Hi, I am hoping someone help me. This is concerning a guy whose name is L (changed to protect identity).

I am 35 years old and I have been married for a little over 2 years to a 43 year old guy I have known since I was 18 and everyone I worked and works with knows of my marital status including this guy. We are happily married but I was assaulted when I was 15 years old by an older guy, abroad, who tried to take me away from my family. I have never reported it because I feel I would not be believed or supported.

L is 38 years old and he and I have known each other for over 3 years through work. He started off as my manager’s manager until late 2018 when I was offered another role. He mainly keeps himself to himself and other people in his team have said “he’s never happy”. I have witnessed him losing his temper, swearing and getting short with others. Outside of work he has some quite biased opinions.

The circumstances are as follows:

I have noticed behaviour from L which I am confused about. I don’t like to say I feel uncomfortable by it because I like L and he has always treated me well, in a professional sense. I will explain what I diarised, below:

August 2017, 2 months into the job where I was working with L, I suffered a confidence crisis from the number of errors I felt I had been making. L took me off for a chat first thing the morning after he became aware of the issue and he took me somewhere secluded. At first I sat a few inches away from him but L then edged closer to me until the side of his body was pressed up against mine and his leg nearest to me pressed against mine.

I did not move away because I felt he was just trying to be comforting; at some point during the conversation he asked for my age and I told him “32” which I was at the time (he would have been 35) and he made a comment saying “you don’t look it.” To me, he was being very positive and supportive and honestly could not see the problem with my work, adding that he didn’t want me to leave because of that and that I shouldn’t beat myself up over the whole issue.

September 2017, 3 months into the job and towards the end of the day where there were very few people on the team left (due to their working hours), L came from behind his desk and approached me, telling me that he’d been on my FB profile and had gone through my photos before sending me a private message asking for my mobile number. I said that I did not get this message because I had lost access to my social media account (which was true) but also I had been getting inappropriate messages from other guys (not him) about hooking up and I did not feel comfortable engaging with them in that way.

What confused me the most about this, was the context in which L was asking me for my number (when really if it was for work purposes then the request should have come from my immediate manager and not him, or as a last resort, get in contact with my agency to get it). He did not give the reason why he wanted it and because he’d actually gone out of his way to look me up and admit to looking at my photos made it seem weird.

June 2018, B (my husband) and I came back from our holiday. One day at work when L was alone and at his desk I went to put something away I’d finished with and L stopped me in the middle of me doing this, asking me where I went for my holiday. I said that we’d only gone down to the south coast and he said “I go down there quite a bit as well. Did you stay in a hotel?”
My answer was “we stayed in a B and B around the corner from the seafront.”
He then responded with “when I’m down that way I stay in hotels near the seafront.” Then he asked “have you been abroad anywhere?”
I said “yeah, I’ve been to quite a few countries – Spain and Turkey a few times, France twice.”
Throughout this conversation L was grinning widely and I was shocked at how open he was being with me, because he very rarely made that sort of conversation with anyone, and if anything, kept all conversations professional and work related. He would also give me a lot of responsibilities, going below my immediate manager to do this.

August 2018, there was talk around my job contract ending because of restructuring within the company, however L had told me that he had been appealing to his own manager to make me permanent but had been refused this.
I had been offered another role within the building short-notice and wanted to let L know about it since he’d already offered me support in applying for other roles in the building. So me, my immediate boss, and L went off for a chat together to discuss. This was how the documented conversation went:

L: J’s been offered a job elsewhere in thr building but it’s only for 6 weeks.
My manager: we can’t stop you from going for this other role but you’ve got to be 100% sure in going for it.
Me: I really am not sure if I want to go for it and I didn’t expect to be here for as long as I have been.
L: You’ve surprised us all, J.
Me: I thought once the 3 months were over that was it, but I’ve been here for a lot longer than that.
L: It reflects in the work you do. (starts smiling broadly)
My manager: the way things stand we don’t see your role lasting for much longer but we are both here to help you with looking for another job in the building.
L: I have to agree with him there, I mean, you don’t want to be temping your whole life.
Me: No, I don’t. To be honest I’d not done office/admin work like this for a number of years so I would like to get a permanent role like this somewhere else.
L: And we’ll help you with that. Just keep looking on the jobs board every Friday and if there are any roles that you want to go for, let us know and we’ll see if it matches what you want.

