AIBU to have asked my boss out for drinks?

[Firefin]

My colleagues seem to think so.

Context: I don't have a lot of friends because I have spent many years of my adult life moving from one place to the next, but I have finally settled down in a place for the longer term. In fact, the 2-3 friends I do have live abroad or are mainly online-based. I work stupid hours and I am a single mum, so don't have a lot of time for socialising and my main social lifeline are the people I work with.

While I have been at my workplace for a few years now, my boss and I have spent a lot of time workling reasonably closely together over the last year or so, and, as is natural, have started chatting a little more about non work related things. We get on well. Things have been very stressful at work recently and we're both a bit dragged down by it all, so I have asked him out for drinks one evening, to which he agreed, and we have now made firm plans for this.

Now, here's where my colleagues have a problem: not only does it seem to be wrong in their eyes that we meet up socially at all, but I am apparently all the more unreasonable because the man is in a very long-term relationship (way more than a decade, though not married).

I literally have zero interest in him in that regard; I don't piss on relationships and would actually lose a lot of respect for him if he tried anything on. I have made it very clear that I am only after a platonic relationship and there has never been an indication that he saw me in any way differently.

My issue is, this disapproval seems to solely come down to the fact that he is an attached 50-y.o. male and I am a (younger - late 30s) female. True, he doesn't normally socialise with colleagues. But I am bisexual, by that logic I wouldn't be allowed to socialise with anyone, ever.

So, AIBU to have asked him out for drinks?

No, all of that is sorted. As is all my leaving paperwork. I just have to finish my notice period.

See, that would have been relevant info to include in the OP and you might have gotten different replies

Wow. I used to get on really well with a previous boss. We used to go out for drinks, dinner etc, just the two of us. We still do, if we’re in the same country. We’re quite flirty but that’s generally as far as it goes.

Are you both single?

Then just arrange to meet after you leave, surely?

At least explains why he agreed to meet at all. Little risk to his job if you are about to leave. People are unlikely to put in a formal complaint about favouritism and nepotism

I agree - that does change things and I think it'd be best to have left it until after you'd gone to meet him. Not the end of the world, though, and I do see why you'd want to try to keep in touch with someone you get on with.

One of my best friends is a male colleague, we clicked straight away. Strictly platonic, DP isn't arsed whether I meet him or not. We do met once a month or so.
Dp has a very strict idea that business should never be mixed with pleasure. So he kept work socialising to a minimum when he was employed.

I hadn't thought about it, but I used to manage a really nice guy at work, married and a fair bit older. Now he's left, we meet up sometimes for a coffee and a natter - that's a daytime meet and it's after he left - no conflict of interest.

I wouldn't have done it before, due to it being unprofessional

I never get the angst about things like this on here - we cannot assume that all men will cheat, given the opportunity. I frequently have after work, 1-1 drinks with my married, male manager, who is older than me. I've met his wife, I've babysat his kids, I've had dinner at his house. Never once has any of the conversations we've had 1-1 strayed into anything inappropriate, beyond arguing about our respective football teams
I don't think it's about assuming men will cheat at any opportunity. It's about identifying a situation that's unusual and out of character and the OP seems willingly naive.

Had the OP said "My colleagues think I'm unreasonable for inviting my boss out for drinks. He's older than me, in a relationship, but is generally a sociable man who socialises with colleagues of all sexes and regularly has 1-1 drinks with colleagues." they'd get a different set of responses than my colleagues think I'm unreasonable for inviting my boss out for 1-1 drinks, he's older than me, doesn't attend group social events and doesn't socialise with colleagues, but he is willing to come for 1-1 drinks with me: a younger, single, female employee. I just don't understand at all why anyone would raise an eyebrow. I just want to get to know him more on a personal level and can't understand why anyone would think this might be an unwise idea.

A sociable boss who gets on with lots of people, socialising with a female colleague in the same way he socialises with all colleagues probably wouldn't leave any colleagues raising an eyebrow.

