Thanks for your comments on work / not-work relationships. I agree completely.

I'm 40 and used to work with a girl about 20 years my minor. We were friends ~ actually, she reminded me a lot of one of my nieces. She moved on and we stayed in touch from time to time; she'd drop by and say hello, or we'd forward an e-mail once in a while. I can't imagine driving 12 hours to see her, but if I had business nearby, I imagine I'd at least stop by to say hello. She passed away recently, and I wish I'd kept in touch more often. She was a really nice person.

@Hob

There is nothing wrong with that imo, but Robby's situation is a lot different. Keeping in touch is a lot different than talking everyday, and dropping by if you were in the area is a helluva lot different than driving 12 hours one way to visit.

re: work relationships

I'm in my late 30s - most of the folks I work with are much younger by more than just a few years. I'm married and have a family - everyone else is either single, engaged, or recently married. I do go out to lunch with them sometimes - or the occasional happy hour, even though I don't drink - but I can't *go out* with folks regularly because I have a family to go home to and often have to watch my kids because my wife is working when I'm not. It's nothing against them, of course, I just don't have the option to leave the house to go hang out.

Admittedly, if this guy is single and in his 20s, he has less of an excuse - unless the situation is reversed and everyone else has a family and they can't really get together.

@laudickj

We don't really know the entire circumstances, because all we have is Bobby's perspective. We do know that the unnamed girlfriend *and her parents* are okay with the situation, and she's assured him that everything is fine. I suspect that the real problem is not that she has a friend, but that the situation is making him feel insecure and he doesn't know how to handle it.

If my friend had played WoW, we may have been in touch all the time. (Probably not, because I use WoW to wind down after spending all day with people, and not to socialize.) But since I didn't feel "that way" about my friend, and she didn't feel "that way" about me, it would have never occurred to me that her boyfriend might have felt jealous or threatened.

Could I be wrong? Absolutely. But the details we do have suggest otherwise.

@TheDewd: Honestly? People don't need excuses not to hang out with people outside of work. Camaraderie can be helpful for office morale, and I have no problem engaging folks in polite conversation and watercooler talk. But that's generally where I keep my work relationships, mostly because I can't really relate to the average person in the offices I've worked in. Like I worked in a call center one time with a bunch of 19 year olds that only ever talked about various Kardashians, and were constantly expressing bafflement at the fact that I was a 20-something woman without kids and babydaddy drama. I wasn't trying to get involved with people like that. Then there was the office full of conservative Christians. I can get along just fine with people who have different beliefs and worldviews from me, but I'm not exactly chomping at the bit to spend my free time with people who constantly try to convert me to their religion because they think I'm too nice to go to hell (direct quote).

I can count the number of friends I've made and kept from work on one hand. In those cases, they were people I probably would have made friends with had we met anywhere else, because we had things in common besides work (queerness, similar politics, shared interest in fandom or geek culture, etc).