Emotional affair and work issue

[zeezeek]

I'm currently leading a team of about 10 people in getting an application together for a large programme grant to do a piece of research. All very important for the department etc and the team were handpicked for their expertise and nothing to do with departmental politics.

Anyway, one of the men has apparently developed feelings towards another (female) member of the team. It is a small, incestuous world we live in so their paths have crossed before and they have always been fairly friendly. However, now he seems to have more than friendship feelings towards her. Nothing will happen, however, because he's married and she's a lesbian. It has been a kind of open secret in the team, but we have all tried to ignore it. They don't work in the same institution (she's about 200 miles away from him) and, even if we get the money, they will only see each other a few times a year at most and they are both very professional. I don't know if they've discussed it between themselves.

Anyway, last week we were all at a departmental party piss up and this chap's wife was there and someone (not sure who) told her about his husband's crush. She took it very badly and ended up shouting at her DH, then shouting at the poor woman concerned (even though she was there and obviously with her GF) and accusing us all of being complicit in the affair.

Today I get a call from her demanding that I remove her DH from my grant application so that he won't work with this other woman again. Her DH was actually at a meeting in my dept today so I spoke to him and he had no idea what she had done and definitely didn't want to not be on the grant. He also admitted having marital problems which his crush on the other woman was exacerbating and that if she would give him a chance he would have a physical affair.

As he is a leading expert in his field there is no way I want to remove him. But don't want to be responsible for causing problems in his marriage and certainly don't want his wife calling and blaming me anyway!

AIBU to think that as adults they should sort it out themselves and not fuck up my very important piece of work!!!!

The OP clearly has a very loaded opinion of the woman, that much is true. She doesn't know her at all by her own admission, so...

zee I don't think you meant to be horrible about sahm but I do think you've bought into the common misconception that university and working makes people intelligent and interesting, wheras sah indicates an insular boring life. Or that it's a choice people make because they are not bright enough for a career.

I don't know this particular woman but I do know that I have been out with my husband's colleagues in the past and have never been so bored in my life. Some of them made no effort to talk about anything other than their jobs, and some of those jobs were really not at all fascinating. They were also cliquey, which I consider to be rude behaviour in mixed company.

I've been that wife (well partner), not to the extent of calling a workplace and losing it though.

Prior to DH with a previous partner, who worked in a very cliquey environment. I was told on a work night out about their closeness / inappropriate behaviour around another colleague. It was isolating, humiliating and crushing in equal measure. I didn't ring the workplace though, he got a FTFO.

Sounds all a bit like people are forgetting they're at work, and peer management doesn't help that. There's harrasement legislation for reasons like the above.

I agree with spartans post.

The woman was publicly humiliated by an in-joke.

And the DH has now admitted this crush is a contributory factor to wider marital problems.

If he is serious about saving his marriage, he might decide to leave this project anyhow. So do you have a plan B for doing it without him?

This really does show why work and sex (whether actual or an obvious crush) simply do not mix. Yes, you have to be professional now. It's just a great pity that everyone wasn't beforehand.

I don't feel sorry for the wife at all. Calling her husband's boss, making a scene, she's clearly stupid and/or unhinged and out to finish his career. Using the fact that she's a sahm as a way of excusing her behaviour is an insult to all other SAHMs.

You are a very poor manager.
I feel very very sorry for the woman he has a crush on. She has a good case for sexual harrasment. And you won't fire the man responsible for all this. Sexism at its best.

And I don't think it's the wife that has been humiliated,she did that herself. It's the other female colleague that has been humiliated over and over again. Sexual banter and proclaiming your crush on a woman at work who has no interest in you is sexual harassment and very demeaning. And on top of that, you as a manager have condoned this for so long. Inexcusable behaviour on your part. You all sound as if you never left high school.

Woah. I'm certainly under attack today! As I have said previously, the other woman is not taking it seriously and certainly wouldn't consider it sexual harassment - and isn't. I spoke to her this morning and she wants to just forget it and move on.

He isn't in today, though we are meeting in town for a coffee this afternoon, so will talk to him then. He's not under my direct management and doesn't even work in the same department - though he is at the same institution as me, so I can't manage him officially. Our only connection is through this application and another grant we that we are co-applicants on. It is a tricky situation and for those who say that I am a poor manager - the only people on the team who I manage are 2 post-docs. It is an arrangement that's hard to explain if you don't live with it. It is his decision whether or not he continues with us - but not his wife's.

Whilst I don't know his wife very well, our paths have, obviously crossed in the last 15 years that they have been married and we have similar aged children who have occasionally played together. So we have had a few conversations over the years and she has admitted to me that she doesn't like his colleagues, doesn't like him being around the young PhD's/post-docs and has definitely given the impression that her life revolves around him and the children and her church.

FWIW I have also been aware of my own DH finding other women attractive over the years - including ones we've worked him. However, I trust him to not take it further and know that he respects me too much to do that. So, yeah, I probably haven't realised just how much this has affected her.

