Yep, I really enjoy my job too and I even work with some really good people but I keep my personal life… personal. It’s not like I hide my personality and life from my colleagues but I’ve got enough friends that I don’t feel like I need to add any more to my inner circle.
I don’t mean to say that the place can’t be nice but I would hope your home is of greater comfort than your workplace in most cases.
Obviously some different life circumstances influence your options of making new friends as an adult. I can certainly understand your perspective there but perhaps it’s hard for me to relate since my significant other and I have no children nor do our friend and none of us desire to ever have them either.
I’m sure they consume a great deal of time and energy that probably drives a person to crave social experiences away from them. If work is the only place they can get away from them I can understand that too but hobbies can still be an option.
World feels overcrowded as it is. Getting a shit deal because so many others choose to have kids and then want to force people to spend time trapped in a box with them… It’s like a whole population of people having their cake and eating it too… Or whatever expression fits best here for an unfair, double-dipping advantage…
And actually now that I think of it, two of our friend group did have kids and we all drifted apart because they were no longer able to commit time and weekends like we did to each other.
They used to often say “we should all hang out again!” and such but then either we’re never available or had to leave early or host events at their place which required interacting with their kids and I gotta say toddlers are not skillful conversationalists.
I don’t have a solution for people with kids trying to find friends at work. I can understand why it might seem appealing to them but speaking from the other side, it feels like a burden I shouldn’t have to carry.
I’m sure you have friends outside of work right?
That’s the part I never understand about people who connect working in office and with the fun of seeing others is person.
Why are you so willing to put up with commuting, office quality furniture, public restroom facilities, sick people who realllllly should have leverage optional work from home days or just regular old sick time… When you could just have more time for friends outside of the workplace.
I see my friends on weekends or they come over and we have game nights spending quality time with each other rather than infrequent unplanned interactions when we both should be doing something else.
My personal life friends are the people I “jump” for. Not coworkers. Having to “jump” for a coworker is and should be an inconvenience in the workplace because it means a failure of planning occurred somewhere. You can still have friendly camaraderie in the face of inconvenient circumstances but I don’t think you need to have some deep relationship to help out a colleague. That comes with the job to some extent.
When I’ve become friends with people from work, I invite them into my entirely separate personal life and in fact that is the case for one of my closest friends.
I just feel like If you wanna hang out with people from the office invite them to something outside of the office. The whole captive audience thing is such a demoralizing foundation to start a friendship with.
So why not hang out with them outside of the workplace?