Office Spouse?? What???

So, I learn from my Fox & Friends' Friends yesterday about the phenomenon that is "office spouse". This would be someone at work with who you have a close friendship and apparently are to share with them deep secrets so that, if people looked from the outside, they would suspect an affair was underway.

I immediately resented the term. Why? Because it makes the following blanket statement:

An adult male and an adult female cannot be close friends without it having something to do with romance, sex, or breaking up families.

Bullcrap.

Why does this tick me off? First, most of my life, most of my friends have been females. Most of my close friends...heck, a majority of my friends, period, in high school were female. I had close female friends in college.

And, in the best portrait of this---I was a stay at home Dad for 2 1/2 years (the first years of my daughter's life), and, at the time, there were many "starter" families (young couples, young kid/kids) on the block. So, many late afternoons would have the kids out riding bikes, playing street hockey, etc., while the parents watched.

So, on our block, it would be Dana, then Sharon, then Christie, sometimes one or two others, and.....me.

When Bonnie gets home from work as the "guys" in the other families do so, they begin to join us outside. It was never a surprise when my wife would go talk shop, cars, home remodeling with the guys drinking beer, while I talked parenting, etc with the ladies. Bonnie would spend most of the time with the ladies, but you'd never see me popping a cold one with the other guys.

I don't hunt, I don't fix cars, my wife owns the toolbox....that's just who I am.

So, when I returned to the work force six years ago, it came as no surprise that I made friends who just (SHOCK) happened to be female.

For the past five years I have shared a large office with three females! My best friend at work is......oh my goodness.....female!

Get the picture? If "office spouse" becomes a presumed reality in all male/female work relationships, two things will happen.

1) Eyes will look with questions in the minds of those seeing the friends co-working.
2) I'll be considered a gigilo.

I got one spouse. I have many friends. I have some great friends, and a couple of close friends. There are plenty of females in each category, even in the last one.

So what. I spit on the idea of "Office Spouse", not because it doesn't exist (I'm sure it does), but that it automatically injects the "affair" factor into what could simply be a close friendship between two people.

In closing....if a man at work has a best friend who works in the next cubicle and happens to be a man, does this qualify as "same-sex office spouse"?