In April 2023, I packed up my life in Singapore and moved to Malaysia for a classic case of nepotism: joining my dad’s company as an executive. At the time, I was dragging along the corpse of a boring, stagnant three-year relationship with my Singaporean boyfriend. We were constantly fighting about marriage timelines, and honestly, I was bored out of my mind.
Enter the Group General Manager.
He was older, oozed toxic confidence, and possessed that dangerous, fast-talking charisma of a guy who just moved back from Perth and thought he owned the place. As an HR staff member, I should have known better. But within weeks, he became my ultimate workplace distraction. We weren’t just talking about business; we were texting 24/7. The red flags were screaming, but I was blinded. I distinctly remember sitting at my desk thinking, “If only he were mine.”
Then came the first bomb: he was married. With a kid.
Did that stop us? Absolutely not. It made the thrill worse. We blew right past professional boundaries. He was texting me the second he woke up, complaining about his life, and sending me elaborate bouquets of flowers—which was objectively hilarious because he was severely allergic to them and would literally sneeze his way through his romantic gestures.
Then, the plot went entirely off the rails.
His wife found out about me. But instead of a screaming match, she sent me a text that read like a corporate transaction: “Honestly, you can have him. I never loved him anyway. I only married him because I needed a sperm donor to have a kid.”
Before I could even process that level of audacity, my dad found out. Furious that his own daughter was entangled with his married GM, he summarily fired him on the spot. The drama was so toxic that I had to resign in shame and flee back to Singapore.
The GM completely ghosted me. But instead of taking the hint and moving on, I went full-blown obsessive stalker. I spent thousands of dollars to fly all the way to Perth, wandering around Australia hoping I’d magically run into him. For seven months, nothing but radio silence. Then, out of nowhere, he’d drop a text, breadcrumb me for a week, and vanish again like a ghost.
Fast forward to November 2025. He pings my phone with a casual: “Hey. You single?”
The absolute kicker? By then, I was already married to someone else.
My husband is a saint. He is a genuinely good man who supports me, loves me blindly, and provides a perfect life for me. Yet, here I am, sitting next to my devoted husband, completely plagued with guilt because a massive part of my heart is still hopelessly obsessed with a married, allergic-to-flowers ex-GM who treated me like a part-time option.
I know people will judge me. They’ll say it wasn’t love—that it was just toxic timing, an unhealthy obsession, and the thrill of unfinished business. But the infuriating truth I have to live with every single day? Some corporate scandals never truly end. We just learn how to hide them from our husbands.