'willingly naive' is a great expression

It'd odd. Sorry.

I would go for drinks with my boss if say we were on a course/away day together or after a training day or something like that. But not just invite them out on our own, it would be a casual shall we pop into the pub on the way home type thing. I have ex male colleagues who it's nice to catch up with if they come back to the company so again might go for a casual invite for drinks after work. But the key is causal, nice to catch up, fancy a beer type things, and would be extended to other colleagues in the vicinity.

I don't think I'd make a plan go for lone dinner/drinks with another man who wasn't my family. It's too much like a date even if we are platonic. It feels disrespectful to DH. A group setting absolutely fine, coffee sure. But like asking them out for drinks and not wanting anyone else to come?

But would it be like a date if it was another female?

Especially if, like me, you were bisexual, so could be interested in and attracted to either sex?

It would be like a date if boss was female but attracted to women.

Not like a date if boss was female but straight.

So every one on one night out I have with anyone is a date, from their side?

A one on one meeting for drinks, a night, with a person whose sexuality means they might be attracted to you sounds like a possible date, yes.

I don't get what you don't get.

I dont believe in all the profesional nonsense, we are all people. But I wouldnt like it if a woman asked my husband out for drinks after work 1-1

So every one on one night out I have with anyone is a date, from their side?

I don't think anyone has said this OP.

You clearly really really want to connect with your boss on a personal level that you want a pat on the back from strangers online to give you the green light.

He's seemingly happy to make an exception to his not socialising with colleagues when a younger, single, female employee invites him for 1-1 drinks.

You're are doing your very best to keep claiming everyone else is unreasonable, so what does it matter what your colleagues think?

Go for your drinks.

Oh I fully get it, I'm just way more dateable than I thought! 😁

You are bisexual ... so you can date both sexes. Didn't you know that's what it meant?

A 1:1 evening out with any work colleague in my environment would be unusual. With the boss, if it wasn't their norm, male or female it would show favouritism.

There's something childish about your faux naivety - do you just do things to cause a reaction, by any chance?

If a colleague of the opposite sex, or indeed of the sex in which I am interested, asked me out on a 1 on 1 basis which was not a normal occurrence, I would certainly be wondering if it was a date.

Why are you pretending to be so dim about this.

Oh, admittedly the last bit was provocative. Because there seems to be something highly hyprocritical in some of the answers and I doubt many responses would have been similar if I had intended to meet a female boss.

(I did that once, by the way, after I had left the place in which she was my boss, and I would have loved to call that one a date, but, alas, it was just coffee)

The thread has done its job in that it has clarified some thought processes for me. It was never intended to change my mind, and it hasn't, because I am adamant that neither of us are doing anything wrong.

But at least I now see that I have colleagues who either think I have the need to brown nose in my last month of work at the place or who think so little of both me and my boss that they think we'd break a long-lasting, loving relationship apart for the sake of sex.

Yes it’s completely inappropriate especially as he is in a relationship. If he was single it would be slightly different or it was a group setting but 1-1 drinks is a no go.

If someone asks me out for drinks, we aren't usually friends, they are attracted to my sex, I am attracted to their sex, and they specifically do not want others to join then yes that feels very much like a date. If a colleague did this I would assume they were asking me on a date tbh.

It may not be. But if I have a partner it feels disrespectful.

No not everyone you go out with. But you haven't been out with this man in this way before. You havent hung out in a social setting, you aren't long term friends catching up. You don't want anyone else to join.

Weird!!

I think the responses would have been exactly the same if your boss had been a bi / lesbian in an established relationship and you also bi / lesbian. Apart from that side of things even from a work point of view it is pretty cringey to invite the boss out for 1 on 1 drinks and then tell all your colleagues that you have done so.

You actually seem to get off on trying to test relationships. You are not the innocent you pretend to be. You have mentioned before that you have invited married men out and I presume you pretended that the drinks with your old female boss was innocent even though you wish it were more. You are starting to sound quite toxic.