Made a drunken pass at my office whatevership and now we no longer talk
A few years ago, I met a girl at my company thru a work-related group and we really seemed to hit it off. We had great rapport, a shared sense of humor, a lot common interests, and talking to her just felt very easy and natural. She was in a long-term relationship already when we met, but she ended up getting dumped pretty bad by her ex a few months after we met. She was always pretty guarded about what happened outside of the highlights, but it seemed like it was very nasty and very unexpected. More on this later.
I never really dated much in my 20s (outside of a somewhat toxic relationship in college) due to a myriad of factors, including a long battle against workahol, family drama, mental health issues, and the *_global pandemic_* (that is to say, "life happened"). Anytime I felt remotely stable enough to start dating again, it feels like life found a way to intervene and put me in my place, so I just sort of resigned to a pattern of self-isolating and some low-grade substance abuse as my two forms of refuge. Leading up to all this, I had been in therapy for several years and was actually making progress coming out of my shell and getting back out in the world of the dating.
Anyways, at some point last year we started getting closer and sharing more about ourselves with each other. We had a few non-dates that felt like dates where we spent hours hanging out alone, but we never put labels on anything, even though it felt like it was mutual. I didn't really care though since it just felt really nice just to be around her. She's very beautiful and had an easy way of conversation that made me feel heard/seen in a way that I hadn't really ever experienced before. I loved the sound of her voice. My core group of friends (people I had been friends with since high school) was fully imploding around this time, so I was really grateful to have someone to talk with that wasn't coated in the nuclear fallout that had covered my broader social circles. Things with her felt like they were starting to get more intentional, but it was in a sort of weirdly ambivalent way on her terms where she would set things up and we'd meet, but anything I tried to set up was met with vague rain checks. I'm typically not great at setting up plans, so I figured that this was just more bad timing on my part. Everything else was good, so I wasn't worried and was really looking forward to where it might go.
And then it sort of just... stopped. Started getting more vague rain checks on plans, then stopped seeing her around office, then the texts got dry/vague, and then I stopped hearing back from her altogether. For whatever reason, it seemed like she didn't want to be bothered and I don't make a habit of bothering women (especially young, professional women at work) who don't want to be bothered, so I backed off. I say "backed off" like I was chill about it, but internally it was consuming all my fucking mental and emotional bandwidth. I replayed every moment, every text, everything that I did and didn't do to see what could have possibly gone wrong between us. This tore me a new one mentally for at least a month.
Then, after a few months of holding my tongue, I eventually said "fuck it" and reached out to her on something neutral to see how she was doing and actually she actually seemed excited to hear from me. We reconnected over text a bit over the following few weeks and then eventually I had another "fuck it" moment and I told her that I had feelings for her and that I regret not being more upfront about it sooner. She said that she appreciated the honesty but that she wasn't seeing anyone because she was still dealing with the baggage from her last relationship. I told her that I understood and that I hoped that we could at least stay friends. Obviously not the outcome I was hoping for, but it was very validating to hear that from her. Probably the second best outcome I could have hoped for. We were a bit distant after this, but every now and then it felt like we'd dip into more flirty/intimate territory. Never really lasted long though and it felt like we were entering the exact same push/pull cycle again that we had found ourselves in earlier that year.
Then the office holiday party...
Open bars always felt like a questionable choice for professional events.
Anyhoo, I proceeded to get absolutely plastered at this event, completely blacked out, and woke up wickedly hungover the next morning to a text from my coworker asking if I was feeling better. I called my coworker friend to ask him what all happened. He said that I had apparently made some sort of pass at her at the afters that did not appear to be well received. Allegedly nothing predatory and nothing too public, but definitely sloppy and very much pushing the boundaries of someone who had made a point to keep that door closed. I was absolutely mortified hearing this and I immediately sent her a text apologizing for my behavior and for pushing the clear boundaries that she had set. Never heard back from her. After a few weeks went by with no response, I sent her another neutral text just to test the waters. Again, no response. Naturally, I assumed that she didn't want contact with me and I backed off again.
It's hard to not beat myself up over what happened, but what's done is done at this point. I did my best to make amends and, as much as it hurts, she is fully within her right to keep the door closed to me and I respect that choice. It's very likely that I may never speak to her again, much less know how she feels about me or what happened, but I do want to believe that on some level her silence is not a personal indictment of me. I think that maybe it was impossible for either of us to show up for the other in a way that didn't hurt and, if it wasn't the incident at the holiday party, then it probably would have been something else down the line. I have my own part in this, no doubt, and I'm not trying to write my own actions off; in fact I think a large part of the issue stemmed from the lies I told myself that I could maintain "just friends" with her without harboring any feelings was painful for me and disingenuous to her. With that said, I think we both created a very complicated dynamic where a lot went unsaid and I can see that being hard for her to manage while also recovering from her own personal baggage. Maybe a classic case of bad timing.
At this point, we haven't been in contact in almost six months, and I wish I could say that moving on has been easy. I have tried dating other women, but I haven't been able to make anything work because there is a part of me that doesn't want to accept that it is over. I've seen her more around the office recently, but usually from a distance and the few chances that I've had to just manage a friendly nod, I've found myself completely frozen and unable to even look in her direction. It does feel like it gets little better each time, so maybe I can be more normal about it at some point, but fuck it sucks so bad. I just can't help but feel like a jackass every time it happens. The easy button here would be to quit the company and find employment elsewhere, but the market sucks so bad right now and I actually feel very secure in my current role, so that doesn't seem like a professionally or financially viable option at this point. It's hard to see the first person that I've come close to loving in almost a decade turn into a stranger at the office, but, as sad as it is, I do think/hope it will get easier over time. Despite all the confusion that has come out of whatever this was, I don't regret trying with her. Baggage aside, she is a wonderful woman and she deserves someone that treasures her, even if that can't be me in this life.
Curious if any of yall have been in similar situations and what you did to move on? Also, where do people meet these days? The apps are a mess and I would rather sand my own teeth off then go meet people at bars/clubs?
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Dinner is fried shrimp, air fryer french fries, and broccoli florets with a cocktail sauce. I also tried to air fry the shrimp at first, but the batter I used ended up just baking onto the shrimp and looking all grey and gooey and unsettling rather than getting crispy and brown, so I had to resort to doing things the old fashioned way (seed oils ftw)
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TLDR: Caught feelings for a coworker who couldn't hold them, tried to make "just friends" work, then got piss-drunk at the holiday party, then made a pass at her anyway, and now we no longer talk.
Moving on is hard.
The air fryer let my poor shrimp down.