Seeing her every day is pure agony.
Want Hera’s help? Email your problem to helpme@thespinoff.co.nz or fill out this form.
Kia ora Hera,
Forgive me for I have sinned. I dated someone I work with.
At the time it seemed wonderful, and I felt so lucky. I got to see my love and my best friend in boring meetings and the communal kitchen, and exchange meaningful glances across the office while pretending to be extremely interested in whatever was happening on my laptop. What could go wrong?
Well, a lot actually. A place that felt so good turned out to be The Good Place. We broke up after a year, and unfortunately, I still love my ex. She does not feel the same, which means I now have the enormous privilege of pining from five desks away while trying to determine whether her laughing and flicking her hair is flirting with Becky from accounts or simply being a polite and well-functioning human being.
Moving on is hard. Moving on when you still love someone is harder. Moving on when the person you are trying to get over is sitting in the same Teams purgatory as you and casually existing within your peripheral vision every day feels downright impossible.
And, because many of our colleagues don’t know we were together, I also get to periodically hear someone mention her in conversation and experience the emotional equivalent of being hit by a small truck while smiling and saying, “oh yeah, she’s great.”
I know, rationally, that I need to move on, but how do I move on from someone I can’t actually move away from? How do I stop analysing every interaction, stop wondering who she is talking to, and somehow turn this person from the love of my life back into Susan from down the hall who needs to send me that document by Friday?
Please help. I am beginning to feel that I have committed the ultimate workplace romance error and am now destined for an eternity of punishment in corporate hell.
Yours,
Regrettably Employed
Dear Regrettably Employed,
People love to tell you not to date people you work with for exactly this reason, but of all the viable contemporary dating strategies, this one actually makes a lot of sense. Or about as much sense as uploading your various stats and damage modifiers to a dating app in the attempt to motivate a stranger to spontaneously fall in love with you.
One of the sad things about dating apps is that meeting strangers online means the diminishing ubiquity of a slow-burn crush. Crushes, like black mould, thrive in an atmosphere of humidity, poor ventilation and an abundance of time. Conditions that are often found in the modern workplace.
It’s all very well to tell people not to date their workmates, but unless you have some kind of sexually promiscuous hobby, like bouldering or musical theatre, it’s hard to meet people without having to advertise yourself, like a new brand of flavoured probiotic yoghurt in an already crowded flavoured probiotic yoghurt market.
Personally, I think it’s fine to date colleagues, as long as
- Your job doesn’t represent a once-in-a-lifetime career opportunity you would be devastated to have to leave.
- You are prepared to immediately resign if it all turns to shit.
I’ve dated people I’ve worked with before, and most of the time it was fine. Sometimes it was brutal, but it can also be a lot of fun, especially if you work in a chaotic, pheromone-rich environment where falling in love with a colleague and having a torturous romance followed by a devastating breakup is a celebrated and folkloric part of the office culture.
I think the advice about not dating colleagues is pointless anyway, because it usually happens by accident, and by the time you’re wondering whether or not it’s a good idea, you’re already too far gone. If you don’t hook up, you’ll probably just spend the entire workday mutually enfeebled by your obvious attraction, boring and alienating your coworkers, and becoming heartbroken when your crush meets someone else. You might as well try to eke a little joy out of the situation.
Your current situation sounds brutal! There’s nothing harder than actively trying to get over someone you have intense feelings for when you have to see them every morning, laughing on the phone like a part-time model in a Deloitte customer care ad. It’s a mixed blessing that nobody knew you were together. On one hand, you don’t have to suffer through endless condolences and side-taking. But it’s also awful to be miserable in silence and not be able to tell anyone why. There are only so many times you can cry in the work bathroom without people noticing.
My advice is to find a new job. I know this is unfair. But the rule about dating workmates is that the person who cares the least/gets over the relationship fastest usually gets to keep their job, because their suffering is less intense, and they’re able to bear the awkwardness longer.
This is doubly cruel, because job hunting is horrible at the best of times, let alone while in the throes of misery. But pain can also be a great motivator.
You don’t say anything about quitting in your letter. You don’t even seem to consider it as an option, which might mean there’s some valid reason you can’t quit that you’ve failed to mention, like you are working together on a remote Arctic research station, or leaving would represent a huge blow to your career prospects.
If that’s the case, and you really, really cannot quit your job, there’s nothing you can do but suck it up and wait for the pain to diminish. It will get better with time. Another piece of unpopular dating advice I subscribe to is that the fastest way to get over someone is to fall for someone else, but that strategy only works once the worst of the heartbreak is over.
If you can’t quit, there’s not much you can do but buy an enormous pot plant that blocks your ex from your peripheral vision, avoid all work-related functions and try to move on as soon as humanly possible. But it would be a lot easier to find another job.
Good luck!
