Never thought I would fall for someone at work. I am in my late 20s and he’s in his early 40s. He was the VP of our department and recently got promoted to the C-suite. He’s married with kids. Earlier this year my parent passed away two months after I joined the new company. Mentally I wasn’t in a good place and I had to travel overseas for funeral and took care of the aftermaths. I gave no notice and turned in my resignation letter.
To my surprise, he was the one who reached out to me.He was very understanding and shared some very personal things with me. I was vulnerable and I opened up to him.. He told me even though my parent has passed, the memories would never fade. He convinced me to stay and offered me a month off with full pay. He also sent me a plant which I thought was very kind of him..My direct manager hasn’t reached out to me even once during the whole time. And I felt like he could easily find a replacement given my duration in the role.
I returned to the office a month later. I sensed a stand off ish vibes from the other coworkers of me taking the time off. He was the only one who’s nice to me in the department.When I first returned, he was very attentive. He would come to check on me often and tried to initiate conversation. He would always ask about my dogs and nagged me to bring pictures of them and even offered to print out the pictures for me when I told him I am too busy.He would ask me if my leg hurts from standing too long and told me I should get one of those standing mat and expensed on the company credit card. He skipped an interview with a candidate to join my welcome back lunch.. He would assign projects for me to directly work with him and always praise my work.
Shortly after my return, he was promoted to C-suite. He’s even busier and our company is a one of the big public traded tech companies. He would still came to me and try to initiate conversations about my dogs or sometimes he would very awkwardly try to start a conversation of weather…A little awkward but I also find it’s cute. Not sure if I am seeing him filling in the father figure that I wanted or if it’s something else.
Slowly I found myself developed feelings for him. I noticed he would check me out sometimes but I told myself it’s all just in my head.. One day I dyed my hair, none of my other male colleagues said anything. But he noticed and asked if I changed my hair color and told me it looks good. Part of me thinking he’s being friendly but the other part was saying hey he notices changes on you. He would go around my direct boss and boss’s boss to assign project for me to work with him directly.. Although this ended up backfired, because my boss basically told him to back off from my day to day work management. When we walked by each other in hallway, I felt he always give me this meaningful glance with a smile.
I found my feelings extremely unhealthy. I tried to avoid him these days because I can’t even function normally when I am around him. There are times we are in a group setting, he was talking to others. I purposely look at my phone to avoid conversation with him but he walked up to me and asked about my dogs for the 1000 times again. On Halloween, when he came to our area. He asked what my Halloween costume is ) a pretty obvious one actually) and I noticed he looked at me up and down and paused on my boobs..There’s a company event where his wife was present and I bought one of my guy friends, he had a big smile when he saw me.. Told me he’s glad to see me and teased me a little..
I think he’s a good boss. I think my feelings for him is probably because I felt he’s the only person at work likes me while others have been very cold and distant. He’s my outlet and someone who made me feel comfortable. I also kind felt a vibe of our office environment where he was the only alpha male in the department and most of the supervisor/managers are female and all fighting for his attention/approval.
I started kept distance from him because I the work environment was too toxic and I am planning to leave. I no longer engage in conversation with him when he comes to our area and just pretend I have earphones on. I also avoid any eye contact with him at all. Gradually I see him also stopped engaging me in conversation and turned his attention to other colleagues. Sometimes I still felt a little bit uncomfortable when I saw him joking around with other female staff.
I have been applying for jobs and can’t wait to restart my chapter fresh. I felt I should never agreed to come back to this job and found myself in this hot mess. Everyday I still can’t help wondering if he had any kinds of feelings towards me or this is all just office politics game that he plays.. Either way it’s making me very depressed
