Just to put this upfront: I am a (very?) anxious person by nature, and have had enough Bad Relationship Situations and General Losses that this may be playing into my worries about this situation.
I've been dating a guy for about 3.5 months, and really like him. He's gentle, kind, funny, super articulate, intelligent, and in general very emotionally generous. Also very switched on re emotions - he's actually taught me a lot about responding kindly to others' distress, and talking about things in a grown up way etc.There's just this one thing, though, and it's been making me feel uneasy and insecure. Would it make you feel weird?
He has (had) a very close relationship with a female colleague. I cant mention the profession as it's in the public eye, but essentially they've build a joint 'brand' and have done very well out of it. He gave her her first job as her boss, and then took her to this new workplace as his equal, so she has made extremely fast progress and managed to essentially leapfrog around 15 years of experience through his advocating for her on everything from position to salary. He also seems to have been doing a lot of her work for her, which she has gotten credit for (in an industry where credit is really everything).
She moved to London two years ago from the US, and he says that the reason he moved a month after this, also, was because he wanted to try living in a new city, he was very unhappy where he was and he loved London.
This job has taken them all around the world, dealing with scary and very bonding situations. He would have described her as his closest friend. When she had post natal depression last year, he said he took up to three days off work every week to sit with her and listen to her talking about her issues with her father, then he caught up on work in the evenings.
He would spend most Fridays with her and her husband and two children. He grew attached to their children.
This all just sounds like a nice, close friendship writing it down like this. But she ended up acting a distant with him -- I'm not sure exactly when. He said 'since the summer' (when he was depressed and felt he needed her support - bear in mind she has two young children, so I feel like maybe this was a bit much to ask?), then he said 'since last year' (when he was very depressed and she was in hospital with terrible pregnancy related sickness), then he said 'since October' (they'd had a minor intellectual squabble, which apparently she takes very badly).
He said that at times, she has been very helpful when he's been down and shown him care, but he also describes her as 'cold', 'lacking compassion' and not able to show feelings. I think he would say similar things about his mother, who had a drinking problem and abandoned the family when he was 16. She is so anxious she apparently can't be in the same room alone with him or his sister, as it brings up too much anxiety,
He would say that this colleague cannot take the slightest disagreement without going over and over again about how it makes her feel and reminds her of her abusive father; he feels that he has given way too much emotional space to her over and over again about this, having discussed it over and over and apologised, tried to find new ways of dealing with inevitable disagreements etc. He felt that this might be a reason as to why she was putting distance between them, along with a number of unplanned trips overseas for the both of them which meant they were too busy to see eachother for a couple of months.
Either way, he has tried to confront her about this growing distance, saying it's hurt his feelings and wanting to know what's going on (whenever he talks about this bit, though, it feels like I have to draw it out of him that he was asking her / wanting attention, and like he doesn't want to be totally honest about what he was asking / needing?). She has refused to talk about it or admit anything is wrong, it would seem, although he's always a little cagey in terms of how she is responding.
In November she insisted that they went to 'work therapy' before they embarked on a huge joint work project which would have meant close working for a year (even more close working than they do already, which is a fair amount). He wanted to use these sessions to talk about how hurt he was at the increasingly distant friendship; she wanted to talk about how to handle this project. She also said she felt they had 'never been friends' and it was just a professional relationship. By all accounts this seems untrue. Even the therapist said that this doesn't seem to be the case, and that there were some mixed signals going on.
In the second session, she said she didn't want to work together anymore, without any warning, and that she was pulling out of this project - which is not an easy thing to pull out of and risks reputational damage. Again, she gave no clear explanation, although in a subsequent coffee (he seems to continue to make overtures to be her friend), she admitted that she let her anxiety about them working together - and these occasional squabbles - get the best of her and it just kind of 'blew up', according to her (via him). The therapist, for what it's worth, felt that this woman was giving him 'mixed signals' and no emotional space in the conversation.
The consequences of this are that he will need to produce this project himself, which is almost impossible to deadline without being hugely disruptive, and also that he will need to move back to his home country as he had used his close working relationship with her, in his current country, to justify living here. So our entire relationship is being jeopardised (these countries are 12 hours away) and his working and professional life has been completely uprooted, because of the anxiety of this lady. She didn't seem to really care about this.
I do believe that he has never made an advance on her, and that this isn't like text book creepy stuff. She still is happy to work with him, in a very arms length way, although she got him removed to a different office as they shared one - which seemed extreme.
I'm worried though, that I'm being an idiot here. Has he just been a creep? I did see an email she wrote to him confirming that he saw her as a 'friend' and she saw him a 'colleague' (he showed me this), although she admitted that a friendship had built up through working together, so it all just seems like semantics.
He mentioned today that he'd joined her whilst she was talking to a mutual friend/colleaguein the office (just before they needed to both go on stage to present together) and that she's looked super uncomfy and disappeared. She had clearly stated she wanted to keep things professional in their relationship and I do feel that he was overstepping a boundary by trying to get involved in this conversation.
I also find it a bit strange that he felt 'let down' by her emotionally last year when he was depressed and she was literally in hospital with a serious pregnancy related condition (especially as he mentions she actually got him a therapist at the time, which seems like a nice gesture).
He has mentioned that he has a cold mother who left when he was 16, and was also a pretty bad alcoholic. He said it didn't damage him, but has mentioned her not being well enough to take him to school sometimes etc. He also mentioned that he sometimes feels 'worthless', and that in exploring these feelings with his therapist he had admitted that in his head they were 'coming from his work colleague'. That was like a year ago, when apparently they were close and things were fine, and it feels like a very extreme thing to say about someone you don't have an overly intense relationship with.
I've seen him cry twice now over the work colleague thing, one time when he drank a whole bottle of wine and was saying he felt worthless and that he hates rejection. He said that his only serious ex girlfriend had rejected him over and over at the beginning, and that he 'runs headlong into rejection' and had felt very in love initially because of this. He said he wasn't going to pursue this work colleague even as a distant friend because he doesn't want to get caught in this dynamic.
He has reassured me that their relationship was only professional, and that he never felt romantic feelings. I did say it sounded like this woman seems to have been a surrogate girlfriend in terms of closeness, and he said he had wondered that and bought it up with a previous therapist who didn't have much useful stuff to say.
He doesn't feel in love with me yet, although he seems to be reasonably self aware about how unhealthy his romantic pattern was and has expressed that the top quality he is looking for in a partner is kindness, which I have in spades. I just worry that he'll never be in love with me, if actually he has this pattern of fixating on unavailable women? He says his feelings are growing, and he feels we have something healthy and solid. I'm glad he can be vulnerable with me, and I don't want to blame him for what are essentially quite easy to understand feelings around rejection etc. - especially because it's easy for society to assume that men don't get upset about this stuff when they clearly do.
When I'm with him, I do feel good and quite cherished. But sometimes he just seems so distracted, and I feel like this is taking up a lot of space in his head. Like, 75%. He doesn't want to burden me with talking about this all the time, but when we do it can turn into hours of it, and one time he got really drunk and cried and said it made him feel worthless (something he has mentioned he's felt when he is feeling depressed). One part of me feels that that is normal, and that if my best friend were distant with me like this and then dropped me - and it meant I had to move countries - I would be pretty devastated. I also know i can look for the worst case scenario in any situation, but sometimes I just feel....odd about this.
What would your thoughts be?