The media and late night TV have been all up in arms lately because of the confession Dave Letterman gave last week that he had an affair with a coworker. While no one seems to be really concerned about the fact that HE CHEATED ON HIS WIFE, the only thing anyone seems to be talking about in any ‘lifestyle’ column this week is whether or not it’s okay to have relationships with coworkers. I married one of my coworkers, so I’m obviously a proponent of the whole “It’s good to have sex with the people that you work with” argument. It worked for me, not the other way around.
Relationships (romantic relationships) with anyone can also tear you apart though, so I get where the whole Should You Or Shouldn’t You weighing of the scales is coming from, especially when it leads to heartbreak and hurt feelings and drinking alone. When I started thinking about this post it was originally just going to say “make sure he’s The One before you take your clothes off” but this whole situation is bringing back memories of a workplace romance that I had several years ago that I’ve never really sat down and talked to anyone about, besides my husband. Even then the sharing of details is sketchy, though, because he’s a firm believer in the “I’m going to pretend I’m the only person that has ever seen you naked” coping mechanism when it comes to exes.
Not long after I started working for an insurance company in 2005, I met This Man. I couldn’t even tell you now why exactly I was attracted to him, just for the fact that he was your average cute guy and we had the same sense of humor. He also smoked (menthols, ew!) and since I was going through my smoker phase at the time I often found myself huddled outside our office building in the cold Indiana winter with him while burning down my half a pack a day habit. He had a girlfriend (AMANDA, HERE WAS YOUR FIRST CLUE). And an ex-wife. And an ex-fiance. And three children that were all born by the time he was of legal age to drink (AMANDA, HERE WERE YOUR SECOND, THIRD, FOURTH, FIFITH, AND SIXTH CLUES). One evening, a group happy hour came up, and while This Man couldn’t come along immediately he said he would meet us later. By the time later came around, my friend Jason and I were the only ones left and we decided to hit up a gay bar a few blocks away. Jason is gay, I’m not, but I liked going to clubs where other boys would admire my boobs in the “Aw, look at you!” kind of way and not the “I’m going to inappropriately touch you and never speak to you again” kind of way. This Man called me up not long after we got there and agreed to meet us there. He stayed attached to my hip for the half hour or so that he was there, and somewhere along the way in my increasingly drunk state we started kissing and soon left together. He spent the night.
A couple of weeks later, with another night together thrown in, he had broken up with his girlfriend. We never talked about being together in the sense of him saying “I’m going to break up with my girlfriend for you.” It was actually quite the opposite once they had broken up. He and I were “hanging out,” but we weren’t dating. He was very clear about the fact that he didn’t want to be in another relationship just yet (AMANDA, HERE WAS YOUR SEVENTH CLUE). Save a few select friends, no one else knew about us. And I let it unfold this way. I was falling for him, and I was excusing his behavior that same way a lot of women do, brushing it aside and saying that it was fine, that I didn’t want a relationship either, that no-strings-attached was exactly what I wanted. We even had an agreement that if either of us was interested in someone else that we would tell the other person first before pursuing anything; an agreement that I had no intention of keeping because it never even entered my mind to look for someone else.
This together but not together relationship continued for five months. I was happy, yes, but I knew that I was being short-changed and that I was worth more. I kept letting it happen though, because I was so desperate to not be alone. I liked waking up with somebody, I liked having Friday and Saturday night plans, I liked having someone with which to exchange a constant stream of text messages. Did it matter that I was completely hidden from everybody in his life, save his roommate (AMANDA, HERE WAS YOUR EIGHTH CLUE)? Yes, it did, but I kept pushing those nagging feelings to the back because I. Just. Wanted. Somebody. To. Love. Me. In retrospect it sounds sad and it sounds desperate, but I know that there are so many women out there who go through this exact same thing.
He broke things off with me in April or May of 2006 (AMANDA, HERE WAS YOUR NINTH CLUE). It was for no reason that I hadn’t heard before, just that he reiterated he wasn’t ready for a relationship and feared that I was getting too emotionally involved. You think? It’s not like I’m a bunny-boiler or anything. I never showed any signs of the relationship at work, I never called his mother, I never bought him socks, I never showed up unannounced, I never checked the history on his phone; I’m not like that. I also never showed any ounce of self respect by allowing him to get away with that one-sided relationship, but that’s a whole ‘nuther Oprah, right? Except for the fact that him breaking up with me never really stuck. He made the very chivalrous decision to break up with me the night before I left on a week-long trip to Denver to visit some friends of mine, and then proceeded to call me pretty much twice a day every day the entire time I was gone. Mixed signals, much? He was gone on a trip to New York when I got back, and during one of those daily phone calls to me he asked me to pick him up from the airport when he returned. I of course agreed to it, because that’s what friends do (and he had made such a big effing deal about the fact that “We’re still friends, right?” when he had broken up with me). So things never really even cooled off between us, because as soon as he was back things started right where they had left off (AMANDA, HERE WAS YOUR TENTH CLUE). Except I was walking on eggshells more than ever, wondering what was wrong with me that This Man didn’t really want to commit to me.
Things stayed par for the course until one night in June of that year when I went to a concert with my brother and he went out drinking with some other work buddies, including some new hires. None of those people knew about our secret covert relationship, and one of them, while giving me a recap of the evening the following Monday, told me how This Man and one of the new girls were sucking each other’s faces off all night long and left together. And it finally clicked. The oh-my-god-what-are-you-doing-to-yourself realization finally hit my like I had been slapped in the face. During the time I was being told that story I finally got it. That I was worth more than that and this, this, is what I was settling for?
