I really need some solid advice from the bros and sis here because my brain is currently malfunctioning and I am dreading going into the office tomorrow.
A bit of background: I’m 39 this year, and divorced. It was a relatively clean split a while back—just didn’t work out, we moved on. Since then, I’ve been focusing heavily on my career. I’m working as an Manager at a global specialty MNC company here in SG. The job is demanding, but I like what I do, and generally, I just want a peaceful, drama-free life.
Enter my colleague. Let’s call her Michelle. Michelle is in her mid-40s, married, and works in a different department. Because of a massive global infrastructure upgrade we’ve been pushing, we’ve had to work extremely closely together over the last six months. Lots of late-night Teams meetings, troubleshooting, and shared stress. Naturally, we became pretty good work buddies. We’d complain about upper management, talk about life, and she would occasionally rant about her husband being emotionally unavailable. Honestly, I just listened with one ear in and one ear out. I treated it as typical pantry talk and just tried to be a supportive colleague.
Fast forward to last Friday. We finally managed to close a major project milestone, so a few of us from the core team went out to a pub in town for some drinks to unwind. Eventually, the others left one by one, leaving just the two of us at the table. We had a couple more pints, and out of absolutely nowhere, she drops the mother of all bombs on me.
She looked me dead in the eye and told me she has caught feelings for me. She claimed her marriage has been dead for years, that they are basically just housemates passing each other in the hallway, and she feels a “spark” with me that she hasn’t felt in a decade. She literally reached across the table, touched my hand, and asked if I would be open to “exploring this” with her.
Bro, I instantly sobered up. My soul left my body. I just awkwardly pulled my hand away, mumbled something completely incoherent about it getting late and needing to feed my cat (I don’t even own a cat), paid the bill, and practically sprinted to grab a ride home.
Now I am full-on panicking. It’s Sunday night and I don’t know what to do. On one hand, yes, I’m divorced and technically single, but I am NOT about to be a third party and ruin someone’s marriage. That is a level of bad karma I don’t want to mess with. Plus, the golden rule: don’t shit where you eat. If HR catches wind of this, or if things turn sour, my job is on the line.
But here is the absolute worst part: I still have to work closely with her for the next phase of our rollout starting this week.
How do I reject her professionally without making things suffocatingly awkward at work? Do I act like the alcohol was talking and pretend Friday night never happened? Help a brother out, I am legit stressing over this