About a year ago I ended a nine-month-or-so relationship with a guy that I met at work (I know, I know. Bad idea to date someone from work!). Although he and I work for the same company, we are rarely at the same location. Occasionally we have to interact due to the nature of our jobs.

The breakup was very, very difficult for him. Although he was 31 years old at the time we started dating, he had never been in a romantic relationship. He had never even kissed a woman. I, on the other hand, am a divorcee about five years older than him and have had plenty of experience with romantic relationships falling through. It happens. It hurts, but people move on. That’s my take on it.

Anyway, in his desperation to understand why things didn’t work out, he emailed my mother and Facebook messaged my brother a long message, giving personal details of our relationship and including a link to borderline personality disorder. Apparently he felt like he was helping my family understand me better, since the only way he could make sense of the breakup was to peg me as having a personality disorder. He also told another coworker about sending the message to my family members and what it contained.

I was furious. I felt that he had grossly overstepped his bounds. Things eventually died down and we have kind of tried to be friends (or at least coworkers) a few times, although I do not generally like to remain friends with exes. But now we are at the point where he refuses to work with me at all. I found out today that he has established a “no contact” rule with me, and that if I have to work with him he will assign my questions to another person in his position. So basically he has had to air our dirty laundry to fellow colleagues to explain why he does not want to work with me and is instead pawning the work off to them.

This is extremely upsetting to me because I have worked hard in my position and am a good worker. I feel he is needlessly ruining my name and reputation because he can’t “get over” our breakup. At this point I don’t know if I should go to the HR department of our company or what . . .

Any suggestions?

Then hand it all over to HR. He is absolutely overstepping bounds and doing the classic rejected lover cliche of painting you with a PD.

He sounds like an immature, emotionally stunted person. Maybe he'll grow out of it, maybe he won't. In studying human development, understanding that not getting through the critical intimacy vs isolation stage sets people up for failure in interpersonal and intrapersonal relationships.

Emailing his parent(s) and airing dirty laundry to the co-workers.

A failed relationship(s) doesn't equal a damaged or emotionally stunted person, necessarily.

I have been a manager for many years and run my own company now. Let me tell you that running to HR with a relationship problem will sink your career really fast. Your respective managers don't want the drama. If he has besmirched your reputation by calling you unstable and borderline personality, you are only going to reinforce that by running to HR. You may think HR is in your court, but management will not want you on any of their teams. Ignore him, play like an adult, move on.

I think this is the better advice. Move on and act like the stable one. Keep the drama to a minimum or you will likely be cut loose.

What he's doing amounts to harassment. People like this can move from creeper status to frightening, really, REALLY fast. If he starts stalking her (which is more likely than you think,) a paper trail and documentation of his previous behaviour is not a bad idea.

Even if the OP doesn't go to HR to start with, she should document everything. This is creepy, pathological behaviour, not something to "just move on" from and minimize.

Yes, she should document everything and if it escalates, she should go to the police.

Keep in mind the job of HR. It's to protect the company, not the people in it, no matter what they tell you.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/11/2016 08:04PM by Devoted Exmo.

I agree with Itzpapalotl to notify HR and make it official. It is in your best interest.

His "no contact" rule is an effort to hurt you, but also a subconscious desire to prompt you to confront him and, thus, reestablish some kind of communication with you that's more emotional--good or bad--than the relationship you've been having "just being friends." At least that's my take. I'm no psychologist but I've seen plenty of love-crazed ex's to make this assessment.

Don't be angry. As Oprah once said, "If he/she has a problem with you, it's their problem and not yours." I'm no huge fan of Oprah, but this is insightful.

Thanks, everyone. It's true that I'm not the best at romantic relationships and I messed up big time by dating a coworker. Lesson learned. But I love my job and want to keep it.

sleep with more co-workers OPie ~

that should help ~

if that doesn't help ~

sleep with someone from HR ~

plz post pics of HR department ~

thx in advance

I worked at a company where screwing the head of HR was the fastest route to VP-hood.

I wouldn't involve HR. But what I would do is to take every advantage to come off as a reasonable, rational professional to your ex's colleagues. I would go out of my way to ingratiate myself with them. You can count on the fact that if your ex is acting irrationally with you, he is acting irrationally with them as well. Make him look like the crazy one.

I used to work for a manufacturing company. In order to get anything of note accomplished, you had to be on the good side of the woman who was in charge of production. I made it my mission to make her laugh every time she picked up the phone with me. She if you can charm your ex's colleagues as well.

Life is weird. It's a good thing I work alone now is all I'll say. Propinquity can be a bitch!

Confession time here, a year ago I had a fling with someone who worked for me. After a few months of working with her I started to pursue a relationship with her. Beyond having a tremendous work ethic, she was also beautiful, smart, successful, caring, and exotic. Certainly this was not my finest hour but I excused my behavior by telling myself and this woman that she was everything my wife wasn't and could never be for me. I think we both became a bit emotionally attached.

Well, karma is a real downer and I ended up having to fire her. I was sick about it for days and she certainly wasn't to happy. The short story is this, she became unreliable at work and others who worked for me could no longer depend on her to keep up with her workload. She would do anything for me but she became increasingly difficult for the team.

We maintain a platonic relationship to this day, she tells me that she regrets slacking and I tell her I regret putting the two of us in a situation like that.

I still haven't told my wife, and I don't think that I ever will. But, I did tell my boss when it came time to fire her and I should have lost my job, fortunately she came to my defense.

I guess the bottom line is quite clear. Date coworkers at your own risk.

Tell HR. He sounds so unstable that you don't know what he'll

do next and you need to protect yourself and your job.

This guy sounds like an immature dick wad because his teeny

tiny ego was hurt.He needs to get over it and move on but

it doesn't sound like he's mature enough to do that.

Good Luck.

How about having your mother and brother let him know how his behavior is ruining both your careers.

Or...you can remind him what constitutes slander and libel and start documenting so you have evidence if you end up going to HR.

Go to HR. ASAP.

You might need to consider what legal action you could take.

And I dated my wife when we met in our workplace. in 1989 and we are still together. ;o))