No. It was a different time. And single women keeping in touch with male colleagues meant landline home phone numbers and avoiding one on one conversations that weren't obviously at work, about work.

A phone number for a resume was acceptable. Going out for beers or golf or lunch was only acceptable if there were 3 or more people - regardless of if he was married or not.

Single male friends were only around until a gf was found and then the friendship had to dissolve or change dramatically.

I was adhd before anyone knew what that was. With some overlap in autism spectrum traits. I could pull off neutral nerd to get accepted by and taken seriously by male colleagues, but building a network was impossible for someone like me.

As for people from the era of my life you are asking about, I has to leave people behind all the time because I continued my path of personal growth and development long before it was cool. No one had any interest in growing alongside me. And there would inevitably come the moment of decision where I had to choose between staying in a world that no longer suited me to keep friends, or minimize contact until things naturally faded away. Ok, sigh, lone wolf it is yet again.

I regret nothing, but I am definitely sometimes jealous of younger generations who didn't need to undo their upbringing because the base had far more tools built in by society finally evolving into it, their opportunities to have technology between them and others to keep in touch without appearance of shenanigans, and a world far more accepting of an "all of human traits" respect rather than skewing heavily toward what we as humans have categorized as masculine traits.

I'm now dealing with ageism. It's obvious just by how I express myself that I'm not cool in the ways I'm supposed to be cool to befriend the connected generations.

It didn't help that I changed careers into owning a personal business. Always non-competes and wildly varying income levels that caused unstable financial situations. I was needing to move or move on, adapt to local recessions, not staying put long enough to build a solid client network based on referrals and accessibility.

I worked so very hard to become the awesome person I am now. But sacrificing a strong network for chosen or unexpected reasons really has me quite low on close friends and the solid network others my age worked so hard to build.

I couldn't have. I didn't have the social graces, nor did I have much interest is trying to fit it to have a social network.

I'm just a nerdy enough girl to be unfit for cool society, and not even close to nerdy enough to hang with the true nerds.

I'm super smart but not booksmart. I have zero interest in normal human activities like sports, opening movie night, bars, etc - all the kinds of things people build networks around.

Many closed chapters.

Sometimes I wonder if I chose poorly, but then someone from my past appears in order for the universe to remind me that those connections was doomed to fail and I always chose the graceful exit before things went south.

So, sure, for the most part, I'd smile and say hi maybe a warm hug. But the person they remember is many many versions of me ago, and we just have zero reasons to reopen chapters.