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?