etc. “Temple of Busy” can always win out, but try your best here. You can do the same with college friends and the like.
- Remember the 20-40-60 Rule: It’s a good guide to how people move through life in terms of their relationships.
- Remember that many people are just full of shit: They focus on their own priorities, claim consistently that you are one of those, and you’re really not and they’re changing diapers, watching Netflix, and housing wine. It happens. It’s life. People are full of shit.
- People prioritize what they want to prioritize: And, in pockets of time, that might not be you. Don’t take life so seriously.
Now, broadly-speaking, I’m horrible at this stuff and often think I’m “ignored” or “cancelled” when, in reality, people just get busy with other shit — or they get busy trying to prove to others how busy they are, which is also unfortunately a common outcome of modern life. Contemplation? No. Instagram and hustle and busy.
But in the grandest sense of things, keeping in touch with former co-workers can get you new opportunities down the road, which is always nice in a very unstable work environment … and heck, if you read the story above, maybe it can even get you laid, which is nice in a post-divorce environment too.
Do your best. It ain’t easy and lives shift. But do your best and try to stay rolling with people.
