Karen
writes, "I am a
single mother of 2 children, the eldest nearly 12 is
still working through the shock of her
parents
divorcing, and the younger is nearly 6 and very
wanting of his father. Our arrangement is such that the
children go to their father's for the
weekends and I work long hours Fri, Sat and Sun to
be home for them during the week.
I am captivated by this man: A
divorced colleague with a 10 year old child he goes
to pick up every other weekend and has been struggling
to
balance work and home life to see more of her. He
travels about 3-4 hours round trip to get her. I have a
feeling he wishes he could have her around more than he
has her, and he's always apologetic when he has to leave
having coffee with me short to go to her. I have
always understood that and have told him she comes
first, don't apologize.
He is someone prominent where we work, so I am reluctant
to openly shower him with how I feel about him, and he
appears to have had the same
reluctance as I. I didn't believe he was all that
interested before, that I have been tricking myself
because I have feelings for him, but I am beginning to
think otherwise as I just returned from a 2 week
vacation
that I purposefully planned opposite of his so we would
be apart for almost the entire month. I was trying to
forget him.
My children need me and
I need my job. I have returned to a man that openly
makes eye
contact, stares at me, winks at me, follows me from
one place to another and ignores other colleagues in an
acute situation that warrants his attention to ask me
questions about my whereabouts! He looks very drawn
since I've been away. He was coming to me before
and sharing minor details of the
stressors in his life and would spend as much as 2
hours
joking and relating
things we have in common with me, leaving me and
himself (I think) with uplifted spirits.
So here is my dilemma: I work directly under him when
management allows it to happen (it seems they have
noticed our sparks and purposely change assignments when
I arrived to separate us). He is
Hindu so there are some
cultural variants that
confuse me on his reactions to me often. I can't
really tell if he's just personally fond of me or if he
is
romantically interested in me. He is now making it
obvious he favors me at work and I am terribly afraid of
rumors and rifts because of this, yet I would love an
opportunity to get to know him more personally.
I just don't know how to react though
because I have (in the past) invited him on group
outings with staff and he has declined and another time
for
coffee, when he had just given me a gift card for
coffee, and he declined that also. He makes small
talk about
movies playing have I seen them and no he hasn't
when I ask him the same. He jumps in on other
conversations about
food. Have I
eaten
at a certain
restaurant,
and no he hasn't either. Now that I am back, he has
begun
touching me on the forearms a lot, the first day
back he gripped my arm as he stood to leave and caressed
it as he let go, all the while looking me directly in
the eyes warmly. I am deathly afraid to invite him out
again for fear of scaring him off once more, but this
behavior cannot go on while we are working and he won't
ask me out! Now he has changed his tone of voice to very
tender and almost distracted when he interacts with me
on the phone or job, and this is making us both feel
very awkward (many silences now). I can't concentrate,
yet, I cannot make mistakes where I work as it could
cost someone their life!
I have a lot of difficulty pinning him down alone to
talk to him as he is almost always on the phone when
he's walking in/out of my work area, and my supervisor
has been keeping close tabs on my whereabouts, literally
following me around if I depart from my work area when
he is there. In the spring I applied for a second job
and asked him to sign a form for me, which he did easily
and wished me well. I gave him the following week a
thank you
card offering to do him something nice in return. I
passed it to him in a business envelope by discreetly
mixing it in with his papers when he "forgot" them at my
station, but he opened it and read it before I had
returned from the
bathroom, and he was ecstatic, half-hugging me and
telling me he would call me (I provided my personal
number).
Well, he called me, but it was on the
work line and he made a point of bringing up work
issues, so I missed that boat and the following week he
seemed very angry with me. So, after more thought the
next week I gave him a plain
envelope with a gift certificate in it for a
massage; when I handed it to him I told him I didn't
want to offend him at all and that I had meant what I
said in the card, so I was providing him with this
substitute since the phone thing didn't work out. He
thanked me profusely, but last week when he was
caressing my arm it was after telling me he should give
the
spa gift certificate back to me as he probably will not use it (said he's
never done a
massage before and doesn't think he'll try one). I
gave it to him three months ago (it came up because I
mentioned he should have a
massage for his current headache problem). Do you
think another card would be helpful at this point asking
him to meet me out?
Obviously, I'm not going to be able to
forget about him as he just won't let me. Please advise
me on what action to take. I am very much at a loss
here."
Attraction to a recent immigrant
from India
In my opinion, you are definitely
dealing with a situation in which
cultural differences are making it difficult. I am
assuming that when you say he is a
Hindu, he is originally from
India and a
recent immigrant. Do you know how
long he has been in the country and who he was married
to? An
American woman or an
Indian?
|
|
I see a lot of
characteristics in this man of a recent
immigrant who has none or limited experience
of
dating an American woman. That is why while
he is demonstrating his interest in you, he does
not have the courage to formally
ask you out on a date and explore something
romantic. He could be
incredibly shy too. |
There is another very important issue
that I am sure both of you are aware, and he maybe aware
even more because he is a man in a supervisory capacity.
If something goes wrong, he will not only lose his job
due to
sexual harassment, he might end up in court further
jeopardizing his long-term career. What about you? Are
you willing to
risk your
career for this man? |
