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Original poster

Advice needed - conflicting feelings about my manager

69 replies

itsabee · 23/12/2018 23:06

Hi,
I have found myself in a situation with my manager and I'm not sure if I'm imaging it or not. I have a three year old, I'm single, in my thirties and my flirting radar is way out of date! My closest friends are also work colleagues and I can't talk to them about this.

My manager and I started working together just over a year ago and hit it off immediately, we work really well together and have a laugh too. He's married with three kids ranging from 3 to 7 years old. He's ten years older than me but constantly jokes about him being old and me being very young. He praises my work and my abilities all the time and tells others that I am great. He openly says he would be lost without me and treats me more like an equal, discussing everything with me.

He used to text me after work about random stuff and phone when he was out of the office, even when he didn't have much to say just to "check in". We have a lot of meetings, just the two of us and work late a lot. I say work, but a lot of the time we just get caught up talking about stuff - work related, after 5pm and the time just flies. We have lunch together and take turns paying. Others used to joke about him having a crush on me and I always laughed it off. I recognised that we were friendlier than most others were with their managers but it still felt entirely platonic.

A month ago I met his wife. I had spoken to her on the phone once or twice before, she knew my name on the phone so he had clearly mentioned me to her. When we met I tried to be friendly but she was quite stiff. He wasn't there at the time but it was him who had asked her to drop something off with me. The following day we were in the same place again and he had an opportunity to introduce us but didn't. I'm not quite sure what to make of that.

Since then I have noticed a change in his behaviour. He doesn't text out of hours anymore or stop me to talk after 5pm. She doesn't call the office anymore.

I'm confused by his behaviour and more confused by how its made me feel. I miss how things were. Things suddenly feel strange, I don't understand why he wouldn't introduce me to his wife or why things have changed. Can anyone offer any advice on why his behaviour has changed?

OP posts:
category12 · 23/12/2018 23:10

What do you think is happening here?

pog100 · 23/12/2018 23:15

You can't really be this naive can you? He fancies you, has over mentioned you at home, the wife is rightly jealous and rightly sees you as a potential rival. He has either recognised it himself or had it forcefully pointed out by her and has dialed it back to professional levels. What did you think?

User12879923378 · 23/12/2018 23:16

His behaviour towards you is inappropriately over friendly both because he is married and because he is your manager. Someone else at the office who knows his wife has told her or she has seen it for herself, or someone at the office has told him that the way he behaves with you has made people think he is having a affair with you or wants to. Either way, he has recognised that his behaviour was inappropriate and has stopped it.

Original poster
itsabee · 23/12/2018 23:17

Part of me thinks it's obvious and his wife has told him to chill things with me. But there has honestly never been anything untoward. She has nothing to worry about, he talks about her and the kids and seems perfectly happy!

But she stonewalled my attempts to be friendly the first time we met and I don't understand how I could have done anything to annoy the woman - we'd only ever had 15 seconds on the phone a couple of times before that!

OP posts:
Mrstobe90 · 23/12/2018 23:17

It sounds as if his wife had concerns about the way you two are with each other so he's backed off. In this instance, it does sound a bit as if things are over friendly and it's probably best for his marriage if he respects the boundaries.

pissedonatrain · 23/12/2018 23:19

I'm not sure how you can't realise that it's a completely inappropriate relationship with a married man.

His wife probably caught wind of it and told him to stop

i would suggest some counselling to learn what is and isn't appropriate behaviour and what boundaries are.

category12 · 23/12/2018 23:19

You've annoyed the woman by "working late" with him regularly and having lots of non-work related chit-chat going on, taking his time and attention away from his home and family. That's what she annoyed about.

purplerainbows · 23/12/2018 23:23

You're pretty silly if you don't understand what's going on.

LonnyVonnyWilsonFrickett · 23/12/2018 23:24

Put yourself in her shoes. 3 young kids and she's either wrangling them all day, or working herself plus wrangling them, and her husband can't be arsed to come straight home from work to help with bedtime, cook a meal and chat to his wife because 'time just flies after 5pm' when he's trading chittychat with a young woman in the office.

At best this is someone using work (and by work I mean you) as an excuse not to engage in the grind of family life. At worst it's an emotional affair. Sort out your boundaries and find someone to talk to who isn't taken.

Original poster
itsabee · 23/12/2018 23:25

He arrived into the company without knowing anyone, and I guess because we worked so closely together and because he didn't know anyone else we became close and he relied on me a lot. But there honestly hasn't been anything even remotely romantic or sexual in our interactions.

We chat about all sorts of stuff but the primary focus is work. Yes, we stay late but that is always centred on work, making plans for the week ahead or an upcoming event. We don't stay late to just chat about personal stuff. I've covered so that he can go home early on several occasions, and even told him to go home a number of times because I know he works late a lot. I am certainly not trying to keep him from his family.

