Hmmm. I beg to differ as someone that has been through it all over thirty years of office work. I've had opposite sex friends and same sex friends at work to vent too. (I'm a CIS hetero guy married 28 years) It depends on the situation, job or company if I ended up with friends that were opposite sex or not. I work as a software engineer so women in general are far between these days. Currently I am working remotely and started a new job last summer and have made a couple of friends over video chat quite easily. I have only met these people in person on a couple of occasions. Even in my last company I had "gossip" friends that we instant messaged all day long about this and that about work. Venting and so on. All I am saying is that it has shifted online and maybe you didn't make the shift?