A troubling relationship situation.

As a married woman, please don’t mess w/ a married man. No matter how bad their relationship is….Sounds like you need to clean your own house first anyway…..

In other words, until you are out of this relationship and he is out of his…..leave well enough alone.

Especially w/ kids involved. Really.

Oh, no, Snoopy! I do not want to mess with a married man! I just do not know what to do with this. It is very hard to deal with because we work together and the connection is undeniable. I have no intention of being a homewrecker. I just do not know how to handle what is going on.

Drop your current relationship and wait for your work beau to finalize his divorce before you get involved.

Do? There is nothing to do. If he is making googly eyes at you, you most assuredly aren’t the only one…..

Part of the “attraction” (read: titillation) between the two of you is that you are off limits to each other.

Put it in perspective and move on….

@Snoopy: I’m not sure I totally agree with that. Do you think it’s possible that this person genuinely cares about her and is just as troubled as she is? I’ve definitely been there before.

@poof Anything is possible.

I am most affronted by the fact that kids are involved. If your scenario is true, then I would refer back to my first suggestion. Clean their own houses first and then see where things go….

This sound like a horrible way to start off a relationship. Let’s say this guy leaves his wife and goes for you, then you’re always going to be thinking in the back of your head “is he going to do that to me?” Maybe you also need to think about letting your bf go. You’re having an emotional affair and that’s not really fair to him. It sounds like you’re bored with what you have. Either way, I would NOT go for the married guy. He sounds like he needs to fix his own shit before he’s gonna be in any position to be “available” to you. He might be a nice guy, and you sound like a good person, but this just sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.

well, pix, I wish you luck, no matter what happens. I won’t give advice, because I handled it terribly (I didn’t mess, but still terribly) and lost a lot of respect from a lot of people and the job was miserable after that.

We all have had work crushes. Yeah, an older married man wants to sleep with you. Duh. Did you ever think that maybe he is a creep for wanting to cheat on his wife?

@pix: I would leave it alone. You are in a serious relationship and he is married with children. Even if he does happen to be curious about you and interested, you don’t want to be involved with a guy who is not willing to be truthful, honest, and monogamous. Who’s not to say that you would date him for awhile and he would get sick of you? Please if only for the 3 children leave this guy alone, you don’t want to be the homewrecker that leads to these children being in a separated home.

How old is he exactly?

he is in his 30’s, I am in my 20’s. I do not want to say as I do not wish for a google search to cause everything to blow up in my face.

I can assure you that he is not just being a dirty old man who is unfaithful. I believe that he is just as troubled with our quandry. My whole point in asking this question is that I cannot make the feelings go away, and I am finding it harder and harder to hide them. In addition, I love my current boyfriend very much. I feel very differently for the two men I refer to.

I would say that your best bet is to cut ties completely with this co-worker. It’s really the only way for either of you to be respectable to your significant others.

Aah, if he’s in his 30’s, has three kids and is having marital problems, it’s usually a by-product of realization that he’s hit adulthood and is becoming.his.father. You, at 20 something make him feel hip and cool. The reality is, he’s the father of three kids, probably has a mortgage, may still be paying on student loans. Life is about soccer practice, fixing the water heater, and mowing the lawn.

I would be willing to bet, for him, it’s not you. It’s the idea of you. You represent freedom. This is nothing new; rent the movie The Seven Year Itch.

Years ago, a co-worker (about to be married) and I (already married) had huge crushes on each other. We admitted that if we were not committed to our partners we’d definitely date each other. We used to eat dinner together in his office every night, with the door closed so we could talk privately. Nothing ever happened between us, not even romantic talk in private, because neither of us allowed it to, but that didn’t stop people from thinking we were having an affair.

As soon as it became apparent that people thought we were, it was a huge reality check for both of us. We pulled way back from each other, and never were in a closed room together again. Just the appearance of impropriety(sp?) can ruin many relationships…family, work, and even the initial friendship. Believe me when I say you should back off!

Workspace relationships between a male and a female. AH. Nasty gossip.

I was going to tell you that you should let the tongue-waggers in the office wag their tongues and you should find some way to tell them to go )(*) themselves, but two posts above made me think about this. The relationship can be genuine friendship, flirting, deep and growing love or just going over projects with a mentor. But if this man is contemplating a break-up in his marriage, even if you had nothing to do with it, you are going to get drawn into an uncomfortable vortex. It ain’t good.

But a story. In the early 80’s I became VERY friendly with a consultant who was working for us on a one-year contract. We chatted at my desk, we went to lunch a couple of times a week. Some of my male co-workers started making eyes if she came looking for me or if went to her side of the floor to see her.
She was married. I was living with a woman who became my wife and has stuck with me for some unfathomable reason. My soon-to-be wife worked for the same company in a building across the street and everyone in my department knew her and knew that we were living together.
My friendship was totally and only friendship with a smart woman who was a pleasure to be with in the midst of a dreary workday.

I got some of these shitheads to stop the nonsense when Nancy (the coworker) came to my desk on a Monday morning to return an empty casserole or serving dish that I had left at her home when we (me, my intended, Nancy and HER HUSBAND) had dinner on a Saturday night. But the tongues are always going to wag and it might just be better for your career if you took this down a couple of notches.

SRM

I think the angle here is another one, if you are capable of being so infatuated with another man after only 2 years with your partner, is he really the partner you want to spent the rest of your life with?

Isn’t that more down the line of the question?

pixitrek, yes, does sound like you have an honest-to-goodness crush. if it was me, i would try to avoid situations where you’ll be tempted to flirt with him. i have had a couple of mutual crushes on a co-worker while i was in a long-term relationship with someone else. i tried to ignore the feeling, and eventually i always saw the guy crushing on some other girl (the nerve!) which flushed my feelings away pretty quickly. i’m not saying that this guy is necessarily the same, but some the warning signs are there.

dont flirt with him, please! it’s just a crush! it’ll pass.

Adults can talk to each other, admit to feelings, and decide not to do anything about them, for whatever reasons you have.

I suspect you just want acknowledgement of the feelings. So, if what I say is true, you need to find a way to bring it up so that you can talk openly, but that it is clear you both don’t want to take it anywhere.