Letters to the Editor
Amerigo
Published Letters: 955 Editor's Choice: 60
-
I'm so sorry..
[Read the article: My boss wants me to apologize to his wife]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]... but I still don't "get" the emotional affair thing.
If the LW and her boss were so close for so long, then they must have discussed whether they were sexually attracted to each other, what (if anything)they planned to do about it, and why not, so there is an awful lot of information that has been witheld from us (from Cary).
If, on the other hand, it was just a meeting of minds--they were both lovers of Jane Austin or golf, then where is the harm?
At my work I often get dragged into discussions about marital/sexual/romantic issues with emotionally needy married female coworkers who often tell me more than I really want to know about their marriages etc. I tend not to reciprocate with personal information, but rather just say things like "well, maybe he doesn't understand how you feel..." or "have you tried..."
Anyhow it seems to me that it is pretty common for people to discuss their marriages and relationships in the workplace, though less common to spend time with coworkers after work.
One reason I am cagy about personal revelations is that it is possible for coworkers to become emotionally involved with an idealized image that they form of you that does not correspond to reality.
Here is a horror story. This is 100% true and I could provide a link to the newpaper story, except that it contains my true indentity.
A few years ago I had a female employee whom I supervised. I barely knew her and knew nothing about her personal life except that she was about to be divorced. She was older than I and not someone whom I would have considered as a romatic partner if we were the last two humans left alive.
One day she left work and said to me "see you tomorrow". Tomorrow she never came, nor the next day. No phone call, no message, when I called her number, needing to schedule a replacement if she was not coming, there was no reply.
After two days of this I found out with the help of human resources, where she lived, which turned out to be near where I would pass on my way to the YMCA to swim after work, so I made a detour to her house.
A dog was barking and there were three leaf-covered cars in the yard. I dialed her number with my cell phone and heard the phone ring inside and the answering machine pick up. I went round the back of the house and a door that led into the laundry room was open and a TV was playing in the bedroom. There was a funny smell. I looked in through a chink in the bedroom blinds and saw what looked like a lot of blood and a dead body, so I called 911. A cop came and sent me out front and went in with his gun drawn. He found that her husband had blown her head off with a shotgun and then killed himself too.
End of story--not quite. It turned out that she had told her husband and daughters that she was having a relationship with ME, of all people. I had to explain to the detectives and the daughter that I barely knew her and that this was total fantasy.
Fortunately the families reconciled with each other and had a joint funeral party and scattered both sets of ashes from a boat in the Gulf of Mexico. So it was a nice day out for them.
End of story--not quite. Her locker at work was cleaned out and some junk dumped in my office. Months later I had forgotten about this and was cleaning up and found a plastic food container with paper toweling inside. It felt rather heavy so I opened it, unwrapped the towels, and found about $3000 worth of gold coins. At first I had forgotten where the container had come from, but then the penny dropped and I called her daughter to come and pick up the stuff. I don't know what she believed, but I just told her the truth.
Sometimes I still shudder to think how this MIGHT have turned out. (By the way, the husband was an officer of the law and well-known to the investigating officers as a violent, paranoid drunk--which they naturally kept mum so as to protect one of their own.)
So this a part of why I don't understand emotional affairs. Either you fuck 'em and have fun, or you keep right out of it.
-
Makes sense?
[Read the article: My boss wants me to apologize to his wife]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Our relationship was rooted in the fact that we were both extremely unhappy with our significant others.
...
The emotional aspect of our relationship came to a halt when he and his wife began talking divorce. I sat down with him and told him it was time we stopped seeing each other socially so that he could focus on his marriage.
This is what I don't understand. It is paradoxical.
The LW and the boss became "emotionally" close because their home lives were in the doldrums, but when his marriage came to a logical conclusion and moved towards the divorce court, the LW decided that his marriage was redeemable after all if the platonic affair was ended. Huh?
So maybe she enjoyed flirting with him, but didn't want a sexual relationship, whereas he desperately wanted to get into her pants, but didn't dare declare his true feelings.
It is very soap opera, and while I think Cary's advice is spot on, this might be discussed better in the forum of the Jerry Springer Show (if it still exists).