Dear Sarah:

You shared that you (30) are in a five year long relationship, three of which are long-distance because you moved away to further your studies. Your plans are to get married soon after Covid resolves, in about a year.

At your workplace, there is a senior co-worker (mid-40s) who is new to the branch where you work, having been moved from another branch. He is nice and everyone likes him. He “keeps checking” on you, “comes around to talk for a small chat”, you catch him looking at you, and for the last 2-3 days he’s been messaging you. Last night he messaged you last night. At some point, you asked him casually if he has a wife and he said that he lives alone. And last night you told him indirectly that you have a boyfriend.

You also told your boyfriend about this senior at work texting you, and your boyfriend said that he may just want to “have a thing” with you, or “maybe he just wants to simply talk”.

About your feelings/ state of mind and work situation,  you wrote: “this is now started to affect me. I feel something really weird inside me because I keep on thinking about him… I am already in a relationship and I am feeling quite bad and this is all tormenting me. I can’t share this with anyone and it’s killing me.. for me usually I am not attracted to guys as I know I got my bf since 5 years… I don’t want to sound rude as we work together and he is a senior. What do you think of the senior guy?”

My answers/ suggestions-

First, to your question about the senior guy: it seems quite clear to me that he likes you romantically and/ or that he is physically attracted to you.

Him being nice to everyone may mean that (1) he really is a nice, ethical person, and he will not take advantage of a junior female worker who lives far away from her boyfriend, and maybe far from any family at all, or (2) being nice is not his character, but his behavior: he is nice to everyone because it is easier to get along being liked than it is being disliked, and he is willing to take advantage of a junior female worker.

When you asked him if he has a wife, he told you that he lives alone- that does not mean that he does not have a wife. Maybe he too has a long-distance relationship/ marriage,  as well as children, being he is in his mid-forties, there’s a higher chance of that than if he was in his mid-twenties. He may be interested in an affair outside his marriage, and maybe he already has one and is looking for another.

Second, regarding your attraction to him:  you may feel alarmed by this fact, feeling guilty and scared- I know this feeling. This is my input in this regard: it is natural for a person who is in a relationship, including marriage, to be physically and/ or emotionally attracted (feeling very close) to other people. If your boyfriend interacts with other women himself, he is also attracted to other women from time to time. And if he is not interacting with women, then he probably feels an attraction to female movie stars and such. This happens when couples live together. The fact that you live far away from your boyfriend only adds to the chances that you will be attracted to another man because you are lonely, not having your boyfriend around.

You are not guilty for feeling attracted to this man, just as you are not guilty for anything that you feel at any time. When you feel guilty again in this regard, remind yourself that your boyfriend too feels attracted from time to time to other women, it is human emotional nature.

What we are guilty for is not how we feel, but what we do/ how we behave. If you are serious about your boyfriend and the two of you are in a healthy, although long-distance relationship, then you need to not feed your attraction to this senior guy at work by having him message you at night, and having a back and forth conversation with him after work- this activity will feed/ increase your attraction to him, and his attraction to you, increasing the chances that the two of you will have a physical affair.

I suggest that you tell this man that you need him to no longer message you after work, that all communication between the two of you must be at the work place and not outside the work place, and that it needs to be professional, friendly, but professional nonetheless.

What do you think/ feel?

anita