Sorry if this is a long one but looking for perspectives. I’m not in the UK so hopefully this thread won’t be found by anyone who recognizes this situation.
About a year and a half ago it came out in the office that two colleagues were having an affair. Some of the colleagues were in a tight group, going on vacations together, nights out, the lot. The man,called Tim on this thread (living with then partner) was at the center of this group was ostracized from the group. The woman (at the time married) was a younger, newer colleague, and nobody would touch her with a barge pole after this came out.
While I agree cheating is wrong, I was not bothered enough to get involved. I tried to remain neutral and pleasant to everyone. However, I did realize over time that the female colleague, let’s call her Liz, has some issues. She often has crying fits in the office, talks a lot about having an eating disorder at inappropriate moments, like while people are eating lunch, gets very personal with people very quickly. Something giving me crazy vibes, but since I was one of the only people still talking to her in the office, she kind of latches onto me a bit.
She has also told me she and Tim, now boyfriend (her husband divorced her and the two colleagues now live together) like to go swinging and are into some pretty weird sex stuff. Again I’ve just put this down to different strokes for different folks, not my business kind of stuff.
Fast forward to this weekend. It was the work Christmas party until around midnight, and then a load of us went on to a club, which stays open to around 8am. It’s quite common for this to happen because it’s a work hard play hard kind of environment and leadership usually hand someone a load of cash for people to take taxis and buy drinks.
At some point in the night I bumped into Liz in the line for the toilet. She introduced me to a woman who I then realized had her hand in Liz’s nickers. Liz is mid twenties. This woman looked much older and I asked how old she was and she replied 55, but I think she appeared much older. I don’t want to rip into her looks but she was not attractive and Liz is actually a very physically attractive woman. When the cubicles became free I ended up in the one next to them. They went in together and I could hear sexual moans coming from them. It actually distracted me from being able to pee so I heard enough to know what was going on.
I then went back to the dance floor and Tim was there, so I told Tim what was happening, thinking she is clearly too drunk/being taken advantage of and he needed to go help her. Instead he told me that he had encouraged her to go with this woman. I was like but have you actually met this person because they are super creepy and I didn’t get a good feeling. He just shrugged.
Later in the night I encountered her stood on a chair being groped by a load of strangers and this time I didn’t say anything. The next time I heard from someone else she had taken a taxi back with some random guy, and they also called it out to Tim who just again shrugged it off and said he was going to join them later.
So here’s the Aibu:
AIBU: Let swingers be swingers. If this is their kink it’s none of my business and I just need to pretend this night never happened.
AINBU: This is wrong because
- Fine swing but don’t make it a spectacle in front of your colleagues and make them listen in the next cubicle
- I should be worried for Liz because she’s in a relationship with an older man and probably has mental health issues and it looks like he’s exploiting her to fulfill his own weird sexual fantasies. Tim has been openly disrespectful to Liz in other ways around the office so I do think he holds a lot of control in the relationship.
- I should be worried for Tim because his gf is absolutely insane and he’s lost all his friends and social life for this nut job.
On the one hand I just want to forget but on the other hand I want to get this off my chest and get opinions without discussing this with others at work about it. One colleague has already rang me today asking me what I think about it all and im trying to just move my way back into the neutral zone. However I don’t know how I can look Liz or Tim in the eyes again after this.