Hello Meredith,

I’m a 30-year-old woman who is single, unmarried, and without kids. There is a manager at my job who started a few years ago. I always noticed him, though I’d never spoken to him. He is attractive and charismatic. I never thought I had a chance, so I would watch him from a distance.

However, for about a year I’ve felt like he’s been trying to find an opportunity to talk to me. I even caught him looking at me a few times. The opportunity came before Christmas vacation. I was alone in my office, so he approached me and we had a good conversation. The next day he told me he felt a connection with me and couldn’t stop thinking about me. He was very direct and said he wanted to get to know me better and asked if I wanted to have lunch sometime after we come back from vacation.

When vacation ended, he visited me every day. It’s like we were magnets. There was obvious attraction. I agreed to go out to lunch and I had a wonderful time. Conversation flowed. We planned to meet again. I learned he was seven years older than me, and somehow I had thoughts that he could be married. So I asked before having lunch with him a second time. He was honest and said yes, he is married, but it was complicated. “We’re together but not together, if it makes sense,” is what he said. I told him that I didn’t want to be in the middle of his marriage, so I basically rejected his offer of getting to know each other, even as friends, while he works through things. He said he understood and that he would let me go.

Even though I know it was the right thing to do, I regretted asking the question. Or maybe not hearing him out, because I don’t know the situation with him and his wife. Maybe he’s keeping his promise to let me go because he hasn’t called or visited me. I do miss his constant visits. I hate that I feel jealous that his wife is married to him. I wonder if he still thinks about me like I think about him. And I wonder if he thinks I see him as the bad guy. Help.

– the brokenhearted girl