How you avoid a flirty energy at work if you don't really want to.
I need advice, because I think I’m entering a field again that I know perfectly well doesn’t suit me.
I’m a woman in my 30s, and I have a coworker six years younger than me with whom an unexpected closeness arose from the start. He’s someone I laugh a lot with, and our conversations have crossed the strictly professional line many times. From the beginning, he’s been the one pushing the relationship to become closer, to where it is today.
The problem is that I like it. And he knows it, or at least I think he perfectly perceives the chemistry between us.
He hasn’t done anything I could consider a promise, nor has he told me he wants a relationship with me. In fact, his behavior is quite ambiguous: he seeks a lot of closeness, compliments me, brings up inside jokes about my love life, is interested in my appearance, and sometimes our conversations end up surprisingly personal, even a little flirty.
The problem is we’re both playing the “just friends” thing. Even though he’s been the one investing time, asking questions, joking around, he’s also the one who said, “I would never date someone your age,” and who even talks to me about other women.
Another thing is that he genuinely seems to care about me: that I work comfortably, that I actually rest. He’s kind of my supervisor, and we work remotely, by the way.
Right now I feel like an absurd amount of my feminine, romantic, and sexual attention is orbiting around a man who isn’t trying to build anything with me.
And honestly, I want to save that energy for someone who actually wants to get closer.
So I need advice: how do you pull back when you don’t want to cut the bond, you don’t want to create drama, and you don’t want to pretend you don’t like it anymore?