I don't want this affecting my job.

OP posts:
User12879923378 · 23/12/2018 23:28

Best way to avoid it affecting your work is to respect his boundaries and get on with the job, right?

ladamanera · 23/12/2018 23:28

How can you possibly think you’ve done “nothing to annoy” the wife of someone who spends his leisure time calling you and that people in the office joke openly fancies you? Also- if you meet her so infrequently and she did nothing insulting other than seem a little frosty, why do you give a shit? Don’t be disingenuous. You care about his wife’s feeling because you see her as a barometer of him- and her potentially beingn angry titillates you because it suggests that at least one person close to him thinks something could happen between you and her husband. She is not the dangerous one here. You are.

category12 · 23/12/2018 23:30

"He used to text me after work about random stuff and phone when he was out of the office, even when he didn't have much to say just to "check in" [..] I say work, but a lot of the time we just get caught up talking about stuff - work related, after 5pm and the time just flies." Hmm

You're being disingenuous.

ladamanera · 23/12/2018 23:33

Ep. Also the title “conflicting feelings about my manager”. If you were as straight as you seem to this you can dupe us into thinking you were, title would be “manager’s wife has wrong end of stick how do I reset my work relationship”. No “feelings”, no “conflict”- just “message taken to back the fuck of

Original poster
itsabee · 23/12/2018 23:33

But that's my problem. This new behaviour is affecting work. Our section is fastpaced and communication is important. The fact we got along so well helped both of us to do our jobs better and our department was more efficient because of it. Now because we have less contact decisions aren't made as quickly.
Recently our boss threw me a job to do presuming I already had all the details because before my manager and I were always on the same page, but I had no idea about any of it and our boss commented on how it wasn't like us to be so slow off the mark.

OP posts:
ladamanera · 23/12/2018 23:33

“Fuck off” should have been end of that

pissedonatrain · 23/12/2018 23:33

Hmmm your "conflicting feelings about my manager"

and

"I have found myself in a situation with my manager and I'm not sure if I'm imaging it or not. I have a three year old, I'm single, in my thirties and my flirting radar is way out of date! My closest friends are also work colleagues and I can't talk to them about this."

So what kind of feelings do you have for your manager?

Disingenuous is right

ladamanera · 23/12/2018 23:34

Inless your job is either pushing through brexit or preventing nuclear war I reckon your lack of post 5pm chitchats won’t slow the world down that much

User12879923378 · 23/12/2018 23:39

Best just to accept that it's not going anywhere and live with your nose being out of joint for a bit, OP. It's more his fault than yours - he's the manager - but absolutely no good would have come of it continuing like that.

Original poster
itsabee · 23/12/2018 23:40

My feelings are conflicted because I've always viewed things as being friendly but professional. The switch in behaviour and him not introducing me to his wife has made me wonder if I was missing something.

His text were always about random work stuff. All contact outside of working hours was still work related. I have always believed our friendliness was perfectly fine because of how he spoke about his wife and kids. He's never tried to pretend they don't exist or avoid talking about them.

I am not being disingenuous

OP posts:
User12879923378 · 23/12/2018 23:46

OK. Well, the answer is not necessarily. The fact that he spent a lot of time with you doesn't mean that he fancied you, but most people in relationships don't want their partner staying at work late to spend time with other people even if it is platonic, and that sort of behaviour can be misinterpreted by partners as well as colleagues and evidently has been if other employees are joking about him fancying you and his wife is palpably unfriendly to you. So no, none of this means that he actually fancied you or wanted to have an affair with you but he obviously feels that he has crossed a line and is rowing back a bit.

Original poster
itsabee · 23/12/2018 23:51

I don't know how to get rid of this new tension. I can hardly ask him why if his behaviour has changed because his wife doesn't like me! We're friendly but not friendly enough to have that kind of chat!! Or even to broach the topic of whether he thinks there was something inappropriate going on because what if he thinks nothing has changed and thinks I'm a loon for even askin!!

OP posts:
Krankypants · 23/12/2018 23:58

You don’t get it.

He is your manager, you need your job.

Whatever the new status quo is you’d better join in with it pronto.

Any thoughts or confusion you might have about before or what has changed are irrelevant.

category12 · 23/12/2018 23:59

You need to get the hint and back off - be professional, get some distance. He's your manager. Take his lead.

Original poster
itsabee · 24/12/2018 00:01

But if it's leading to me appearing to be less efficient than I was and our boss has already commented then I am afraid that it's going to affect my job longterm. I have been doing really well and I don't want my progression to be affected because of a misconception - either his or anyone elses!

OP posts: