He wants to leave his wife and I’m horrified
Dr Miriam Stoppard offers wise words to a woman looking to end her three-year affair with a married colleague.
Dr Miriam Stoppard offers wise words to a woman looking to end her three-year affair with a married colleague.
For the past three years I have been having an affair with a man at work – not serious, mainly just drunken sex after work nights out, as we work in quite a boozy industry with lots of travel and hospitality. However he has now announced he is in love with me and wants to leave his wife and move in with me.
The idea horrifies me as I have always lived on my own and am happy that way. I have gone off the whole idea altogether and would like to end it, but he is my senior at work and I am worried it will affect my job. Please can you advise?
Oh, those affairs with colleagues at work, they’re deadly! So deadly that, years ago when I was running a company, I made it a sackable offence to have an affair with another employee. And for good reason. Your professionalism and judgement are affected by your feelings for another employee and your loyalty to the company and performance are compromised.
You’ve been mired in this affair for three years now, and it won’t be that easy to extricate yourself from it. It’s going to be painful but it would seem that the two of you broke the first rule of having an affair – you failed to tell each other what your expectations were. You didn’t establish the ground rules.
Have you not once in three years explained to this man what you’re expecting from the relationship? Under what conditions you would want the relationship to continue? How you see the relationship developing in the future without marriage on the agenda? And what are his expectations? How does he see your relationship in the context of his family?
I’m surprised that his confession he wants to leave his wife and move in with you comes as such a shock. Surely he’s hinted at such a thing for some time. He didn’t get the idea out of the blue. This is a serious suggestion with very serious consequences and he’s done some serious thinking.
In order to put things straight, I think you have to be true to yourself, put on a brave face and be entirely honest. You owe it to him and you owe it yourself to lay your cards on the table.
What’s the worst that can happen? Your affair will end and, judging by your letter, this wouldn’t be a great tragedy for you. It might be a tragedy for him, however, so be kind. Don’t tiptoe around the question. Be straightforward. The next time you see him, say immediately you have something important to tell him.
It won’t be a particularly easy conversation, and in your shoes I would prepare myself by writing out a few notes about what I want to say, and even going as far as memorising them so that once I started to confess I wouldn’t suddenly get cold feet and not go through it with it.
(Hero image credit: Alun Callender)
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