Nobody warns you about how hard it is to come back from something you did to yourself. Not something someone did to you or something that just happened, but a choice you knew was wrong, and you made anyway.
She’s not seeking pity or playing the victim, because she’s already doing the one thing most people never do: taking accountability. But knowing you messed up doesn’t make the guilt easier; it honestly just makes it lonelier.
This 20-year-old girl says she got sucked into what she calls an emotional affair with her married coworker, who is in his mid-40s.
In hindsight, she understands that she made a terrible life choice, and she’s ashamed of her actions. Her fling with her coworker was a slow burn, and they started off as just friends.
She can sit here and now say that she should have been wary, since her coworker is so much older than she is, but one day, he taped a note to her drink cup with his phone number on it.
They spent the following few months texting a ton, and then he got bold enough to kiss her. She thinks he was the one trying to see what he could get away with, while she was more reserved about jumping into anything with him.
He brought up going to a motel room together, and she successfully avoided taking things in a physical direction, knowing it would not end well.
“At one point, I even tried to end it, told him I felt guilty and overwhelmed, but he just guilt-tripped me continuously. Work was very stressful, and he would lash out based on how I was acting/treating him, so I continued all of this out of fear of discomfort at work (consequences of my own actions??) and my own feelings for him actually existing at the same time,” she explained.
“Yeah, over time, I did develop feelings. Not gonna lie. There were texts, photos, and a lot of late-night conversations. The kissing became a regular thing, and he had started to get very touchy-feely, but there was never [sleeping together]. I never once encouraged him to leave his wife.”
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“I knew it was a dead end and tried to treat it like a bubble that would eventually burst. The whole time, I was just in complete disgust with myself. And still am.. Who does something like this?? Trash?? Yes, because that’s what I would’ve said before this experience.”
And then this man’s wife learned of what they were doing behind her back. Her coworker’s wife left her a furious voicemail saying she couldn’t be trusted around married men.
The voicemail came across more like a lecture than anything else, ending with this woman demanding to know if they had slept with one another.
She can’t blame her coworker’s wife for being so mad at her, but it bothers her that this woman thinks she’s been out to steal her man from the beginning and that he somehow got roped into their romance.
She has a pile of evidence to prove that her coworker was a willing participant who pursued her, but she doesn’t have it in her to send the screenshots to his wife.
“Whatever story he gave her, she can believe it. Unless she asks, I’d rather not stir the pot further. All she ever saw on his phone were NSFW photos of me, and a tiny thread of texts where he had told me goodnight,” she added.
“And now, to make matters worse, my job is punishing me over this. Management is trying to adjust my schedule because his wife doesn’t want him working around me anymore. My boss is actively defending him, protecting him, and bending over backward to accommodate her demands while I get treated like the problem when he actively chose this as well.”
“I know this is a messy situation, I know I allowed it to happen and engaged with it. People are allowed to have whatever opinion of me and feel however they want to feel about me, at the end of the day, I made my own choices and now I have to deal with the nasty fallout from that. I’m not angry with anyone but myself. I knew there would be consequences for this. And I’m openly accepting that.”
What upsets her the most is being treated like the bad guy over one mistake. She is remorseful, and she should have shut down her coworker.
She feels grossed out and sad about how this all played out. She’s doubtful she has a moral compass, and she can’t pinpoint why she felt the need to get involved with her coworker.
Part of it was that she was emotionally in a bad spot in her life, and her coworker was the escapism she was looking for. She does not miss him or want him back; she just wants to leave him in her past.
“I just don’t know how to move on from my own wrongdoing and stop feeling nasty about myself. If you read this far, thanks for listening to my vent. I haven’t spoken to anyone about this and just needed to get it all off my chest.”
She’s allowed to feel disgusted, but she’s not doing herself any favors by living there forever. Also, I feel like she’s protecting her undeserving coworker by not sending his wife the screenshots. I think she owes it to this poor woman to see how awful her husband is.
What advice do you have for her?
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By Bre Avery Zacharski
Hi, I'm Bre, Chip Chick's CEO! I have a degree in Textile/Surface Design from The Fashion Institute of Technology, and... More about Bre Avery Zacharski
