Expert: Dr. Dennis W. Neder - 9/29/2006

Question
Ok, I got it. It's very stupid to pursue this older woman/boss fantasy. I like my job, I love my wife, and there is nothing wrong with my marriage. But you forgot to tell me what I should do now or how I should act. As you know, my feeling for her has grown, and she knows that I really like her. I guess she is emotionally in control now. I WILL quit this stupid fake relationship, but her desk is in front of me, and I see her everyday. I get a little upset when I see her talking to other male co-worker, and it's impossible to move my desk away from her. I try to focus on my work, but again, she distracts me. She also makes me feel very uncomfortable, embarrassed and awkward by only talking to me when she needs to; no "hi, how are you?" chit-chat kind of stuff or no eye contact, cold smile, just nod or just shake her head when communicating with me. I truly have no idea what her intention is except what you said: keeping the distance. I am in misery, and I'm stuck! Please help me coping with this situation. I don't want to quit my job because of this.

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Followup To

Question -
I started working at this new company a year ago as an entry level staff. My wife also works at this company. Sitting in front of my desk is one of the executives in the company, and she is a 37 year old woman who is in the process of a divorce. She knows my wife, and she has heard a lot of nice things about me. I am known to do wonderful things for my wife. Maybe because of what she heard about me, I became her shoulder to cry on. In the beginning, I was just admiring her as a boss, a career woman and a single parent. However, we started to flirt with each other, then I could see her signals of being interested in me. I started to have crush on her. Beside just talking about relationship, her and I went out for lunch a lot, and it escalated to go out for a drink after work, then dinner, then nightclub until 3am. Although, we quietly call each other "at work boyfriend & girlfriend", we know where our boundaries are, I'm married. Last month, I found out that she was asking a friend of mine about me. She wanted to know if I had a crush on her. She got the answer; YES, then she told me that it was fine to have a crush on someone. So, I told her I really wanted her, but I couldn't; I am married! She said friends are better; cool, but now we don't go out for lunch anymore; she rejects. I know I am married, and I'm not suppossed to flirt, but it happened. She rarely talks to me now, but she is very chatty with other co-workers. I become jealous, and it drives me crazy. Is she mad at me? I hate this feeling. How do I get rid of this crush? I want my relationship with her back like before. Why is she doing this to me? Please help!

Answer -
Hello Mr. MM!

Dude, are YOU walking the line of fire here or what? What the hell are you thinking?

You must not care about your marriage OR your job. Doing all of this is going to cause you to lose one or both of them. You need to really sit down and consider that. How would you life be if you were in the middle of a divorce and you were unemployed? That's exactly where you're headed with all of this.

To be honest, you should look at the distance between you and your boss as the best thing that could ever happen! She's actually doing exactly what you should be doing - ending this flirtatious relationsihp right now. If you're not happy in your marriage I'll bet your wife isn't happy either. How she'd ever put up with you staying out until 3 am, I'll never know, but let me assure you of this: she's not going to put up with it for very long.

Let's face facts here: what you REALLY want is for things to go back to where you're trying to win boss-lady - and for her to be won. If she has half a brain, that's not going to happen, because it potentially means HER job too. She's trying to stay employed.

You were there when she needed you - the shoulder to cry on. But now that she's gathered up her strength and is thinking clearly she's trying to put distance between you two. You need a bit of that clarity too.

Stop this madness right now!

If you're not happy in your marriage, get out of it. If you don't like your job, go find another, but don't let others make these changes for you - you're going to wind up VERY unhappy if they do!

Best regards...

Dr. Dennis W. Neder
President
~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.
Remington Publications
818.334.8826
www.beingaman.com
Publishers of "Being a Man in a Woman's World I & II"

Answer
Hello again Mr. MM!

You're absolutely right! I did miss that - my apologies.

The first step is to prevent this from going any further. DO NOT tell your wife about any of it! I'm not kidding here. Don't go and try to unload your burden on her. She didn't have anything to do with this and if you tell her, all that will happen is that you'll damage her personally and your relationship with her. You won't relieve any guilt or fix anything.

You need to come to grips with what this really is - it's a crush and nothing more. I know it seems huge, but in fact, it's just an event in your life that will go away. How fast it goes will depend on how committed you are to making it happen.

Here's a little exercise (from NLP or "Neuro-Linguist Programming" - a communication model) that will help you a lot here:

Sit down comfortably and take a few deep breaths and just relax. Close your eyes after reading this if it helps you to concentrate and go somewhere that you won't be distracted for a few minutes.

Now, take a snapshot in your mind of this entire event. Try to find a single picture that "describes" it. It may very well be your boss looking at you across the desk, hearing her voice or some other event. The event itself isn't that important as long as you connect it with the problem.

Now, take a few seconds and imagine that event clearly in your mind - include all the color, the sounds and how you feel about it as clearly and concisely as you can.

Next, try turning up the color - make it brighter, closer and bigger. Turn up the volume on the sounds and turn up your feelings about it. Really amplify all of these things for yourself for just a few moments.

If you've done this properly, it will be much more intense for you. Obviously the point isn't to intensify this but to minimize it, so let’s do that next.

Get that same imagine in your mind again. This time, slowly turn down the color, volume and feelings. Continue turning them down until they are drab grays. Take them out of focus and make the sounds soft and jumble together. Wash out your feelings for them.

Next, make the image really small. Shrink it and move away from it. After you've done this, take that image and imagine it moving behind you and slowing fading away into the background. Just when you can barely see, hear and feel it, imagine it flying right up into the sky as a black dot, right toward the bright, huge sun. Finally imagine it hitting the surface and producing a small explosion. Poof! Gone.

Now, open your eyes and take a deep breath. Ask yourself, how do you feel about it now? Is your impression of the event less? It should be if you've done this with commitment.

The point of this exercise is two-fold: 1) to relieve the stress of it all, and 2) to show you that you have total control over how you feel about every aspect of it.

In fact, you have the choice of whether or not it becomes a burden or just some fading event to you. You get to decide if it's going to keep you from getting your work done and harm your marriage or whether you're going to grow from it. It's all in your IMPRESSION of what the event is.

Every time you begin to feel that pressure, or the affection or the jealousy, try using this exercise to make it a non-event. If you do this consistently for just a few days, you're going to notice that it becomes much less acute. Eventually, it will just fade away entirely and you'll be left with a nice memory of how you cared for your boss, but how you overcame that to create something even more important in your life. Likewise, your reactions to your boss, your work and every other thing will go back to normal.

Trust me my brother - if you use this little tool, you'll be over this very shortly.

Best regards...

Dr. Dennis W. Neder
President
~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.
Remington Publications
818.334.8826
www.beingaman.com
Publishers of "Being a Man in a Woman's World I & II"