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Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

Original poster

Did I do the right thing to tell my crush openly?

243 replies

Iloveworms · 28/04/2018 09:43

Happily Married with 2DCs and early forties. Over the last 6 months a huge crush has developed on a colleague who I have to regularly work with but don’t sit anywhere near him fortunately. I told DH about it, but it hasn’t really killed it. Crush (married) has noticed my unnecessary attention to him and glances across the room. He is a really funny nice person but has now started to tease me about it. I am now totally embarrassed and decided to take the plunge and tell him openly to get him to put me off. This is what I wrote:

Xxxx, it is really frustrating & embarrassing to have these feelings for you. I know it will disappear at some point..but maybe writing it down like this will kill it more quickly. So please, go ahead and do what you think you should (ignore me, embarrass me, tell me about your bad points :-) so I can go back to how I used to see you, just a nice person and colleague. I’m sorry for being very annoying... Have a nice weekend with your family.

Did I do the right thing? I feel better now as it is out and when I am next at work I know I will be so embarrassed I will avoid him as much as I can. I’m hoping the huge embarrassment will kill it for me. It was getting too much.

Just curious to know your experiences if you’ve ever done this and wanted to get it off my chest. Of course he hasn’t responded which is what I expected and is definitely best.

OP posts:
Addictedtohavingbabies · 28/04/2018 15:34

Are you the same OP who wrote the blog about the same situation?

Dancingleopard · 28/04/2018 15:37

This is bonkers and weird on so many levels.

You need to back off love Flowers

Eatmycheese · 28/04/2018 15:54

Did I miss something. Did you email him using your work email as another poster has said.
If so then that was breathtakingly ill judged and I hope this doesn’t come back to haunt you.

Namechangedname · 28/04/2018 16:43

it is really frustrating & embarrassing to have these feelings for you

That sounds like more than a crush, OP. Shock

Bluntness100 · 28/04/2018 16:50

The thing is, reading that text, it is part of a conversation, it's not the start of one or something you send out the blue and cold.

So is something missing from this story op?

SomeKnobend · 28/04/2018 16:50

Your very first words of your OP were "Happily married". Now you've decided in the course of a few posts that you're not really getting what you want from your dh and your not sure you're really right for each other! What the fuck? This is honestly what cheaters do to justify their behaviour. They have a happy marriage and then they invent problems in the marriage that they can use to justify in their own mind that they weren't really happy and that's why they're behaving inappropriately with someone else.

SomeKnobend · 28/04/2018 16:54

What would you think if your dh had sent that message to a female colleague? Or received it? What would you want him to do? Would you feel ok about it and think he was trying to end the crush, or would you think that he was clearly trying to escalate it?

I agree with Bluntness as well. That text didn't come out of the blue.

Annabelle4 · 28/04/2018 17:11

Do you hope that he feels the same way? Confused

Original poster
Iloveworms · 28/04/2018 17:58

It was a text not a work email
It was following from a piss-taking sentence in a work email he sent the day before. One of the only emails we ever exchanged which were not work related. So yes part of a conversation.

Do I hope he feels the same way: the honest answer is yes and no. Yes because it’s a nice feeling for someone to reciprocate your attraction to them. No because I don’t want to have an affair with anyone, I really don’t. He doesn’t feel the same way so it’s irrelevant.

I would still classify myself as generally happily married because I enjoy being with my DH and still fancy him. But I don’t always get what I need from him in terms of attention. But I would prefer by far us staying together as a family and missing out on some ‘male attention’.

How would I feel if DH did it: relieved as that would make two of us; sad to realise I don’t satisfy his needs for attention...he is absolutely rubbish at flirting so it’s hard to imagine him even getting into the situation.

OP posts:
Original poster
Iloveworms · 28/04/2018 18:05

It’s not more than a crush. I have not laid a finger on him. I sent him one non work email which was related to a subject he wanted to learn more about and I knew about. He responded with thanks and then a teasing comment. I knew then that it was going too far.

OP posts:
Mousefunky · 28/04/2018 18:09

This has made me cringe to no end... are you fourteen?! I would be so pissed off if my DP came home and told me he had developed a ‘crush’ on someone at work and couldn’t stop staring at her... it’s awful. You are acting like a child.

CheggarsPlaysPlop · 28/04/2018 18:37

I think you are giving the OP a hard time! She's been honest and brave and is asking for advice. Perhaps I am more sympathetic because I have done something similar recently and feel like I am in 6th Form. It is absolute torture to be limerantly in lust/love with a colleague. I 'fessed up to my crush as my relationship is finished and I thought she was single. Turns out she actually isn't. We are friends now but I still want so much more. Trying hard to let those feelings go, but even as a 'grown up' people still are susceptible to obsessive crushes (well I am). I have considered leaving my job because the feelings are so strong

springydaff · 28/04/2018 18:56

You could have a look at SLAA

Don't dismiss it bcs of the name, take a good look? Some very good strategies for arresting the agony of an obsessive crush.

