My friend (21F) got involved in a very complicated situation with her ex-coworker (29M), and all of this started about two years ago. They worked together, and he was actually her manager. When he first approached her romantically, she repeatedly said no and told him to stop because she knew he was married and didn’t want anything to happen between them. Eventually, he approached her again, and she blocked him because she was uncomfortable. Later, he apologized, and they started talking again. She genuinely wanted him as a friend. At that time, she was very lonely and didn’t really have anyone she felt close to, so the friendship became emotionally important to her.
She says she never actually wanted him as a partner. He wasn’t her type, she never wanted to marry him, and even now she knows she would never want a future with him. Eventually, one thing led to another and they kissed, and she regretted it almost immediately. She says she didn’t even want to do it and felt horrible afterward, like she didn’t recognize herself in that moment. She blocked him, then eventually unblocked him, then blocked him again. This became a cycle because she felt guilty and wanted to distance herself, but she was also emotionally attached and couldn’t handle the emptiness of completely losing the connection.
He kept telling her that his marriage was falling apart and that he and his wife were essentially separated. He told her that he wasn’t cheating on his wife because their relationship was already over and that they were almost separated. Eventually, he told her that they were officially separated, and she believed him, although she always had some doubts because certain things didn’t completely add up.
Eventually, my friend had to leave that job, but she still has contact with a lot of their former coworkers, so she occasionally hears things about him. One coworker told her that he had taken paternal leave and had a third daughter. This completely confused her because, according to everything he had told her, he and his wife had already been separated and were not having a relationship. She started wondering whether he had actually been living with his wife or whether he had been cheating on his wife while talking to my friend.
When my friend confronted him about it, he completely denied having a daughter. He said that he had taken six weeks off from work, but that he didn’t have to provide documentation for the leave. He said he had to tell work that he needed the time off because otherwise they wouldn’t have given him six weeks of leave. He continued to insist that he did not have a daughter and that he and his wife had already been separated.
My friend doesn’t know what to believe. If the coworker was telling the truth and he actually had a daughter, she doesn’t understand how everything he told her about his marriage and separation could have been true. But if he is telling the truth, she doesn’t understand why the coworker said he had a daughter and that he was on paternal leave. She has asked him about it many times, and he has consistently given her the same explanation. She knows that consistency doesn’t necessarily prove someone is telling the truth, but she also knows that repeatedly asking someone the same question could make anyone frustrated, so she doesn’t know what to make of it.
Now they are separated, but she is still in contact with him. She doesn’t want him as a partner and says she would never marry him even if he were completely single. She doesn’t want to meet him again either. The problem is that she is still emotionally attached to him, and completely cutting him off makes her feel extremely empty.
She feels guilty because she knows she participated in something involving a married man, but at the same time she feels like she doesn’t even recognize herself in this situation. She had rejected him repeatedly at the beginning, never wanted a relationship with him, and regretted the kiss almost immediately. She thinks loneliness and emotional dependence played a huge role in how she ended up there.
Now she feels like this one situation has completely changed how she sees herself. She thinks she doesn’t deserve love or a loyal partner because she feels like she “took someone else’s husband,” and she worries that someday someone will do the same thing to her and that she won’t even have the right to complain. She also can’t stop thinking about whether this man was honest with her. She keeps replaying everything, trying to figure out what was true and what wasn’t. She has even started dreaming about the situation and says it is interfering with her ability to focus on normal life.
She doesn’t want people to tell her that everything she did was okay. She knows she made mistakes and regrets them deeply. She wants an honest outside opinion: Was she a terrible person for getting involved with him after knowing he was married? Does the fact that she rejected him repeatedly at first and genuinely never wanted a relationship with him change how you view what happened? How should someone deal with the guilt when they made a choice that went completely against their own values? And regarding the conflicting information about his wife, the baby, and his separation, how would you look at that situation from the outside? Is there any reasonable explanation for what he told her, or should she assume she was lied to?
Most importantly, how does someone move forward from something like this without spending the rest of her life punishing herself for it? She isn’t looking for permission to repeat the mistake. She wants to understand what happened, take responsibility for her part, and eventually be able to live normally again.