Essie
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This is all rhetorical, because he’s going to break up with you.
But WHY are you considering buying a house with someone you think is such a terrible person? You think he’s lying to you. You think he’s cheating on you. You think he’s screwing his ex behind your back. You think he’s so totally untrustworthy that you have to monitor every word of his texts with his ex.
Why are you still with him, if you truly think that about him? And if you’re wrong, and he really is the good man he sounds like from your letter, do you think he’s going to stay with you when you’ve made it clear you don’t respect him and think he’s a liar and a cheat?
This is off-the-charts insecurity, and it’s going to prevent you from having a successful relationship with anyone. I would break it off with this guy, and spend some time in therapy to sort out the insecurity before you try dating again.
When you said REALLY old, I thought you were gonna say the guy was 72. Sorry, I can’t help but chuckle at the thought of 29 being REALLY old.
A 10-year age difference is more than the average age difference in relationships, but you seem to think it’s scandalous or dangerous, and it’s not. At all.
Once you get into adulthood, compatibility doesn’t have so much to do with age. If they care about each other, work well together as a couple, respect each other, and make each other happy, who cares?
It’s fine. And it’s her business.
There is nothing you can do to “weaken the wall.” I’m sorry, I know you don’t want to hear that. If you know each other a bit, and your interactions with her have been reasonably pleasant (no fighting, anger, etc), you’ve done all you can do.
If she knows you, she probably already knows whether or not she’ll willing to go out with you. You just need to find out the answer.
You’re overcomplicating this with a lot of fantasy and fairy-tale notions of what romance is like.
Women aren’t mystical, mysterious creatures. We’re just people, like your guy friends. There’s no puzzle, there’s no mystery to solve. There aren’t any secret words or magic phrases that you say just right and then she falls in love with you. You just ask.
Dating isn’t very different from making friends. Do you have any female friends? Have you ever asked one of them to do something with you, like get lunch, or go to a store to get something? It’s no different. I think the best relationships start as friendships anyway, so just treat her like a friend.
She’s either going to want to get to know you, or she isn’t. If she isn’t, there’s nothing you can (or should) do to change that.
Well, if you haven’t asked her out yet, then I did tell you what you can do: ask her out.
If you have already asked her out and she said no, I can’t tell you what you can do, because there isn’t anything you can do. Continuing to pursue someone who doesn’t want you is wrong, and it doesn’t work. End of story.
I’m not sure from your letter whether you’ve been trying to get her to go out with you and she’s said no, or you’re trying to figure out how to ask.
If you haven’t asked yet, then just say “would you like to get coffee sometime?” Or ice cream, or lunch, or whatever seems appropriate.
If she’s already said that she’s not interested in getting to know you better, you need to stop. Right away. There is no way to convince someone to like you the way you like them, and continuing to try will just make her hate you, and even fear you.
A lot of young people think that dating means you see someone you like, and then you try to make them like you. That’s not how it works, and it’s rude to do that to anyone.
If she’s not interested, then I’m sorry, because I know it hurts a lot to have a crush on someone and know they don’t feel the same way. But you will get through this, and you will be OK. Stay busy, avoid seeing her as much as you can, and these feelings will pass.
It’s very easy to get caught up in these workplace crushes, I get it. I’ve felt it. Probably a lot of us have. And that’s certainly the impression you gave in your first post. By “carefully constructed,” people mean that the post was written up like a treatment for a Lifetime movie about “Forbidden Love in the Executive Suite!” Drama! Sexual Tension! More Drama!
So, OK, you want this guy. And you know you shouldn’t pursue him. That’s not a major problem. If you two were banging in his office after hours, *that* would be a major problem. Your decision has already been made, so the problem is over. As I said, you just treat him like any other coworker, and be careful not to respond to any flirty behavior, and it’ll all go away very quickly.
By the way, here’s something that should cool your ardor: if you think you’re getting shamed here, wait till you see what happens when your coworkers notice that you and the boss’s boss’s boss are getting flirty. The sad reality of corporate life is that he’ll be high-fived, and people will say really not-nice things about you behind your back. And that label will stick with you for as long as you work there.
If things are as you describe in your first post, people may already be noticing. We had our share of affairs and near-affairs at my company, and they always thought nobody knew. Everybody knew.
You say that you’ve tried talking to him about it but your perspectives are totally different. What is his perspective? He feels like he shouldn’t do any chores at all? Nothing, ever?
There’s already resentment on both sides, and you’re not communicating well as a couple. This is something you need to get sorted out, or you might as well move back home.
It sounds as if in his head, he sees your doing all the household tasks as reimbursement for his financial support. Have you ever had a conversation about that? What’s the long term plan here? Will you stay in his country permanently? Can you secure the necessary paperwork you need to be able to work? If not, how does he feel about permanently being the sole source of money?
That old cliche, “it takes two to tango,” has a lot of truth to it. This is only a major problem if you make it one, and you can very quickly de-escalate it by not participating in the flirtation.
These kinds of situations happen all the time in the workplace. You work closely with someone, spending a lot of time together, and things get a little flirty. There’s a little spark of attraction. That’s happened to me a bunch of times over a long career. It doesn’t mean anything.
You say you’re not getting involved with a married man. So don’t. Stop flirting. No prolonged eye contact. Don’t sit next to him in meetings. Restrict your conversations to work topics, and then only when necessary. You don’t have to make a scene or make a big deal about it, just act like you do with other coworkers. He’ll get the message that you’re not going to play, and it’ll be over.
You’ve blown this up in your mind into a big giant Thing, and it’s not.
Short of telling them outright that you don’t want them to bring their kids, I’m not sure what you can do.
One possibility might be to change up the birthday celebration. Get it out of your home. Go to a play. Go to a wine-tasting event. Host a meal at a nice restaurant. I suppose there’s a possibility that some really tone-deaf people would still bring Junior to the wine-tasting or the play, but I think most people would be more inclined to get a sitter when it’s a venue like that.
Your primary responsibilities are to yourself, your girlfriend, and the relationship. You owe her your full honesty. Dancing around what the relative said and trying to figure this out on your own isn’t good for you, for her, or for the relationship.
Just spill it. Get it over with. In the end, you’re going to have to tell her the whole story of what the relative said anyway, and delaying it and editing it is just going to make everything worse.
I know it’s hard. Hard conversations happen all the time in relationships. But it has to be done, and agonizing over it solves nothing.
Say it. Hear what your GF says. Then you can decide who you believe.
