I am feeling weird about a colleague leaving and I am trying to find a way to process my feelings and grief. There are so many things at play that I don’t know where to start but I think most of it boils down to a mixture of sadness, jealousy, lust and a personal life crisis.
I’m a 38 year old man and I work in a Higher Education Institution. My colleague is a couple of year’s younger than me. I have been at the organisation for a slightly longer time period than her but she has now been working as a fellow manager and colleague alongside me for nearly 9 years.
We both have long term partners (over 10 years) and would say we are both generally happy in our relationships. She is getting married next year and I am engaged.
For the first few years we only really crossed paths in meetings and on the occasional project. She wasn’t that sociable and didn’t really indulge in work nights out (where as I did). We would have the occasional spot of lunch together and I remember a few road trips to conferences that were good fun but I would not say we were close.
Then the pandemic and lockdowns changed things. We both achieved a promotion which meant working much closer together. We also realised during lockdown that I had moved onto the same street as her (just a few doors down). This led to the occasional lunchtime walk and upon moving back to the office we started lunching more often, walking home together and occasionally socialising, mostly with groups but sometimes just the two of us after a stressful week at work.
Nights out tended to be pretty raucous. We both enjoyed a beer and whilst nothing more than friendship developed and the nights were purely filled with innocent chats about life, I started to become very attracted to her.
This past week she has been offered a new job and will be leaving the company in the new year. It’s in the same town and she will still be on the same street but I have nothing but anxiety and grief related to this news. I am of course pleased for her and this is her ideal job but it has thrown up a number of things that I am trying to process. All of which I do realise are about me.
Firstly I do feel I am a little Jealous. I have had a few interviews elsewhere without success and have been with the company for a long time. I am definitely feeling ready to move on and some of it I feel is down to the selfishness I have knowing that she has moved on before me
Secondly there’s the personal life crisis for me. Not only am I keen like her to progress and move on. I am also at a certain age where socialising with work colleagues is becoming harder. I have a fairly active social life away from work but she is my last real connection to someone that I can go for an after work drink with and let off steam. A lot of this is down to the fact that we are both in senior management positions, so keeping distance from direct reports is part of the job (it’s lonely at the top!) and also by the fact that the majority of the company is younger than 30 so we have little in common. I am not sure who I will turn to in future when things get too much or I’m having a bad day.
Thirdly I am genuinely sad to be losing a friend and colleague. We have achieved a lot and whilst we are quite different we have been through up’s and downs together.
Finally there are the other feelings that I have which are hard to describe and process. This woman is aesthetically beautiful. Just seeing her each day puts me in a good mood. That said I genuinely feel that these feelings that I have are pure lust and not out of a desire for a relationship with her. I say this as she has a whole host of personality traits (though never directed at me) that would grate on me as a partner very very quickly. She can be quite rude, blunt and confrontational. She often sees everything from a negative point of view (whereas I am a glass half full kinda guy). She is also quite often unprofessional at work in terms of her swearing and mannerisms in the office and in meetings. Put it this way if she was a member of my staff we would be having conversations! I know professionally with these behaviours I am going to be better off without her in the office.
But aesthetically she is just one of the most stunning women I have met. My reaffirmation that this is lust is that when I do fantasize about her (which is often) it is purely sexual. I genuinely feel I would just like a couple of nights and mornings getting to know her in that way and get it out the system. Not that I would ever entertain that due to my loyality to my partner and I don’t think she has the slightest attraction to me. But the fantasies persist and have done for a few years.
It’s just weird because I feel like I can clearly separate the friend who is good for a natter and the female form in front of me that I am attracted to.
I was the first person she told when she got the offered the new job and she is already putting in calendar dates to meet up with me.
In all of this I appreciate that I have a wonderful partner whom I love dearly. She is aware of and has met/socialised with this friend, as I have done with my colleagues partner. But I realise this is a form of emotional cheating.
I am just in such a weird mood. I have lost lots of colleagues and even people who have been best friends over the years and I have been fine with this and moved on but on this occasion I feel a so lost and empty.
