Let me start by saying that I am over 40, but if I sound like the most clueless of teenagers, that is because I am in relationships terms -- I was with the same man from my teens until a couple of years ago, and as I've been single since, and am the busy working parent of a demanding small child with no evening childcare, as a result I have pretty much zero experience of relationships, flirting etc.
Which is why I'm finding this confusing and talking to a bunch of strangers on the internet about it.
I've been in my current job at a large organisation (being deliberately vague) for just over a year. Over the last two or three months, I've found myself feeling close to a colleague from another department with whom I have intermittent meetings/dealings, after only vaguely registering him as a nice guy before that. Recently we seem to end up drifting together at any events we're both at, and falling into conversations which end up often being very long and wide-ranging, and often end up hovering by the lifts or in the corridor talking more, if it's something at the end of the day.
I thought I was overthinking this while I was away over the summer, but now it seems to be becoming more frequent, if anything, and the conversations more personal. It's a busy period at work, with a weekend event and a conference we both had to attend, and in the last five workdays alone, we must have spent four or five hours talking at a reception/on the way out of the building/on the way to the car park. I'm finding myself thinking about him more and more, and realised I find him attractive. He's 48, clever, funny, observant, and kind, and apparently amiably divorced, but clearly a besotted and very involved father to teenagers.
The issue, I suppose is that I'm completely confused about what this means. The last time I was in this situation I was 18, pretty and confident, and I was falling in love with the man I married. Now I am in my 40s, no looker, and my confidence has taken a big knocking for various reasons in the last five years, when I found parenthood tough, my career foundered, my marriage ended and I haven't been particularly happy -- my marriage was celibate for the last few years, and I have not thought of myself as someone who could be considered attractive for a very long time. I also have none of the basic comprehension of men that an average, single 40something woman has. At some level I am terrified, but mostly what I feel is as though I'm a beginner at a language everyone else seems to speak fluently.
How on earth do you know if someone reciprocates your feelings? How can you tell the difference between someone who likes you as a workmate and someone who is developing stronger feelings for you? I have butterflies. I'm off my food. When someone says his name I get a rush of pleasure. I am a teenager in the body of a 42 year old professional.
I realise this probably sounds like a complete non-problem to anyone with experience of adult dating, but despite being a functioning adult I am absolutely unable to conceive that anyone would find me attractive, and while we gravitate to one another when we encounter one another at work and can't stop talking, it's always 'accidental'. He's very self-deprecating, and I sense he's been out of the game for a while, too. I'm especially wary because presuming something about a workmate could have horrible consequences. Also, we're both originally from the same country, though have lived in the UK most of our adult lives, so I wonder whether this might just be nostalgia for 'home' from him. But then I think of all the times when an hour suddenly melted away just standing in the corridor, and the fact that he remembers absolutely everything I tell him.
Thank you for struggling through this any advice? How does this sound to you? What would you do? A bit of me hopes you will all say 'predictable office crush all in your head no basis in reality, no need to do anything'.