Looking for a few opinions on this situation, because I seem to be seeing it differently to the group of friends I happened to mention this to last night.
There is a man at work, who I previously would have described as a “friendly colleague”. We would have generic “how was your weekend?” chats and have a high level idea what was going on in each other’s lives. Eg, he would mention that he had split with a partner, and I would say “sorry to hear that” but not go into details. That sort of thing. I have been in the same relationship for the whole time that I knew this man (my friends say that this is relevant), until now. This is representative of how I am with most of my colleagues, I don’t tend to have close-confidant friends at work.
My relationship actually broke down a few months ago, but it’s taken a while to actually practically move out, which I did recently.
Not long after the break up, my colleague asked how things were going, and I told him that I had broken up with my partner. This wasn’t intentional, I wasn’t intending on telling anyone at work, and certainly not when I did as it was all still quite raw at the time. But I had been going through the process of telling friends and it just came out. I didn’t go into details and asked him to be discreet.
Since then, this colleague and I have been talking more. We have a few recurring meetings each week together (coordinate the same tasks across different sites, so we don’t work together but overlap on a couple of things we both need to be aware of) and he will check in with me then about how I am. And also just more involved general conversation about each of our lives (hobbies, interests, that sort of thing). He has offered to be an ear if I needed to offload at any point and also practical help at times.
The last day we were both in the same office before my moving date, he gave me a small moving present (nothing keepsake-y or costly), but the sort of thing you would take to a friends house when you went to visit for the first time. This surprised me because if the situation was reversed I would not have done the same thing.
My friends think I am being thick and this man fancies me. I just thought a colleague relationship was just becoming more friendly (but the gift has given made me think). We don’t talk outside of work (and don’t have each other’s personal contact details), or indeed much outside of the scheduled meetings. What does the wisdom of MN think?!