Q:
I used to have a crew of about 5 queer people. We are all coworkers and we used to hang out after work sometimes. One day one of the friends who is monogamous and married DMed me to vent about their spouse who is also in the friend group. I listened but then after a while the conversation shifted to how they wanted an open relationship. They only wanted to be sexually open because they weren’t satisfied in their marriage. I told them that’s a two person decision and they should talk to their spouse. They continued venting to me and I was feeling a little weird about it so I messaged another person in our friend group and they said this person was venting to them about the same things. After a few more weeks they propositioned me for sex, saying they asked their spouse and they were cool with it. I was uncomfortable because this caught me off guard and I asked for space. Then I later found out that everyone in the friend group knew they wanted to sleep with me including the other friend I asked about it. It seems the whole reason they slid into my DMs in the first place was to see if I was interested. Now we don’t hang out and work is weird but the rest of the group still hangs. Did I overreact?
A:
No, you aren’t overreacting. I hope that’s not surprising to you.
You were surrounded by ‘friends’ who weren’t honest with you about shady behavior happening behind the scenes. A coworker and former friend pushed you into an inappropriate situation while others remained as bystanders. Just because the situation took time to appear and wasn’t a single instance doesn’t make it more appropriate. Supportive friends would have been more upfront to you about a mutual’s intentions.
TBH, I think removing yourself from the friend group is a sensible act of self-preservation. I’m sure detaching from so many friendships at once isn’t easy, but they didn’t have your best interests at heart in this instance. I hope to demonstrate this by discussing the possible intentions of your coworkers.
Coworker A
Coworker A likely intended to sleep with you from the very beginning.
- They established a private, one-on-one channel of communication with you.
- They ‘vented’ about their partner to elicit sympathy and degrade their partner’s reputation in your eyes so you’d be more inclined to side with your coworker.
- They propositioned you for sex while claiming their partner was okay with it.
Consciously or not, they aimed a process at you that was designed to make you feel more comfortable with having an affair. I still say ‘affair’ because it’s not clear that their partner ever did consent to an open relationship. The evidence you do have for that doesn’t exactly come from a top-quality source.
Your coworker implemented something called triangulation, where someone in a relationship involves a third party to manage the relationship. Triangulation can be positive — couple’s therapy is an example — but it can also be abusive behavior.
Instead of dealing with their (obvious) relationship issues directly, Coworker A drew you in to satisfy their needs. Both emotional (venting) and sexual. I don’t know if they were intentionally trying to manipulate you, but their actions and goals line up. A lot of people act out abusive or harmful behaviors because that’s the world they know, or they’re not mature enough to manage conflict productively.
Clearly, you clocked Coworker A’s nonsense on some level because you were reluctant to participate and rejected their advances. Which brings us to the dynamics you faced.
Coworker B
Coworker B’s timeline looks like this:
- The friend group knew that A wanted to sleep with you.
- You approached B about A’s weird behaviour and B assured you that A is venting to them about their partner as well.
- Coworker A propositioned you and you rejected them.
- Now you’re no longer part of the group but they appear to have continued as normal.
What’s clear is that Coworker B did a lot of responsibility-dodging to avoid sharing uncomfortable behavior. I don’t know what your friend group dynamics are normally like, but my friend group always looks out for each other’s comfort zones. Since the whole friend group knew about Coworker A’s intentions to you, I feel like they prioritized their relationship with them over your discomfort. Learning that your friends cherish you less than someone who wronged you is terrible. I think that’s what happened to you.
If your coworker who propositioned you was venting to others in the group, I think they’re also using the friend group as part of their triangulation. By venting to everyone separately, they’re roping the whole friend group into their relationship drama and turning them into unwitting allies in this relationship conflict. I could see the friend group becoming invested in Coworker A’s happiness and ‘doing their part’ to manage their marriage — a process that fosters loyalty to your coworker’s plight.
This kind of triangulation is common in very tight-knit friend groups. Queer groups that feel estranged from family or mainstream society rely a lot on their friends for emotional support. When people feel like they have fewer options, they can feel pressure to excuse bad behavior in the people they do have.
And people like Coworker A who ‘vent’ like this rarely do it in isolation. They probably ‘vent’ that way about everyone in their lives, to others who will listen. If the whole group knew about your coworker’s intentions toward you, they probably gossiped about you to the friend group. We don’t know what was said behind the scenes. We only know that it led to you being iced out of a friend group when you didn’t do anything wrong.
The commenters can tell me if I’m reading too deeply into this. But I think your former friends weren’t the kind of people who respected healthy boundaries and valued your dignity. Things are awkward at work now, but I imagine they’d be worse with a coworker’s unrequited advances on you — plus a friend group who tolerates it.
If things stay bad and you have an HR facility/person, this could be a topic to raise. If you feel comfortable about raising the matter ‘officially’, that is. I understand if you don’t want to. If any of the people in that friend group is your direct superior, I’d start screenshotting messages and keeping receipts. In fact, I’d do that anyway just in case this gets brought up again.
Still, you didn’t overreact. It sounds to me like you took the calm, high road option under the circumstances. I hope your doubt fades with time, and you’re to feel proud of yourself for respecting your boundaries when others didn’t.
You can chime in with your advice in the comments and submit your own questions any time.
