Bad past experiences when not sleeping with coworkers

[Will_V]

Hi all,

I'm following this interesting recent thread about a coworker, and I would have a follow-up question.

I understand that sleeping with coworkers can result in a lot of bad outcomes. What about bad outcomes when you don't sleep with them?

I suppose that coworkers in auto-rejection can also do nasty things to you. Do you have some bad experiences to share here? And tips how to deal with it?

I have one bad experience. A few years ago a cute coworker of mine was showing interests in me. Over the course of seven months, we got a bit closer, there was a kind of attraction peak around month 5, then a slow burnout in months 6 and 7, and then she entered in auto-rejection. Over the next two months, she started acting rebellious towards me and trying to boycott my work. This peaked when, a week before the winter holidays, I managed to crack an important problem, but could not fully implement the solution, and just shared my ideas with her and other colleagues, and left a presentation. When I came back from holidays, I discovered from my boss that she was claiming to have solved the problem, and that she didn't even read my presentation because it was not clear. Thus she was clearly trying to steal the solution from me.

The girl was way younger than me, and she was actually very good at her job. If I tried to finger-point her directly, it would be "an experienced male employee finger-pointing a younger female employee with a lot of potential", which would certainly look bad for me. The best that I managed to do was to persist around the problem and assist her in solving it. She did make a few mistakes when solving it, so I could jump in, help solving it, and still get some credit.

ps: two months later my boss invited me to substitute him because he was leaving for another project, the girl was very impressed and started flirting with me again, but anyway that situation should have never occurred...

Without knowing the details, the main issue here seems to be entertaining a platonic relationship for 7 months with a girl you aren't planning to sleep with, who you will have to work with effectively in the future. That's poor frame control and leadership on your part. As a leader your job is to make it clear to people under you what the status quo, priorities, and boundaries of the relationship are. Instead you left doors open everywhere for a long time that she got into the habit of walking through, then closed them at some point, and not surprisingly she got upset.

In general when you want to pull back from a relationship that's started to get sexual, but still need to have a working or social relationship, the key is to make sure you do not retract (and perhaps even slightly increase) the non-sexual dimensions of it - being friendly, open, encouraging, and positive - and cut any threads that veer toward sexual - after hours conversations, flirting, touching, above-average time investment, and showing any kind of intent in your body language. You want to seem friendly, approachable, and reliable in the context of the type of relationship you want to have, but unavailable for anything outside of it. That requires discipline.

It also works best when she's not already in auto rejection.