Apologies that this may be long. I feel very confused and I am not sure how to behave from here.
I am a single mother and working in a big corporate company in a chief of staff position reporting to the CEO. It was a position I had to fight and work hard for and it is a very competitive environment where there is always someone to replace you. The CEO is a charismatic man and over the last 6 months has both seduced and completely completely confused and upset me with his behaviour. He is divorced with 4 children.
It started with several business trips we had to do together. We travelled extensively with very tight and packed schedules and he made them more like holidays. I opened up to him about my life and he about his. During one of the trips he confessed that he had feelings for me / wanted to “be” with me, as he said it. I was really surprised as there is an age difference (20 years.) I politely and (I thought subtlety and successfully) brushed him off on the trip. Ie saying “but we work together, you’re very nice but it’s not appropriate etc”
But when we came back to the office he was horrible to me. He would unprovoked tell me off and criticise me in emails, cc-ing in 20 people and exclude me from meetings I had previously been part of. It was a total shock to me as when we said goodbye at the airport we had given each other a big hug and were quite emotional, and then to have this 3 hours later.
After this he began to wildly swing between being very nice to me and bringing me in on important company stuff and giving me opportunities, and back to excluding me from meetings and getting angry with me for nothing in front of other employees. If you asked anyone at our company they would say that from what they see he is not very nice to me at all.
When I confronted him about this in private he told me that he was “protecting” me because it might damage my career if people felt that he had a “soft spot” for me. At the same time as devaluing me in public, he was privately giving me a pay rise and other opportunities.
I confided in a friend who had worked in a similar dynamic before. She said that this was a “classic” situation, and people either quit or find a way to make it work, ie to be able to carry on working with someone on a blatant power trip.
The inconsistency and never knowing how I was going to be treated got to the point where I started to think that my life would be easier if I gave him a bit of what he wanted. So i snogged him. Yes, I know, stupid idea. And it just got worse. The swings got more extreme, the contact became more sexual and intense and then with long periods of not being in contact at all where I was wondering if I had done something wrong or where he was or if he was just going to walk in and fire me.
After the snogging incident he sat me down and said he felt “scared” and that was the reason he was behaving erratically. I said why, you don’t have to feel scared. He said I am worried that it will ruin my reputation that I am trying to have a relationship with someone junior to me. I’ve got everything on the line and you could destroy me overnight. I obviously reassured him that would not happen. But he continued to blow hot and cold both with work and personally.
In my position I am having to be in contact with him a lot and act as a filter between him and others, every single day and at the weekend, which means I need to ask a lot of questions and get a lot of feedback from him. Since our contact became more sexual he has now used this as a way to control me - ie either disappearing off the map for days, being “busy” and not giving me answers so I am having to pursue him or wait for him to give me time, or be more sexual and flirtatious in my contact in order to get answers to things.
Talking sexually and being flirtatious soon became the only way to make it work or communicate with him. He insinuated several times that there were other people who could take my job easily and that I was replaceable. I began to feel very insecure and competitive.
I asked to speak to him privately and spent an evening telling him how I felt for the record. I said I didn’t want to feel like I had to sleep with him in order to be successful and I wanted to feel that he cared for me, for my career and thought I was a good employee. I told him that he needed to set a boundary with me between work and personal and not cross it.
He said you’re right you’re right. I have led you on. I am very sorry. From now on it’s just going to be work and I am going to take care of you and make you successful. He also said “I am sorry for rejecting you” (he is deluded. That is the level of his delusion.) I was very relieved about this and felt that I’d finally got through to him and that I could go back to a normal work life and that he at least felt that he had rejected me, so couldn’t blame me or treat me badly.
48 hours later he bombarded me with calls saying he’d made a “big mistake.” That as soon as I walked away he realised that he wanted me and that he would do whatever it would take to have me. This made me depressed.
Anyway fast forward to now, I have done some more sexual stuff with him ( we haven’t slept together) I am attracted to him, yes, but he is blatantly, obviously, not a nice person at all. I feel like I’ve been pulled into a web where I don’t even know what my own feelings are anymore. Work has taken over my life and I am consumed with his business, his diary. his movements and his communication. He makes plans at the last minute and I have to fit in around them. We were supposed to go on a business trip last week and at the last minute (I was at the airport) he decided to take someone else and has not spoken to me until day when he called asking very patronisingly if I was okay and telling me, all very condescendingly that he is grateful for what I do for him.
Nothing he says adds up. Sometimes he cracks and calls me and leaves voice messages confessing that he is a “terrible person.” Other times he says he is a “pillar of the community.” He is constantly saying that he wants external validation from people and that half of my job is to “keep (his) ego feeling good.”
My self esteem is rock bottom. I feel empty and like he’s taken everything I had to give.
Aside from the obvious “talk to HR” which I am considering. How would you act around him to stop this? Or to at least preserve some dignity? It’s almost like he’s twisted it and made it seem like I was the one who seduced him. Do you think he sounds like he has a personality disorder?