Advice please on how to appropriately advance platonic opposite-gender friendship in the office?

[The Big Lebowski Dude]

Don't befriend - or date - people at work. I'm actually amazed that people have time to do this. At my job, I have barely enough time to do my work and go home - and that's it.

I have no desire to make "friends" with people I work with or see them socially outside of the office. I see enough of them at work. And, my job - like any job - can get very political. I would just be polite but distant to my co-workers. Befriending any of them may end up having a negative effect down the road - seriously.

[jencam]

Originally Posted by StarPaladin

Thanks for your thoughts and feedback. Question: since she has already been super-friendly to me herself on her end, is it also acceptable of me to reciprocate the friendliness to her as well? And if not, do I run the risk of seeming cold or impersonal?

As far as friends and work, I really only have one other lasting professional relationship who I also consider to be a real and genuine friend: one of my former supervisors, who has since left/retired from the workplace. He is one of the kindest people I have ever known, and I honestly and very deeply respect, admire, and look up to him.

This is a hard one. First, I think you are interested in her, but that set aside ...... I don't remember anyone having to go so far out of the norm to make friends at work just due to the nature of my work experiences.

We could always start with going to each other's offices for work-related things and then conversations developed there were breaks to smoke and even non-smokers took breaks outside just to walk around.

People commonly went out to lunch and invited others. We'd sometimes HAVE to stop to eat together if we went together to do work things.

There were times when a male would ask a female and perhaps wanted to go alone but one of their friends would say oh I want to go too and that was funny but of course had to be accepted. I ended up at lunch with two men who wanted to date me I was like 'this is weird'.

OK, so back to you ..... it's hard if it's not common for people to go to lunch together. If you go to the cafeteria together or out together people are going to talk, so you have to be prepared for that.

I remember stopping for drinks after a late night of a work project with one man and some of our co-workers were at the same place they were all oh, are y'all here to be ALONE? We were like no, sit down, stupids.

I have no idea if my experiences are helping or not but one last thing: she will likely think that you want to date her if you ask.

You're not in the same environment it doesn't sound like. If you have to reach further out to ask, it makes it harder to be casual about it.

[jencam]

Originally Posted by SimplySagacious

Just ask her to lunch at the on-site cafeteria. No need to use other people in your little scheme.

This seems like the most casual and easy thing to do. All of my friendships at work that grew started with some variation of that. But we had no cafeteria. If we had I am sure that would have been the go-to.

Maybe later it can extend to I want to try that _____ place, have you been?

[jencam]

If she hypothetically didn't have a b/f...on the one hand, her extremely kindhearted nature alone would (in theory) make her excellent long-term g/f material. On the other hand though, I have always been told that it's almost always unwise to enter into workplace relationships, and that they almost always end badly. And so having her friendship makes the most sense and would certainly still be a very nice blessing, in and of itself.

This gives me the giggles. This is how I felt about M. A guy at work. Since he was engaged, I kept this notation in the furthest part of my mind and we were just barely friends at work - we were both um,,,,,,,, very conservative, maybe? Not out to be inappropriate. Maybe hyper-vigilant about it withe the sparks flying that couldn't be helped.

He'd get tounge-tied on a smoke break and just walk away. I was like ok, he's a bit odd.........

FF to them breaking up and me working somewhere else. All of a sudden he is trying really hard to ask me out w/o coming out and asking me out!

I had to ask a mutual friend what is up? Is he trying to ask me out? Yes, you dummy. Oh, ok! We were like two peas in a pod .... :-)