Making work friends is a strange feeling out process of whether you're close or just convenient - Alexander Brown

My whole life I have felt certain friendships were circumstantial, with people close to me out of convenience.

I would become friends with those I worked with or lived near, only to see that friendship fade or burn out entirely when I moved jobs or home.

That’s no slight on them or me, it’s just part of adulthood that newer relationships don’t seem like forever compared to those you made growing up.

One day someone can seem incredibly important and the person you call for reassurance, and the next you can’t be bothered to travel 50 minutes to see them.

Work friends can be your best. Picture: Getty Images

And making new friends is even weirder, as you meet people through your work and decide whether you actually like each other or just need someone to talk to.

There’s also questions in my work as to whether you talk because they’re a contact, or because you’re becoming friends.

It’s the nervousness of asking to go for a drink but knowing if they say no it’s not your looks that are the problem, it’s solely because of who you are as a person.

But sometimes, just sometimes, you can make new friends as an adult who are utterly brilliant, like my pal Louis.

We met at Tory conference, of all places, playing against each other in a football match.

Explaining to him I’d hurt my hamstring so to go easy on me, he responded by clearing me out immediately before apologising through laughter.

It was an overly competitive and absurdly rash thing to do, and I liked him immediately.

Later I went to the hotel bar to up my alcohol levels to the content required to be at Tory conference and saw him talking to a girl who’d broken up with the boyfriend she was staying with just hours earlier.

Putting his arm around her, he told her how charming and supportive he’d been, to which she replied “actually no, you've not been charming or supportive”, and I still laugh thinking about it.

I have since learned they are friends, but at the time I thought of him as a parody of the brash and loud young people you expect to be in politics.

But spending more time together, while he still is horrendously brash and loud, I realised he’s also funny, compassionate and caring.

Unable to attend my birthday for family reasons, instead of just saying no he sent me a long voice note detailing the entirety of the family drama that was holding him back before calling me on the day.

But now he’s leaving, and the questions over circumstance rise once more.

After the chaotic, violent and depressing nature of politics got too much for him, he’s fleeing Westminster for something a little quieter; he’s joining the army.

And reader, I hate that he’s going, and loathe that I like his company enough that I don’t judge him for choosing a job where he learns to kill people.

He went from being the loud mouth on the opposition to someone I was excited to see in the canteen who sends my columns to his friends.

Male friendships are weird, we often don’t talk about our feelings and just stay close as it’s easy.

Louis is going and getting out of politics, but our friendship isn’t going anywhere.