Despite the realization, it was hard to let it all go. Hard to reconcile the fact that I wanted him and did not want him because of what he did to me all at the same time. Hard to see him with her every day at work and know that “I don’t want a relationship right now” was the equivalent of “I don’t want a relationship with you,” since, jeez, did his relationship status on MySpace sure get updated quickly. Hard to wonder if she knew how much she had thrown my life into a tailspin by making out with This Man in front of someone who would immediately report it back to me because he thought it was hilarious, not because he thought I would want to know.
During all this time there was a great upheaval in the company due to a buyout and impending layoffs. He ended up moving to South Carolina. I ended up moving to California. After the inevitable confrontation that came with the knowledge of his betrayal of my trust and his subsequent “We can still be friends, right?” refrain (what is it with guys and wanting to be friends? WE DON’T WANT TO BE YOUR FRIENDS AFTER YOU KICK US TO THE CURB), I don’t think that we even said goodbye on his last day. He emailed me a couple of times after I moved to California, but I soon stopped responding, and he quit trying. Why keep the charade? He wasn’t my friend. I unintentionally found out shortly after I started working at our company’s office in California that he had done something on a business trip out there during the time that we were together that was a complete and utter slap in my face and I had no interest in ever hearing from him again after that. I won’t talk about it here what it was, because it’s in that boundary of things I won’t talk about on my blog, but it was highly insulting and degrading and reinforced the fact to me that he wasn’t ever my friend.
I can look back on all of this now, being so far removed from it, and just laugh it off and think “Silly little girl, what were you doing?” It doesn’t change the fact that he hurt me or the fact that I let it happen. I’d venture an absolutely correct guess that it was more my fault than it was his. He gave me plenty of signs of what I was in for, both intentionally and unintentionally, but I was blinded by the whole “Oh, I really like this guy and he seems like he likes me” mindset. I allowed myself to fall for him, I allowed myself to ignore the warnings. It’s nobody’s fault but mine.
I did garner some good things from this relationship, though. It wasn’t a total loss, regardless of how I was treated, how I let myself be treated, and how I felt like crap for a long time afterwards. The little that I know about HTML editing I learned from him. I learned how when you play those touch-screen games at the bar that the photo one where you have to find the differences between the pictures is a lot easier if you choose the dirty pictures (AMANDA, THAT PROBABLY SHOULD HAVE BEEN ANOTHER CLUE, TOO). But I also learned how much I’m willing to love someone without them giving anything back. I learned my value in a relationship. I know what I can bring to the table and I know when to say enough is enough.
In a way I think that I even need to be thankful for the experience that was my short-lived relationship with That Man, because when Edgar and I first started dating the difference was glaring. After going through what I went though with That Man, and a few bad dates with other guys after that, I all of a sudden had a man in front of me who was perfect. He was kind. He was respectful. He was funny. He gave me no reason not to trust him. I could let my guard down in front of him. I could even cry in front of him, when up to that point in my life the only men that I would allow myself to cry in front of that weren’t gay were my dad and my brother. Because other guys, the That Man type of guy, think that sort of show of emotion is the equivalent of going Cuck-Coo for Cocoa Puffs. Every date I went on with Edgar, every kiss that we shared, every time he held my hand, I fell deeper and deeper and deeper, and I didn’t mind. And I wasn’t scared. I wasn’t concerned with “Oh my gosh, does he like me? Is he seeing anybody else?” My concerns where more of the “How does my breath smell?” and “I wonder where we’re going Friday night?” not “I wonder if we’re going out on Friday night?” That horrible experience that I had gone through (and I’ll be clear and say it’s not like my relationship with This Man was the only bad relationship I was ever in; my epiphany did not come from the sum total of his experience alone), while not dictating my relationship with Edgar, reinforced everything that I already knew in my heart: that what I had with him was special, that it was unique, that it was not something to toy with, that I was the luckiest woman in the world and I continue to be her every day because I get to come home to him. I think any woman that has been in a bad relationship and has then gone on to find love after that would agree that those bad experiences, which totally sucked at the time, make you even more grateful for what you now have.
All of this is to say that work relationships are a mixed bag. Relationship with That Man aside, Edgar was a coworker and our workplace romance (I hate that expression) turned into honest-to-goodness true love and a happy marriage. So do I think that people should avoid dating coworkers? Definitely not. But I’m wiser now than before, and I do think that it needs to be thought through before there’s any touching (and that’s with clothes, too, not just without). If I had closed myself off to the possibility of being with a coworker after my relationship with That Man I never would have been with Edgar. Imagining my life without him is a nightmare, and I can't be thankful enough that I found him.
I haven’t spoken or communicated with That Man in years. When I was speaking with Jason during our party last weekend, he mentioned to me that he had emailed That Man about a month or so ago because he was considering taking a transfer with the company to South Carolina and wanted to know what it was like there. I think, coupled with the Dave Letterman media brouhaha of the week, that’s what maybe prompted this post from me, which has been kind of stewing in my head during random moments of boredom this week, like when I’m driving in the car by myself or staring off into space as I sometimes tend to do. I so rarely even think about him, and when I do it’s in that random way that your mind takes forever to get to, the “I wonder what ever happened to that girl I used to practice gymnastics with at recess?” kind of way. Or “Hmmm, that cute guy from my Criminal Theory class in college, did he ever graduate?” Or “Ok, that dude from the family reunion in sixth grade, what was his name? How was I related to him? Why is my family so freakin’ big? I wonder if I have any cookies at home?” That kind of way. I don’t wish him any ill will. Not to sound all hippie, but I’m not willing to put that out there in the universe. I don’t have time in my life to remember to hate somebody or hold a grudge (Except Heidi and Spencer. I will ALWAYS remember to hate them). I’ve no use for it and it doesn’t change the past. It doesn’t change my future. I hope that he’s happy, and I mean that in the most sincere way possible.
Because I am.
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