My wife and I are in our mid-40s both architects and we have run our own business for a long time now. Three years ago, our neighbour’s son who is in his 20s was studying architecture in uni back then was looking for an internship got into contact with us through his father. We knew each other and had a normal neighbourhood relationship with the family but we were never that close. We talked to this young man and accepted his application.
Since day one, he has never failed us and proven himself very well. He is very well-educated, respectful, presentable and has a very good discipline, great energy and work ethic. At the end of his internship, we signed a deal and he officially started working in our company. Since then, our relationship has developed and we got more social with him. We often invited him over for dinner. He became friends with our son, we went on vacations together. But the business relationship has always been stable and well.
We trusted him so much. We loved having him around all the time.
Two days ago, he sent a very long text message to my wife, saying “he has been in love with her for the last two years and that he would have never said it if he couldn’t resist it more. My wife shared this with me yesterday and I called him. He didn’t reject anything and he told me he would never disrespect our marriage but he is so passionate about his feelings and apologized. Then he said they would always want to see us no matter what and hung up.
We had a conversation with my wife about it and she is very confused about what we should do,too. Actually, we don’t want to hurt someone who has been so nice to us and never crossed the line before. But, i believe firing him and ending our relationship is inevitable. I wanted to ask here before we take action. Thank you very much for your support,in advance.
Here are what netizens think:
- This is easy. You and your wife tell him that you are happy to write him a letter of recommendation as a good worker but he needs to resign immediately so he doesn’t continue to make your wife uncomfortable. Then you and your wife tell him that you also can not continue to socialize. And for everyone’s benefit he needs to be on his own doing things with people his own age. Your wife should save the text in case you two ever need it for legal reasons.
- Dumb Hollywood stories have people believing that telling the ‘truth’ at any cost is the right thing. When in truth, the reality is that in this situation he should have never told her, and also left for another company for his own mental health.
- He’s young but he’s beyond old enough to know that this was unacceptable behavior for a number of reasons ranging from you don’t shit where you eat to you don’t confess your undying love to a married woman.