January 2018 I started a new job, where a very attractive female member of the training staff took a liking to me and became flirtatious immediately. I did not reciprocate her advances, which in turn escalated to the point of being overtly sexual. Every time she would say something, I would just ignore her and act like it didn’t happen. In private I was always very superficially attracted to her, but kept it to myself because she was a co worker and I knew we weren’t a good match. She was very good at her job and we had a fantastic working relationship.
This pattern of her flirting and me ignoring it continued for 4-5 months until one night in late May she when she added me on FB and came on to me hard. She said the fact that I ignored her drove her crazy and made her desperate for my attention, and basically begged me to fuck her. I initially turned her down, the red flag there being pretty obvious, but she kept working on me for two weeks until I finally changed my mind and agreed to go out with her.
We dated casually for five weeks. We had some fun, but as I thought, didn’t mesh well in a romantic level. Our relationship revolves around work, and outside of that there was always a lot of friction between us. I don’t know why, but I still caught painfully strong feelings for her, which I kept to myself because I knew she was the less interested party. I made a ton of mistakes in dealing with her, including spending way too much damn time with her. There was nothing I wouldn’t blow off to be with her, and she must have picked up on it.
At five weeks, like a switch flipped, she shut me down overnight. She stopped texting first, became aloof at work, stop inviting me to hang out after. She never said we were done, but sent a stream of nasty signals; things like referring to us as “friends” and complaining to her girlfriends within earshot of me that she would be single for life. She would only socialize with me in a group setting, never alone. Like a chump, I stuck around and orbited her as a “friend,”pretending to accept a platonic relationship when I should have gotten the living fuck out of there. I wasn’t ready to accept that it was over even though I knew it was.
A few weeks after shutting me down, she shared in our group text that she had plans to hook up with someone else that night. A few weeks prior, she had made plans to spend that weekend with me; so she blew me off, replaced me in her sex plans and texted it where she knew I would read it. I was absolutely shattered.
Months later, I found out the guy she hooked up with was Johnny, another co-worker and close friend of hers whom I had believed was thoroughly friend-zoned and never considered a threat. I knew she was fond of him on a friendly level, but never thought in a million years that she’d be attracted to him. He whined to her about his problems and shit.
I finally decided to stop being a pussy little friend zoned bitch and cut contact. I also quit my job. I only saw her once more after that, when I stupidly agreed to accompany her to the hospital to visit a mutual friend, and it was a very uncomfortable encounter. We fell out via text the following day and that was the end of the relationship, five months ago.
Her rejection cut deep, and I was pretty screwed up for the first few months after, sat around pining and plotting ways to get back with her. At this point, I’m not carrying a torch for her anymore and have accepted that there’s no coming back from this. Our relationship is dead and buried and I’ll never see or hear from her again… unless I go back where she is.
I got a new job, but it’s much further away, and offers fewer hours, so I’m losing a lot of money by avoiding that bitch. I’m a few months away from being ready, but it would be in my best interest to go back to my old job.
If I do go back, what should be my strategy for dealing with her be? This woman ripped my heart out of my chest and stomped on it. I wish we could go back to our old working relationship before things crossed over into IRL (minus the flirting), but I feel like we can’t. I am NOT comfortable working directly with her again and do NOT want a platonic relationship with her period.
Options:
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Put up a wall and refuse to deal with her period. Tell her straight up not to talk to, disclose everything to management, and tell them to keep us separated.
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Deal with her in a strictly professional manner, but tell her we can only talk if it’s work related.
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Let her talk to me, but be an aloof acquaintance and never give her attention. Just treat her like every other co worker I don’t give a damn about.