
There’s a reason workplaces have HR policies against relationships.
There are some people who are all for dating a co-worker; after all, we spend more time in the office than almost anywhere else.
Then there are some who sit firmly in the “don’t shit where you eat” camp. I was fairly ambivalent about the whole workplace relationship thing, until it happened to me… Then? Well let’s just say I had pretty strong opinions on it after that.
I first realised I had a teeny tiny crush on a guy from work when I fell over outside and split my knee open. When I’d limped up the stairs, thoroughly embarrassed, he’d been the only one to leap into action when he saw the steady stream of blood flowing down my leg.
As he mopped up my injury, I thought ‘Hmm, this guy…’ But almost instantly the thought was gone. At the time we both had long-term partners, so it wasn’t really anything; just a fleeting sort of spark that barely lasted a second before I jumped back into the real world.
I didn’t think about it for five years.
By then we’d both become pretty good friends, and after we counselled each other through the particularly painful breakdowns of our respective relationships, he admitted he’d fallen in love with me. And when I thought about it, I felt pretty dumb for not realising I’d fallen for him, too.
I was hesitant to start dating at first. What if it didn’t work out? How would we continue to work together? But he assured me he was sure I was “it” for him, and he’d just been too stupid to realise it all these years. So we started seeing each other. Secretly, though. We didn’t want anyone from work to know until we’d figured out exactly how serious we were.