Workplace Fling Causing Anxiety, Guilt, Regret, Shame

[Sunny0945]

This is hard for me to post....well I guess here it goes.

I guess I’ll start off by saying I was and still am single. I've been struggling with this for a while, approx. 2-3 years ago my boss who has a partner and I had a fling. we worked on a project together became close and started to flirt in person and over work messenger. We were smsing each other out of business hours Aswell. She asked me to delete the messages we sent each other during business hours. As things started progressing, she said things to me like "you make me smile every time I walk past your desk" and when I questioned her she said “I don’t know” and put an blushing emojis on. I went on by saying "tell me” and she said you make me nervous... and then things progressed again.... we started sexting each other and sending intimate audio messages to each other...despite my gut feeling was not to..I beat myself up for not stopping this here...I feel like a scumbag and blame myself. As things went on, I told her I like her...to which her response was as a "friend right?" and "you get attached to easily". I said “what have we been doing then? you have basically cheated on your partner”. Her partner looked through her phone and saw my message and accused her of cheating.  

Ever since then things have been awkward at work. For a while she wouldn’t even look in my direction and would completely ignore me (even for work related things). Eventually things came kind of good and would at least talk to me for work stuff and a little bit personal but then for some reason would go cold again and ignore me. This has been happening for a long time. I don’t know what she told her partner about what happened but I suspect it wasn’t the truth.

Recently I’ve come to realise I’ve bottled this up for years and never talked to anyone about it. Which brings me to last couple of months where she started trying to be playful with me again and I’ve cut it off for the most part. Unfortunately, there have been a couple of occasions where we’ve gone out as a team and she made a joke at my expense and I ended up blushing.  Now I’ve been getting weird looks from people in my team and I feel like they know.

Any advice is much appreciated.

[randomxx]

Hi there op.

But well you did push it asking her things like that back when at the start , to which the answers were obvious anyway but at the same time. It takes two to tango and she obviously wasn't exactly innocent either so not like it was all your fault. She could've easily have shut it down back at the start too but knew exactly where it was going and encouraged it just as much as you did in her ways too.

But still , so now it's all happened and has landed where it is but ldk. As you know it was all a very messy and wrong move from the start and when something like that in a work situation ends , this is what your left with. Hence the old saying never start anything at work but then with someone who has a partner to boot, triple it.

You can't expect anything else around her now she's trying to bury it and leave it in the past but you should be forgetting it ever happened too and treating her according too , that's what she's trying to do. Juts leave it alone, and leave her alone go about your business, or else even find another job, that's what l'd be doing myself.

[Sunny0945]

Hi randomxx,

Thank you for the honest response, In hindsight yeah the answers were obvious but at the time in my mind I was questioning if this was real...along with all the alarm bells i had going off "don't proceed". When I do things that are wrong or I regret I have a terrible habit of being harder on myself than i should be.. Even after everyone else has moved on, I'm still dwelling on it. This is probably one of those times, which I am seeking help for.

I have no intention of contacting her outside of business hours (unless work related) and at work..well I'm trying to keep things strictly professional though she's making it a little difficult as she is trying to communicate with me in a bit of a playful way. I think you're right and i too came to the same conclusion that she is trying to leave it in the past and is doing her best in subtle ways to encourage me to leave it there too.

Whats making my anxiety worse is I sense at the very least the team leaders know what happened, though I must admit if they do they aren't behaving any differently toward me. In fact i feel like they are trying to support me and assure me its all ok....just in subtle ways.

I have thought about finding another job but despite all this, I love the work I'm doing at the moment. its pretty challenging and though I'm way outside of my comfort zone with the projects I'm working on at the moment, I feel like the team supports me and wont let me fail.

I just have to figure out how to forgive myself for being stupid and put this behind me.

[Scared]

Sounds to me like you already taking charge of the situation at work by not starting this work fling up again.

I doubt very much she has gone around telling work people about your fling with her because its not in her interest to spread gossip around especially because she has a partner.

The next time she comes on to you thats not appropriate in workplace say to her Im sorry for my part i played in this romance as you have a partner already and I need to keep our work relationship professional.  Ignore any flirtation lead by example of discussing work with her without any awkwardness , look act and feel you moved on to become professional again.

Its a dangerous game that can go very wrong in the workplace these work affairs.  This lady is trying to end this affair by going cold on you I mean this is no surprise to me.  Your job now is put your head down and work and stop concentrating on how she is coping with this and concentrate on your being professional.  If you read too much into how she is being you lose sight of whats important and that is how are you being in all this

[randomxx]

Scared put it perfectly op so really l can't add much. Remember though although it got messy and she wanted to shut it down on one hand , on the other too though she';ll also be tempted as time goes on to maybe even start it up again.

So l'd watch out for that and just as scared says keep things professional or even explain if it comes to that.

One good thing , time time time, it's amazing how things can blow over with just being left alone and time. So seems as you like the job, you could always go that way.Even things around her could return to some kind of normal in time.

Good luck and remember , it was no way known all your doing alone so lighten your load on that one..

rx

[Sunny0945]

Thanks Randomxx and Scared for your support.

I do indeed feel like I could get hooked in again easily and so I'm been trying to put some firm boundaries on communication to keep that from happening. I've caught her checking me out on multiple occasions and as i mentioned previously the flirting. For me I feel like there is too much water under the bridge...at least for now. Its been very painful but i have learnt some very important lessons and I'm not keen to experience this again. My biggest regret is not trusting my gut and stopping before it progressed to intimate messaging.

I appreciate you saying "it wasn't all my doing so lighten your load on that one". It made me smile a bit.

Thanks again guys.