About a week later I received an email from L signposting me to a job he found, saying that it would be a good match for me. I doubted it was, since the title made the job sound more complicated than it was. I sent a reply back to L stating that it sounded way above my pay grade.

L immediately came straight over to me and said, “way above your pay grade, J? Are you sure?” He didn’t seem or sound annoyed, in fact he sounded like he was joking/playing along with me. I said “it sounds like it is.”
L then explained to me that it wasn’t like that at all and he asked me “have you seen any other vacancies that you believe you’d be successful in getting?”
I pointed a trainee one out to him and he said “no, unless you have a financial degree/qualification.”
He and my immediate manager interviewed me for a permanent role and L seemed to be overly helpful during the interview, giving me clues as to how to answer certain questions and also encouraging me to expand on some of my answers or giving me another chance to answer them.

A month later, September 2018, and I had been approached by my agency representative about an ongoing role within the building. He had already given the recruiting team leader my details and he wanted me to start the next day. I knew that the job where I was, was ending, but I liked working with the team a lot and had got on very well with all of them but L did get me alone and I told him about it. He then said to me “going for this job has more pros than cons but if you don’t feel right in it then make sure you apply for something else in the building. If I were you I would consider going for it but it’s your decision. Either way, congrats.”

So I thought it over and decided to go for it and the following day I decided to accept it. I came in to tell my immediate boss and he said “yeah, I already knew about it. L came in early this morning to tell me.”
So I had all my work handed out to the others and I left around about lunchtime, so about midday(ish). Apparently L had been in meetings all this time and didn’t know I’d gone. Apparently when he did find out he said something like “one minute J was there, the next she’d gone.”

October 2018 J bumped into L and we walked out together after work. He asked me how I was getting on and we had a friendly chat (just work related) He was being really nice to me, holding doors open for me and letting me go out first.

December 2018 L invited me to a pre-party at his place with the others that I used to work with. I wanted to keep my invite to their party and not my new team’s because I felt I knew my previous team better and wanted to catch up with them. There was talk of there being drinking games at his place and I get tipsy very easily and have no experience whatsoever with drinking games however I’d eaten enough to absorb enough alcohol – or so I thought. As well as this L is a very, very social drinker and the pre-party started at about 3pm. He also gave me a couple of shots.

More often than not I remember quite a bit after I drink and I recall L checking me out from within my peripheral vision. I caught him looking down the back of my dress and he was around about in inch or so from touching me. I then went and spoke to D, one of my guy friends who told me “you look very pretty tonight. If just you and I were alone I’d have you.” Throughout this conversation L had appeared and heard this, then got very blunt with me and when I went to sit back down he was a few minutes behind me and started to look down the front of my dress.

Unfortunately I got very sick and had to be taken home. My husband B came to collect me and B told me that L had been in contact with him over this, first of all calling him to say I’d gotten sick very quickly and from when B got me home L had asked him to update him on my condition.

The following working day I spoke to L to say how sorry I was for the state I got into. L asked me “did you have a sore head?”
I said “I did over Saturday morning but then it went away. I hope I wasn’t sick in your house.”
L said “no, just outside. When I saw you like that I didn’t want the others to take you outside, I wanted you to stay indoors. But D says he takes responsibility for the state you were in.”
D who was there said “yeah, I kept giving you different drinks so that probably didn’t help.”
L said to me “did you have anything to eat before you arrived?”
I told him that I did eat quite a lot but not all of what I had.
I then mentioned that I’d submitted my CV to apply for 2 vacancies on the team that L recommended I go for (someone told me that he said “get J to apply for it because she would know what she’s doing”) and he said that he would look at it to consider interviewing me.

I then told him that I was looking to go elsewhere due to tensions on the team I was in (there was some history between L and a female co-worker on the team I had moved to – she basically called him really awful names and she is a friend of my mum’s, so I didn’t really know what to believe.)
L asked me why I was going to leave and I told him of the tension at work. After the conversation was over I heard him say to D over his desk, “did you know about any of this?”

D said “yeah I’ve known about it for a while.”

