I saw a recent post here about an event for women 30-50 that explicitly excluded those over 50.
So that bothered me. I feel like we don't need to be part of an event to just want to do something on our own.
Would anyone be interested in a get together of some kind for women who were excluded?
(And no hard and fast age rules, nobody is checking ID)
This is long. Bear with me.
We worked together, he was my boss for the first 10 months or so that I worked at this job. We were the OGs at a startup, both there at the very beginning, part of a skeleton crew that somehow got it off the ground.
It started with intense love bombing. Intense. I was the favored, star employee, and he mentored me, told me he loved me, showered attention on me, was so kind to me, showed concern when I got sick, just really was wonderful in every way.
The chemistry and sexual tension between us is wickedly strong. I don't know how everyone around is can't pick up on it.
He is quite a bit younger than I am, which at first horrified me, because I had no idea how old he was for the longest time. But it explains a lot about his behavior.
He had just moved here to take this job, and for the first several months was living in the same hotel we were working out of. I am married, but my marriage is open.
He asked me what my relationship situation was, and I did tell him I was married, but hesitated to tell him that my marriage was open. My husband knows about all of this and is supportive.
Several times, he had asked me to stay late after work when he was living in the hotel, but then ghosted me. When I pinged him to ask him where he was or if I could go home, he acted like he didn't know why I was still there. I am pretty sure he had planned to ask me to come up to his room but freaked out at the last minute.
This love bombing went on for months. So much back and forth between us, but it never moved forward. Because HR exists, and he was my boss.
Around March, it started to change. He was promoted to be the overall site manager, and he started being hostile toward me. Around this time, I had asked him about a couple of promotional opportunities, and he lied to me about why I couldn't be promoted.
Without revealing too much about the kind of industry we are in, there is a way for him to watch me pretty much all day, every day.
It started before I even met him. He found me while I was still in training. I didn't realize it at the time, but knowing what I know now about these systems, he was watching me even then.
Before he was promoted, his surveillance of me had slowed down somewhat due to the nature of his job. But when he was promoted, it picked back up again, and so did his hostility.
I couldn't stand how much he was targeting me with his hostility, even though I was very much in love with him. I felt I had to get out of there.
In April, I applied for and got a job with a different vendor, but working for the same overall company at the same location. He was no longer my direct boss, but since it was the same location, he was still the site manager and it some ways, I still had to answer to him. But not really.
Most important, I was more of his peer, and I came back in one in the capacities that I had earlier asked him about, that he said I couldn't promote into.
This obviously enraged him.
Because I was also in love with him, my way of dealing with that is that I couldn't talk to him, couldn't look at him, couldn't interact with him. I froze him out out of self preservation because I couldn't let him see how I felt about him.
But I also was reacting to the hostility he was treating me with. It was weird. I was in love with this man who treated me so poorly, but I couldn't interact with him either. We had to work together, but it was a game of open hostility. I just ignored him unless we had to speak, and I was as civil as I could be.
He, I think read my ignoring him as disrespect.
His hostility toward me and his surveillance of me absolutely spiked and became obsessive on his part.
He was watching me all day, every day. He was arranging his work schedule around me. He started working at home so he could watch me without interference.
I was only at the location certain times of the day, and because he viewed me as humiliating to him, he started only coming in a few hours a day to avoid interacting with me.
And when we did interact, he was incredibly rude. Or he would make up scenarios to criticize me - publicly.
But the surveillance continues.
He is now telling my boss made up lies about me, trying to get me fired.
He is from another country and also recruited his best friend to work directly under him, also from the same country. I used to be very close to both of them, but his friend will do anything LO tells him, so they both have been telling my boss absurd things about me.
But he still follows me around when I'm there, makes up reasons to be close to me, watches me on the cameras, and the sexual tension is still there.
I've overheard him telling people that he is the boss and he still gets no respect, knowing I'm right in the next room. He said it, twice, knowing I would hear it.
He's from a very male dominated, rather misogynistic culture, even though he's quite Americanized and for the most part doesn't seem that interested in continuing his cultural or nationalistic ties.
But some of that is ingrained in him. This workplace is also very male dominated, I'm one of the very few women, and there are zero women in leadership in what he has control over. Until I got promoted, I am the only one, which he had no control over and I'm sure that really ticked him off.
Anyway, he is actively trying to get rid of me, despite the desperate mutual attraction between us, probably because of his wounded narcissistic ego.
And if I get fired, then he can hire me back under his purview, where I would be back under this thumb.
But why am I still so attracted to this man who is actively horrible to me? Who is trying to destroy me, my job, my career? Why am I bonded to this man? Why can't I stop thinking about him?
When does this end? How do I move on?
I love my job, and I absolutely love all the people I work with, but this situation in untenable and something has to break at some point.