I Deserve Shame over Coworker
I’ll never forgive myself for how I treated an opposite gendered coworker, who I’ll name R here. She was present in my work group when I started my job and still works with us. But I found her to be one of the more attractive people I’ve met recently and how I handled this feeling made me feel ugly.
I gave R compliments over her beauty or outfits several times while hanging out with her in a team-based setting outside work when my job was still online. Then I’m a bad person because I’ve said things to her like that at work too. I also showed her the contact on my phone with her information while we were in the office three years ago on her birthday, but I wanted to let her know I was thinking of her. It was the first birthday of hers she spent in the office when we returned to that setting.
After my boss fussed at the entire team over people’s professional behavior in a meeting shortly after returning to the office 3 years ago, I stopped complimenting R. Then avoided all compliments, even some safe ones that involved non-physical traits for years. It’s also been painful for me when I reached out to R for attending concerts only twice but she was unable to and I’ve worried if it’s all my fault. Although I never want to date coworkers anyway and don’t want to hang out with any of them outside work like I did when the office setting was new. R has never said anything to me or management about my idiocy and is always nice to me unlike some of my other teammates. I’m sure she feels sympathy for my stupidity with women.
As I’ve described in other posts and comments here, I’m unlovable anyway and I am stupid with women even if I don’t date them. This is one of many examples. How can I learn to live with myself?
@Sasquatch254
You are not unlovable or stupid.
You might feel awkward around women but that's fine, you are human and sometimes it's hard to know what to say.
You didn't do anything harmful to her so it's important you don't hold onto this and use it to beat yourself with but use it as a learning curve moving forwards, in professional situations when we are not sure what to say, respect, kindness and courtesy are usually key, not talking about sexual interests, politics, religion, dress, weight or preferences.
But it's something we are all learning to navigate 🩷
@Amanda84 Thank you so much for replying to me! This is wonderful to see since I've sometimes been given unflattering labels by myself and others because of nervousness and wanting to please others. I'm glad to be assured knowing that I probably didn't hurt her. And thankfully I keep those hard topics out of the way.