So the interviews for the jobs on L’s teams (there are 2 of them) went ahead and despite me being put in good stead for them I didn’t get either of them. L did not interview me either but I don’t know if this would have made a difference or not. Other than that, I was shocked.

I bumped into D a number of times and he told me that L mentions me in conversations, mostly about that time at the pre-party. He also told me that L had been shouting at people not to let me be sick in his house and to not take me outside.

A month later L and I bumped into each other again and said hi. A few minutes later he walked past me again and I just smiled at him in a friendly way. I caught L slowing down, then staring at my legs and butt before looking straight into my eyes and grinning widely. To me it didn’t seem to faze him that I caught him in the act.

June 2019 I began to hear things from my previous team mates about the new hires, one in particular. That most of the time they didn’t know what they were talking about, there were issues with behaviour, not gelling with the others, performance and attendance issues. One of them, we’ll name her C, had been complaining about her benefits package and why she wasn’t getting anything. She and 2 of L’s direct reports had fought a few times, she had personal problems that she was bringing into the office and she’d been taken off numerous times for meetings with L and my former manager. This is all that I’ve been told.

L’s team had moved onto the same floor as where I worked and so he and I bumped into each other a fair bit. Most of the time to just say hi, though there has been more than one occasion where L has been staring at me for seconds on end and also following me with his eyes (both in peripheral vision). One time I was at the photocopier/printer and L had walked by, glanced at me from the side, started smiling a little and then looked really nervous (within my peripheral vision). We did not talk.

I moved departments in September 2019 and me and L saw each other less, though L looked straight at me before trying to approach me. When he saw there were other people around where I was sitting he backed off but within my peripheral vision I caught him looking down at me as he walked past.

November 2019 I was with other girl friends and without me saying anything or looking at him he looked straight at me. Myself and my friend then made our way back downstairs to where we worked and L had actually gone behind use even though he was not going the same way as us and was walking much quicker than we were.

December 2019 at the Xmas party, within my peripheral vision L had been checking me out and staring at me for long periods of time (several seconds). I also noticed him watch me with my friends. Nothing really happened apart from that.

February 2020 I was due to leave my role, the contract for which was ending sooner than expected, but I’d accepted a job within the building. This job was also one L did not want me to go for because it involved contact centre work. I went to speak to L’s team and wanted to speak to them more so than the team I worked with after them, because I got on better with L’s team and found them more friendly and supportive.
They were all really happy for me. L was not directly in the conversation but he was close enough to have overheard.

After I had spoken to my former manager I went to speak to someone else and just as I did that, L flew straight over to my former manager asking “what’s J’s last name?”
My former manager then gave him it, no questions asked. Well, why would he question him? L is his immediate manager!

During the current circumstances I have not seen or spoken to L for nearly 4 months but one of my friends on his team said to me that they noticed his behaviour becoming stranger. For example, the photos he had on FB, dated after I left – have now been deleted and he’s just left older ones on there. His IG account, which had 5/6 posts on there – also deleted.

Now, he goes on social media once every few weeks but this is becoming very odd. For him to do it on one social media platform is odd enough, but for him to go into another social media platform and do the same thing again, even odder.

I have also been receiving unknown phone calls, mostly late at night. I have not given my number to him but I have given it to this more trusted co-worker. This other co-worker is friends with L on FB, as well as me.

I just don’t understand his behaviour, at all and I now think it’s all in my head. But the way he’s been with me, I just can’t make sense of. I haven’t reported him because:

1 – I like him as a friend (I find him attractive but because of my marital status I don’t act on the attraction)
2 – I have always respected him and he, likewise (it’s always come across that way)
3 – he’s in a managerial position and probably has friends in high places
4 – he’s imposed bans and rules of his own within the department
5 – he looks very intimidating (tall, big/strong build – someone you wouldn’t want to meet down a dark alley)

6 – of what happened when I was a child

And that’s why I’m here, really. I want to get to the bottom of this but I also want he and I to maybe have a sit down somewhere and just talk about this if that seems ok? He knows I’m married and I don’t think I exactly fit his profile (he has a calendar on his wall consisting of bikini-clad models. And I’m short, small-chested and nowhere near as have a face as pretty as theirs! – the calendar I’ve seen in his avatar which he has since changed multiple times)

Thank you x