MadMags · 28/04/2018 18:57

What was his teasing comment?

And how has he noticed your unnecessary attention and glances across the room, If he works in a different building?

MadMags · 28/04/2018 18:58

Also, I don’t know if this is real, but if it is he sounds like a total twat.

And someone who could potentially spread your text around.

SleepyRoo · 28/04/2018 19:08

What happens if Mr Crush's wife sees that text? Sad

mimibunz · 28/04/2018 19:13

Hang in there, OP. I know this scenario as I did almost the same thing. Obsessive/impulsive is awful. Flowers

AnchorDownDeepBreath · 28/04/2018 19:19

I’m not sure we’re really right for each other but the good points outweigh the bad.

To be frank, your choices here are that you stay with your DH but you have to find a way to live without the attention that you're craving, or you leave your DH to find that attention. You can't carry on like you are now.

You may feel better for having sent it; but it's inappropriate on many levels, and you haven't really considered anyone else. Your husband, if he sees it. Crush's wife; who may now feel quite anxious that a woman at work has opened this conversation with her husband. Your crush, to a certain extent, who might be acting fine with this but might have been "teasing" you so that you stopped making it so obvious.

There's a lot of people at stake who aren't you here; and it's not fair on them or your husband or any future crushes to continue like this. If you choose to stay with your DH, you have to find a way to satisfy that need for attention either from your DH in a way that he feels comfortable (maybe he could manage a date night, or something? Talk to him) or channel the need into something productive and that won't involve anyone else. They are your only choices if you don't want to leave.

crimsonlake · 28/04/2018 19:45

I am confused as you initially say you do not sit near him but see him regularly, then later you say he works in another building. Which is it?
If it is the latter then there was no need to send the text as you were not in constant close proximity to him. I think you did this to force a reaction from him as I do not see what the issue was.

Isadora666 · 28/04/2018 19:48

Has he replied to the text?

Emma198 · 28/04/2018 19:54

Cringe.

Original poster
Iloveworms · 28/04/2018 19:58

I hope to hell he deleted it immediately. I certainly did this morning drowning in embarrassment...
He could always tell her that he’s done nothing which is true. He can’t really help it if he has a crazed lovesick colleague.

He’s not a nasty guy I’m sure he will keep it to himself. When he teases me it’s not with the intention to hurt my feelings but to make light of things, but this time I felt terrible and felt I needed to react.

His teasing comment was that he had thought about me all night (obviously, he hadn’t), following on from a comment made the previous day when I said I was thinking the previous evening about a serious work incident when he interrupted me to say jokingly “were you thinking about me?” to which I gave him a look and continued my explanation and left shortly after.

Yes he works in another building but we have dealings a few days a fortnight mostly a few minutes chat in the corridor for questions here and there.

I think what has provoked this crush to escalate is eye contact, when we talk we really look at each other. That’s normal for colleagues, and he does it with everyone but over the last few months it has developed into something stupid on my side. For the whole previous year I didn’t really notice him. I don’t really know where this came from, probably familiarity breeding a certain closeness over time.

OP posts:
sonjadog · 28/04/2018 20:04

I think you should be prepared that he won't laugh off your text, and that you have in fact made him feel really awkward and that he may want to avoid you. You may have just ended all good tone between you. You may also not, but be prepared that this might not play out in the way you have pictured it in your mind.

Original poster
Iloveworms · 28/04/2018 20:16

Anchor down, yes I think he was teasing me to protect me from making a fool of myself.

I sent the text because the whole obsession I have had with him for months was bugging me like hell and I needed a relief from it. I admit I didn’t think about anybody else. In my twisted logic it would diffuse things and stop it going farther and hence be a good thing.
Of course he hasn’t replied. I knew that he wouldn’t. Would you want to encourage a crazed colleague stalking you?

I didn’t think I was risking anything as it was clear he knew my feelings anyway so I wanted to point to the elephant in the room and apologise for making him feel stalked.

OP posts:
Original poster
Iloveworms · 28/04/2018 20:37

Sonjadog, you could be right and that would suck big time. But I will just go into complete avoidance mode now. I will keep our work discussions to email only, and keep completely out of his way physically, ie not ask him anything in passing, avoid his lunch table, avoid all eye contact.

My hope is that at some point in the not too distant future we can both laugh at this, I can tell him what an idiot I was and no longer feel that way. Hopefully the embarrassment will speed up the killing of feelings.
Bring it on embarrassment.
I will also be imagining him on the toilet as I read somewhere today and thought that was a hilariously effective way of killing the fantasy. Of course he picks his nose and leaves his socks on the floor too. From the state of his messy desk he would be a nightmare to leave with.
My DH is much tidier and just as handsome and he has stood by me all these years. It is so easy to take someone for granted.

I am also convinced his wife is absolutely lovely, I even give her names and picture him going home to her.

I need a really long holiday don’t I.

OP posts:
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