Do universities not have HR people to advise in such circumstances?

Yes, but sadly they don't always get a hearing. Returning to university late in life, I am struck by the number of new initiatives around issues which were dead and buried twenty years ago in industry.

OP, employment tribunals will hold that workplace social events ("departmental party") are no different from the workplace in general.

Were she an employee of your institution, your female co-worker has a case for harassment and, as a matter of practice rather than principle, her sex and sexuality make that case both stronger and more expensive. She has been humiliated in public in your workplace, for which you are responsible, over something that you knew about and could have predicted might happen.

But as presumably she is working with you while being paid by her parent institution, she has an arguable case against them, on the grounds that her employment conditions are either her parent institution's responsibility or your institution's responsibility, depending on how formal the secondment is: whichever, one or the other or both is/are responsible (a good question would be "if she were working in a lab and was injured through someone else's negligence, who would be liable?")

That you did, and are doing, nothing about it would obviously be a factor in the ensuing disaster.

You need advice from an HR person, both for the woman's sake, for your own sake and (given you want him working on your project) the man's sake. It's a complex situation, and on the face of it one that is not being managed very well.

"We ignored the bullying because he was an important member of staff" is the sort of stuff that ETs react badly to.

I think the difference between you and tne wife is that you are married to someone you trust not to have an affair but her husband has made it clear he would cheat in a heartbeat if the colleague was up for it.

That's a horrible realisation to have. She did behave badly wrt phoning you ar work etc but I expect she was in shock. All this is new to her - she's probably really embarrassed by what she did.

It's amazing how much damage one lecherous arsehole can create. He's put a bunch of women in horrible situations that they don't deserve to be in!

I see you're not his manager. Still unreasonable of you to have condoned his behaviour for so long. And just because your colleague said she wants to forget about it doesn't mean she wasn't offended or harrassed. She just realized that you all admire him so much that you would never get him off the grant, no matter what a sleazeball he is. I don't work in academia but in my workplace he would have been reprimanded from the first time he said anything publicly and then fired if things escalated in that way. And I work in a male dominated industry. This is just to give you some perspective. It's 2015 not 1960.

He sexually harrassed a colleague but he'll still be a succesful academic because you all think he's so brilliant you still want to work work him. YABVU. I can't believe you still don't see that it's wrong to not take him off the grant.

But I guess it's all good as long as the sexual harassment happened to a woman 200 miles away and not you.

Pay very close attention to Metacentric's post

You are leading the team, you said this.

She maybe fine now, but it could also get very annoying very quickly. Especially if the man doesn't grow up.

You can't compare your marriage to theirs. You said yourself, they having issues. I wonder if these issues began around the time he started his school boy obsession with this girl.

Also, I would imagine he wouldn't be so sort after and had a family had she not been a sahm. That's not worthy of his respect (since he happily admits he would have an affair if he could) and apparently not worthy of your or your staff. But is worthy of bringing his kids up? Says a lot about him.

You need some HR advice.

I see you're not his manager.

Which makes the ET even more toxic. So, says the chairman, to whom should the complainant have reported this? And after that, who would then have spoken to the alleged harasser?

Well, it's rather complicated, and we put this team together where no-one was anyone's manager and we all worked together but I was sort of leading it but I didn't actually manage anyone but yes but no but yes but no.

Suddenly it's not "well run workplace in which a rogue member of staff behaved like an arse and the well-intentioned manager is a little slow to follow process and therefore it gets a bit out of hand which is why we're here", which is bad but not that bad, and becomes "shambolic workplace with no process or procedure in which there were no clear lines of reporting or escalation and nothing was done until a known but untreated risk blew up but even then no-one had a clue what to do next", which is rather more serious.

So, asks the chairman, did you know, at the point at which the team was assembled, that the alleged harasser had a thing for the complainant, and that the complainant wasn't happy about this, even though she said she was because she had no practical redress? Did you know that it was a topic of discussion, even amusement, amongst colleagues, who talked about it behind the complainant's back?

At which point we turn back to our other work, as watching car crashes is not something the well brought up should do.

I agree with PP who says the whole set up sounds very unprofessional and you're running it!

Obviously the wife shouldn't have tried to involve work people and shouldn't have called you, but it sounds like she could well be right about the colleagues being "complicit". Not in the affair (as there isn't one) but certainly in the way you've all closed ranks and excluded her. If you're going to invite partners to these events you include them, that's just basic good manners. And why would anyone think it was OK to tell a wife about her husband's crush? You sound like a load of not very bright teenagers with no social skills, but somehow feel all superior because you're supposedly so clever.

I think you have to take him off the project - you can't just allow sexual harassment because he happens to be good at his job and a friend of yours

Whether she considers it sexual harrassment or not, it's being witnessed and talked about across a profession of people. It's happening, and is defined as 'violating another's dignity' or 'creating an environment that's hostile, intimidating, humiliating or offensive'. Id consider both of those to have occurred, and an employer is responsible for harrassment. You're colleague / friend should rightfully be investigated surrounding his behaviour to establish the facts before you go forward.

