Ask Anahit: Working It Out

In this month's advice column, one reader is experiencing an unwelcome workplace romance

Feature by Anahit Behrooz | 09 Oct 2024
  • Ask Anahit

I’m head over heels with someone who has a partner and now we keep working together :(

I kind of love that there isn’t really a question here, it’s more just an expression of a predicament. And if it’s comforting to you at all, it’s such a common one that you’re about to join a canon of the greats. You are the Jane Eyre to this person’s Mr Rochester, the Cyrano to their Roxane, the teenage dirtbag to their girl whose boyfriend is a dick and drives an IROC. Unrequited love – or at least unconsummatable love – is a bitch, but it’s also a tale as old as time. Love and attraction don’t really care about trivialities such as practicality and propriety and whether you’re about to absolutely fuck up your own heart. They just happen. Lucky people fall in love under perfect conditions. The rest just… fall in love.

To answer the implicit question here (what should you do!), I can give you very sensible advice which you probably already know and which I have rarely if ever followed in my own life. If this person, for whatever reason, truly isn’t available, indulging in these feelings will lead to someone getting hurt, and in ascending order, it will be this person, their partner, and you. I know how addictive that rush of serotonin can be, but every upper has a comedown and it! will not! be fun! for you! Try and create some distance at work, maybe even talk to this person about how you feel, and do your best to set up some boundaries.

But I do want to take a second to acknowledge how fucking shitty this advice is, and how much it sucks that the very real way you feel has to be diminished and abandoned. I don’t even mean this in a 'free love', 'abolish relationships' way, but more in a 'your feelings are important and valuable and it’s so depressing that they can’t be legible or welcome outside of the structure of a relationship' way. Like, you haven’t done anything wrong. You are feeling the same feelings as everyone else in this scenario – you just didn't luck out this time. And yeah, you need to try and protect yourself and prioritise what is possible but more than anything, I hope you remember that.