friendship and closure

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What makes you end a friendship? How do you get closure? What are the signs that you have moved on? How do you interact with that person once the friendship has ended?

if you're a married male, do you think its possible to maintain a platonic friendship with a younger female?

I should point out that my replies on your other thread
were based on the fact that the "friendship"
took place in a work environment.
You have to be real careful with that.

Be careful not to burn bridges at work?

Exactly.

People change jobs and companies so fast these days,
that you never know who will be sitting in on your next interview,
or who will be talking to whom when references are being checked,
or who you might be asked to work with someday,
or where you will be working that you wouldn't have guessed years ago.

Yeah, I've experienced some pretty weird things.

I've had friendships with married men at work. We just got on well and would talk at the office. When I moved on I didn't keep in touch with any of them because it seemed inappropriate.

That doesn't mean that I dislike them. I just felt that it was ok to be friendly because we had to see each other every day and work in the same room so it makes sense to be nice. We got on well, so why not have a chat everyday and share things, But they are married and I respect that. I don't want to get in the middle of that.

Keeping the reationship going after the work aspect of it was over just didn't feel right to me.

I try to keep every friend I make no matter what, but if I were to seriously end a friendship, it'd take a betrayal of my trust for me to do that.

That's possible but you better analyse your feelings. Are you really doing that because you really feel like being friends with the woman or is it because you feel physically attracted to her somehow and want to stay close to her because a platonic relationship would be better than nothing?

In the latter case I don't advise you to stay "friends" with her. Politely leave and don't ever look back. You don't need to be rude, just leave her alone. That's not a real friendship.

If you leave her alone and don't look back, don't you think she deserves an explanation so that she can close the chapter too?

No, it was just a casual work place friendship. If the married person feels like there is some attraction there, they may feel it's not appropriate to carry the friendship on any longer. It was ok to have that friendliness when seeing the younger female employee person everyday, they're not going out of your way to see them if they are just there in the office, but generally these things aren't carried on further unless the guy wants to have an affair.

It's just kind of understood. An unwritten rule.

Even as a straight male, a very close platonic friendship with the same single female is tricky - I think it's quasi-impossible for a male to spend hundred/thousands of hours doing stuff with the same female together without developing attraction toward her (I am not sure if it's the same for the females, but honestly I don't think it happens as frequently).

In my experience, friendships with the opposite sex is limited in nature, there are boundaries and usually it's a friendship only in a group context, or as a casual workplace/college friendship hence temporary - and more often it dies once one of them gets into a serious relationship.

OK, I get it. This is helpful. Thank you. So for one reason or another, this kind of friendship is always destined to be temporary and confined to work projects, and for good reason.

So it wasn't about being used?

In another post I mention that through my loyalty to this person, amongst some other reasons, I took a lot of flak from my boss. It was worth it in some ways because we were working on an important project, and his contributions were critical; but it was a very sad time realising that he wasn't there when i desperately needed workplace support.