Friendship with a former professor?

Anonymous

I developed a good relationship with my mentor for my thesis. He is about 20 years older than me, I am 28. He is not married. After graduation (I will not be returning to school, I also have a job), I talked to him in a hallway, and I mentioned to him that I would want to talk to him again sometimes since I generally like talking to him. He said sure, we can go on a drink or dinner sometime, but he want to wait for all formalities to be behind us first and then we can talk more.

We also sent an article in one journal few months ago and are still waiting for it to be accepted. So with formalities he meant, let's wait for that article to be accepted first. (Getting article accepted in a journal can take up to one year or even more.)

I am just curious, is this article still considered a formality even though we are not in a student-professor relationship anymore? I want to continue talking with him because I really like him as a person and I want to develop some sort of friendship relationship with him. Maybe he confused it with dating and that is why he wants everything to be behind us?

Thanks for your opinion!

Friendship with a former professor?
3 Opinion