Hello everyone,
I'd like someone to explain to me this experience I had with a former colleague.
For two years, I worked with a colleague who was four years older than me. We're married and have two children the same age. We got along very well. We chatted, went out for lunch together, or with other colleagues. She also brought me meals she prepared at her house, because she knew I had a sweet tooth. Sometimes she gave me cakes and snacks, a bit like a big sister, I thought. She often suggested we go out with the children, but I always refused because I didn't want to see a colleague outside of work hours.
I then had problems with management, a kind of harassment that I took very badly. For several months, I didn't speak to anyone at work, concentrating on my tasks and trying to get through this tumultuous period. This colleague tried to find out why I was isolating myself and I told her "I have a lot of work" without saying anything more. I then ran into her by chance on the subway and she came to see me asking if we could travel together, behaved in a way that I can only describe as flirting (she stuck very close to me, pressed her chest on my arm, leaned in very close to talk to me). One day, she also came into my office to look at something on my screen and touched my shoulders like a massage, I didn't know how to react because she's older, and I was quite surprised. If she was simply "touchy" she wouldn't have been with everyone, which wasn't the case. Even with her own husband she was very distant. At 50, you know what you do with a 46-year-old man.
I then landed another job in another office, and it was announced that I was leaving. This colleague then came to see me, asking when my last day was, and told me she was inviting me to lunch on my last day. On the day, she invited me and asked me if she had done something wrong, why I wasn't talking to her anymore. I told her I had experienced periods of harassment and that I had looked for another position, which I got.
She was relieved that the problem with my distance wasn't hers. She then engaged in some flirtatious contact, touching my hand, for example. I then told her that since I was leaving for another office, we could stay in touch and meet up for family outings with the kids and partners (maybe that was my mistake!!!!). She was happy and organized several outings herself over the summer. We saw each other regularly. With our respective partners (at my request because I didn't want us to see each other without her husband and wife). I was the one who insisted on our partners' presence because she was on the same page as me, her, and the kids. The relationship was great, I thought. Except that sometimes, when I went out with my kids and didn't contact her, she would point it out, "You didn't call me, that's not nice." And yet, she did it on her own, but frankly, I didn't care.
Then, after about ten outings and invitations to eat at each other's houses, she started to stop contacting me. I wrote to her a few times, asking if everything was okay, and she responded succinctly. I then sent my New Year's greetings to her husband, but got no response. She had promised to give me some contacts for renovation companies, which she never did.
I then confronted her by text several months later, without hearing anything... asking her why they had disappeared and why she hadn't given me the promised information about the renovations. She wasn't going through any difficult times, because when I confronted her, she initially just said, "I'm back from vacation." When she had problems in her relationship or at work, she knew how to write to me to talk about them. She then called me twice, but I didn't respond. I wrote to her, "You disappeared without giving us the promised contacts; you're taking advantage." She then wrote me a message saying something like, "A true friend would have looked into why someone is drifting apart," and then concluded with, "This is where our relationship ends." WOW... Was my ex-colleague F(50) a fake friend?