It goes without saying that it’s risky business to get involved with someone who is married. When your married lover completely ghosts you to play happy family after promising you the world, how are you supposed to get over the loss?
It was two years ago that this woman began an affair with her boss, and she says that he manipulated her into thinking that he wasn’t married anymore.
Their company is so tiny that there is no HR department, and she and her boss are the highest-ups. Her boss did flirt with her for several months prior to making his move.
“When I found out he was still married, I told him I couldn’t engage with him; I explained I couldn’t do that to his family, and that I could never be happy in that sort of arrangement anyway,” she said.
“He told me he had been fantasizing about starting a family together, with me. Over the months, he continued to push, I eventually gave in, and eventually we fell in love. I felt like I couldn’t say no, given the power dynamic, and now I so wish I did.”
“He told me he hadn’t been…with his wife in 10 years, that they were basically coparents and roommates. They never went on dates. He thought of her as a sister and not a romantic partner. He said he felt like he hated her sometimes.”
Within a year of the affair beginning, her boss mentioned that his wife had asked for a divorce, and this was all while she was having a passionate emotional, and physical bond with him.
She talked to her boss every day. They traveled a lot. He promised that he had never felt a connection like theirs before, not even when he first met his wife.
She and her boss fell in with one another and daydreamed about being together forever. Her boss even got to meet her mom and started calling her his future mother-in-law.
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“He went back and forth about leaving his marriage in the first year or so. He told me that if it weren’t for his daughter (middle school-aged), it would be easy,” she added.
“I complained often that I didn’t want to be with someone who is married, that there isn’t enough time for us, that I wanted a normal relationship, etc. We tried to end our relationship a few times, but he always pushed to resume it.”
“A year into our relationship, he started weekly therapy to try to figure out whether he wanted to leave. Over the months, the conclusion increasingly leaned towards leaving his marriage. We agreed that we needed to make a decision one way or the other by the end of last year for both of our sakes.”
Her boss mapped out a timeline to have that chat with his wife, and she was frustrated that their own romance came with restrictions due to his marriage.
As 2025 came to a close, she attempted to end the affair, but her boss asserted that he could not lose her, especially when they were closing in on the divorce.
Her boss did say he no longer wanted to be in his marriage, regardless of what happened with them. He said she was the love of his life.
“He reassured me there was no way he was backing out. Within a couple of days, he told his wife he wanted to move towards divorce,” she explained.
“She asked if there was someone else, and he told her about me (I knew he planned to). We had had normal communication that same morning, exchanged I love yous, etc. That night, he said he wasn’t sure where things stood with them.”
The following day, her boss took back his word about leaving and said he had to try with his wife because of his daughter. He mentioned ending their affair.
She suspects that his wife threatened him, or he got overwhelmed, which gave him cold feet. She will truly never find out the truth, but anyway, her boss did relay that his wife was guessing about the affair. Her boss definitely confirmed it, because his wife began blocking her on social media.
“Neither of them seemed to care for many years that their marriage was gradually and irreparably falling apart. I was, and still am, utterly blindsided,” she confessed.
Her boss looked like a totally different man as he discussed ending their affair once and for all. He then said he was going to close down their office, and they would be remote.
He stopped speaking to her, and she never got the closure she needed. It’s like the man she fell in love with vanished before her eyes, and she’s left reeling.
This went down months ago, and she’s tried to move on and focus on herself. She’s still mad over how childish and cowardly her boss acted. She did some hiking and traveling alone, which was cathartic, albeit lonely.
“Other times, I feel I’d do anything to hold each other again, even to hear his voice. My heart aches, and I think about him every day,” she continued.
“I obsess about where things are with his marriage, if they’ll end it, and whether he’s thinking about me and planning to try to repair things with us.”
“I can’t imagine their marriage will survive in the long run, and I can’t understand why either of them would choose such a miserable future; I do see the logic of wanting to prioritize their child’s wellbeing…obviously, no one can predict the future, but I’m wondering if anyone wants to share from their experiences what they think the future holds, whether he’ll eventually leave his marriage, and if he’ll contact me again. Whether I should run the other way and never look back (ya, I think this is the right answer).”
She needs to focus on not getting fooled again, which means she needs to totally move on from her boss and stay away from romances with married men.
He obviously will never leave his wife for her, or he already would have done that by now if he ever intended to. Her boss made his choice, it’s not her, and she needs to accept that or risk wasting more time waiting around for him.
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