Putting your in the sand doesn't help.

I just wanted to add that (as an academic) I have seen this kind of issue destroy working groups and departments, the fallout can be great especially when the people involved are quite eminent in the field. If not this time, he will cause trouble later on (for instance with a PhD student / postdoc), it's a disaster waiting to happen. Universities do (sometimes) take this seriously and it can lead to sexual harassment claims. No idea how you would leave him out of this proposal though... very tricky situation.

On the issue of his wife not being an academic, I know a bit how it feels as my DH is not an academic, and although very smart and with a university degree, he does sometimes find academic life frustrating and feels left out. I think the problem is that due to the nature of what we do, academics find it difficult to separate work and social life, leading to these sorts of problems. I am now sensitive to the issue and make sure that when he comes along he feels involved, for instance by finding the nicer (i.e., normal) people who he might enjoy talking too.

Also, agree on the poster above who mentioned how her role as a SAHM would have helped him in his career.. many of the top male academics I know have non-academic wives who looked after the home and children while they worked long hours to get ahead. I feel very sorry for her in this situation.

The entire situation sounds cringeworthy. Your colleague is making a fool of himself, the busybody who informed your colleague's wife should have kept quiet, the wife had no business calling you, the woman caught in the middle must feel so uncomfortable. The work environment with its gossip and cliquishness sounds utterly appalling TBH.

And your comments about SAHMs are really insulting, whether you intended them that way or not. I say that as someone who is not, never has been, and would never want to be a SAHM. I'm an academic as well, and I can't imagine anyone I work with excluding our colleagues' spouses in a social setting or making them feel inferior because they don't happen to belong to the "club" of academia. Surely all of us in academia have learned that intelligence has nothing to do with the letters that appear after someone's name.

I have to agree with Dynomite. This man will probably continue to sexually harass colleagues and get away with it because everyone else thinks he is fabulous.

Junior female colleagues will continue to brush it off/laugh it off because they don't want to jeopardise their own jobs/progression plus the knowledge that no one appears to want to pull him up on his apalling behaviour.

What sort of organisation ARE you? You sound so incredibly unprofessional in the way that you run things and how these ' experts in the top of their field' behave.

missmoon - I'm not feeling particularly charitable towards this man at the moment, however, it is unfair to say that his wife enabled his career because he's worked bloody hard at it. I am also an academic and so is my DH and many friends of ours are equally successful and both work - either both in academia or one in and one out.

However, reading through some of the responses I admit that I have seen this team as outsiders might see it and feel somewhat ashamed. I spoke to the other woman again and she is adamant that she is ok with the situation and not feeling harassed etc. I do tend to believe her because I know that she went through a difficult time re prejudice a few years ago when she got together with her GF and came out to a wider audience (they work together - I did say academia was incestuous).

I also rung the wife to apologise and, luckily, she accepted my apology and we had a long chat (in fact I ended up cancelling the coffee I'd planned with her husband in order to meet up with her instead). It seems that this is not the first "crush" he's had, but it was the first that he hadn't told her about so that's why she over-reacted. In the past she worked on the assumption that as he had been open about it then she had nothing to worry about - but is now wondering whether he had actually cheated on her before. To be honest I think he may have, from other things that she said, but didn't mention it to her. It seems that she never has felt intimidated in our group, just completely uninterested in academia. She's very happy and secure in her life and makes no secret of the fact that her life revolves around the children - who, btw are having a play date with mine tomorrow so she and her husband can decide the future of their marriage.

My DH is happy to take over from this guy if he (I) decide he needs to come off the application. I am still keen to keep the team together because we do work well together - but we shall see.

I've been reading this thread for a while, and didn't post because so many others have said every thought I've had about it better.

But I love this last post, zee. It seems to have come full circle. I'm so pleased.

And I'm glad you and his wife seem to have reached a new level of understanding.

Im glad you and his wife have had a talk.

Just as an aside, when people say she has helped him in his career, it's not to say that he hasn't worked hard to achieve or that he couldn't have done it alone - more that it is a hell of a lot easier to put in the time and effort at work if someone else does all the childcare etc.

His behaviour constitutes sexual harassment, whether or not the woman he has the "crush" on considers it so or complains. It could create a hostile environment for other women in the team.

His wife should find MN!

As for your comment Op that " it is unfair to say that his wife enabled his career because he's worked bloody hard at it", that's astonishing! So in addition to working bloody hard at his job he has done 50% or more of the childcare and domestic work? 50% of the relocating?

Success in academia for parents with DC and no partner at home is obviously totally easy if you just work hard, women too - oh, wait! That's an alternate reality!

Imagine how much more work he could've done if he hadn't been lusting after all these other women his poor wife knows about. He sounds awful.