Welcome back to the game! The above-mentioned solutions should sort you out, I believe, but I also wanted to add that since you've been gone the game has added cross-server support within each data center, meaning not only can you go into duties with players from other servers on your data center, but you may also send them friend requests as well! Furthermore, they recently provided the ability to set up a cross-world Linkshell, though atm you can only be a part of one such group at a time. This all may not be totally relevant, but I noted you mentioned that you made sure your bf was in the same server so you could add him, which implied that you may not have been aware of all these changes. So if you didn't already hear all that yet, hopefully that helps to bring you back into the loop!