I’ve got a crush on my young new boss
DEAR BEL, I AM a single gay man with an active and varied social life, but although I’m friendly with many people, I struggle to have a meaningful connection with a special one.
At work we are mostly in our 40s to 60s (I’m mid-40s) and a rather cynical, worldweary bunch. A few months back, a new team leader arrived: 28, very fresh and positive in his attitude.
We got on from the start and soon he moved me to sit next to him, encouraged me to get involved in LGBT groups at work and opened up more to me than to anyone else.
He always has a smile when I speak to him. Recently, we had to write down three things that made our day and one of his responses was watching me playing table tennis.
He confided in me and I believed we had a connection. He’s made it clear he doesn’t socialise with staff and has a girlfriend, yet colleagues remarked he obviously likes me.
He’s expected to move on soon, so I confided my fondness for him — saying it was like I’d found a new best friend or surrogate son.
I even hinted that I should cool it, as he is my line manager. He didn’t seem particularly fazed and suggested we’d talk again.
A few days later, I asked if we would keep in touch when he left, but (polite and calm) he said it was all from me, that he’s pleasant in the office because it makes work more bearable, but that he has no thoughts of me beyond work.
He said although he’s happy to keep in contact, I shouldn’t expect a reply because he is not very good at that. Do you think I was imagining his fondness? Should I accept his response as final? LUKE
HoW refreshing it was when this man ( call him Joe) arrived at your workplace and changed the atmosphere. You used the terms ‘cynical’ and ‘world-weary’; both at work and in your private life you were feeling jaded and desperately in need of a ‘lift’. And then Joe arrived — and fresh air blew through your life.
There will be readers, sorely beset by their own problems, who are wondering why I have chosen a letter about what is no more than a crush.
‘Unrequited fondness’ is the title you gave to your email and this is hardly the stuff of tragedy. Yet how many of us are afflicted by small let-downs which add up to a big sense of being flattened by life?
It’s an accumulation of pinpricks which can gradually deflate a whole soul: relentless, punishing and all the worse for seeming trivial. Your problem is about sudden excitement and hope followed by disappointment — and should resonate with others, gay, straight or just human.
of course, this problem is also about perception and truth — and my answer must be honest. Yes, you were imagining Joe’s fondness for you.
A pleasant, enthusiastic young man, he treated you warmly as a colleague he likes and almost certainly values. That strange little detail of him liking watching you play table tennis meant … oh dear, exactly what it says.
But to you it implied much more — because you crave a ‘special’ relationship with somebody who can change your life and end the loneliness that surely lies behind this problem.
Surely, it’s not so much about charming Joe, who will soon move on out of your life, but about how you are going to deal with your world-weariness and create some new starts.
I expect you have kicked yourself with embarrassment for mentioning your feelings to Joe. Secretly, you hoped he might be gay (despite the girlfriend); now you must face up to that fantasy.
I suspect it might have been good for Joe to realise that charm often has unexpected consequences. He might even have asked himself whether he did something to encourage your crush — and was that responsible?
He might have learned a useful lesson from meeting you, and if I were you I’d embrace that thought. Did you matter to him? Yes, I think so. But more than the others in work? Probably not.
You need to learn from this experience. Joe will move on to a new placement and out of your life, and your quest now is how to wake up the rest of your days as Joe enlivened them during that brief time. Read today’s top quotation by Sylvia Plath — and believe.