I’m 33. I am sleeping with my boss. He’s 55. He's on the board of the company. He pursued me, initiated it and came on very strong 2 years ago saying I am his soulmate.
He is not married. His wife left him for cheating on her five years ago. This is widely known at our company. At the beginning of his and my relationship (if you could call it that) he also slept with some other people. At the weekends he dates women his own age “”for respectability’s sake.” Yes I know - he’s an absolute prize!
Nobody at work knows that we are sleeping together (I understand that they might be able to tell, less so during covid but it’s not an open secret or anything like that)
I’m miserable because it was a really stupid idea to enter into this sexual/personal/professional relationship with someone superior to me, but now I am in a cycle of addiction/abuse/hot and cold behaviour/S&M (introduced by him) that I don’t even know the first steps to get out of it emotionally or professionally.
He cycles between lovebombing me, calling and wanting to see me constantly, joking around, going out for dinner, taking me away on holiday, calling me his girlfriend, telling me he loves me, holding me up as a shining example in front of other people at work, helping me progress my career, taking me to senior meetings (that are above my level but great opportunities) and then dropping me like a light, going silent for days, treating me over-professionally, formally and critically, saying nothing I do is right. When he does this it’s almost like I cannot function. I can't eat or sleep or find any joy. I feel like my self esteem rests so much on him, that even an email or a text during these periods of silence where I don’t know where he is or what he is doing or where I stand, will make my heart beat through my chest in relief or pain or desperation.
Every time I am with him and things are going well, I feel like the sun is shining on me. Every time we are apart I wonder what he is doing and I feel I don’t know who I am or who he is. I work 70+ hour weeks and the only person I see outside of work Is him. When that world drops away it feels like a bottomless pit. If I take an objective step back I see that he is a very average bloke, and not a nice person, I did not even fancy him or like him at the beginning, but he was my boss, he was lovebombing me and I cannot get out of the addiction of trying to please him, now that I am in it.
When I do make attempts at withdrawing he redoubles his efforts to pull me back in. He breaks down in tears, appears at my house and tells me he loves me and that we’ll go through my feelings together and “sort this out.” He will always find an excuse that wins me around. It’s that he’s been so stressed. I know how hard he works, surely I can see how stressed and busy he has been? Or his ex wife and kids are on at him about something – his ex has a bill she needs him to pay and he’s working doubly hard so that he can "afford everyone’s life." He frequently says he is “swamped, underwater, drained, on the verge of a heart attack, everyone wants a piece of him.”
Whenever I talk to him about the situation or ask him where he is or what’s he was doing or is planning to do, he sighs and tells me I am acting “like a wife, checking up on him.” He’ll say that’s “not what I wanted from this. I want fun and adventure, not someone asking me what I am doing 24 hours a day. I am not checking up on YOU.” I don’t feel equal with him for a start, so it’s not like I feel I have a right to check up on him at all, but I do occasionally ask because I need to make my own plans and have a life. He actually gets angry about me asking. He will say I have “ruined” a day or an evening by asking him what he is doing or me “needing to know” his plans, work or otherwise. Or what country he is in. The last time he said I should be grateful for the time he found for me considering how busy his life is and that I should “not be greedy" with my time from him.
I cannot cut him off because we communicate every day for work. The work we do together is how I pay my bills, support my parents and support my DC. I get professional respect for this because he has a good reputation in his industry. Every time I withdraw and am coldly professional I get a huge onslaught of lovebombing, calls and attempts to pull me back in. Things are never in balance. The average cycle time is 3 weeks. 3 weeks cannot go by without me hitting several highs and despairing lows due to his hot and cold behaviour.
I waste a lot of time wondering if his behaviour is deliberate, whether he is damaged and he can’t help it, or whether his behaviour and words are crafted to keep me addicted and suffering. I go round and round in circles thinking about it.
After his wife left him and before he and I started sleeping together he said he had a 3 year relationship with another woman at work who is an acquaintance of mine. He said that she broke his heart, he was addicted to her, obsessed by her, wanted to be with her. He says that he is still “grieving” the relationship after she lost interest. Everything I do is compared to her and how perfect she is. She is very “thin and beautiful” which he keeps mentioning (I am normal size and average looking) She is “brilliant at work,” and can “light up a room.” I know this is wrong and extremely unhealthy. I know that he is wrong to do this, that it is very manipulative. But it’s like my primitive brain cannot stop going round and round in circles about her. Why she is perfect and I’m not? Why do I do everything I can for him and I still fall short of her in his mind?
I am pursuing therapy for this. It will start soon. I am planning an exit from work and trying to find a different job. Hard to do during covid. I cannot go to HR.
Please give me any advice about the steps I can take emotionally and professionally to unhook myself from this and get my life back. And please, if you see through his behaviour from what I have written, tell me and make me feel better and not a small, inferior person.