I am feeling very confused about everything at the moment and would like to write my thoughts down. I appreciate any advice or similar experiences that people can offer. To give some background about me, I am single (LTR broke down 6 months ago) and late 20s.
I have developed feelings for a man at work – someone I definitely can’t ever have – and it’s beginning to really affect me. I have a stressful job that takes up many hours. This year, I was moved to a different department (to gain experience) and began working with this man, who is effectively my ‘boss’ because he is a middle-manager in that department. The problem is, he is engaged to another person in our workplace (who was actually my boss last year when I was in a different department.)
I have worked with him for about 5 months now and this huge crush came out of nowhere. I’m not often attracted to people but I find everything about him so endearing. He’s funny, interesting, thoughtful, witty and he makes me look forward to coming to work every day. We work in a very small team and one person recently left so we are basically together all the time. We can talk for hours about general things and I know a lot about his life. He often says he misses his life when he was younger, before he worked here because now he is stressed out and has no time for himself, which I can relate to. We are close to the same age so we often talk about nights out and university etc. He is really friendly and just seems to understand me.
After work, he will sometimes come to my area for a chat. Yesterday evening, we spent a while talking and I was getting my stuff ready to take to the car. We won’t be at work for a while as we have time off for the Christmas break and he was asking me about my plans. He helped me pack up the stuff I needed and asked me to text him over the holidays if I felt like chat or if I ‘get drunk over New Year’s Eve.’ We never really text or communicate out of work unless we need to talk about something work related so I thought this was a bit odd. Then went we went home, the last thing he said to me in the car park was ‘text me’.
It’s difficult because I know that nothing can ever happen (not that I even have any proof he likes me that way, I’m probably just being obsessive and stupid.) It would be a disaster both professionally and emotionally and the fall out would be enormous. I am friendly with his fiancée and see her every day too. I am very positive about the wedding whenever it comes up in conversation but he always seems negative about it. He often moans about how they’re spending too much money on it. I don’t ever comment on this though and as far as I’m aware, he has no idea how I feel about him.
Part of me would like to text him, just to hear from him, as I miss him when I’m not with him. I don’t think I should though. Some days I think about him a lot and I wish I didn’t because it’s pointless. I can never have him and I’ve tried to meet other men but I just don’t seem to like anyone else that way.
Why do I have to feel like this about something I need to see every day? It’s like my mind is trying to torture me with these ridiculous feelings. I imagine things about him that I really shouldn’t and then I feel really guilty and weird afterwards. Please don’t judge me for saying what I’ve said as I wouldn’t act on these feelings. It’s just making things really unpleasant for me as I can’t stop thinking about him.