Love Bombed at Work and We Still Work Together
Her ex love bombed her and another woman at work. Now they all still work together and she still feels hung up on him.
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Dear Chump Lady,
I was in a 1.5 year-relationship with a man who seemed perfect.
I met him at work in what seemed like a magical romantic way. He used to say how much he loved me, supported me constantly and treated me amazingly well. I was convinced he was the love of my life.
Seven weeks ago, he went to meet a “friend” for coffee, and was gone for 10 hours. He didn’t pick up his phone. When he came back home he seemed off, and stayed that way for 2 days. Then he bought me snacks, pastries and flowers and apologised for being off, saying I was the love of his life.
I looked at his phone and I found messages with a co-worker (who is married).
On there he said he had to really control himself that day when he met her to not kiss and sleep with her, how it was the best day of his life, he is in love with her, and willing to risk our relationship for her.
He said some out-of-this-world things to her that are utterly baffling! The Schmoopie eventually said she didn’t want to risk her marriage for this and I think she actually got creeped out. Even when she said this, he was still insisting he may indulge in her eyes and lust for her whilst at work.
The rational part of my brain has helped me move out and go no contact with him.
However, I am struggling to move on.
He kept saying how this girl understood him like nobody ever has, even better than me, but that it was only a two-day thing and he actually rejected her when she tried to kiss him. He said that he never intended to hurt me and that if I had not found out, we would be okay. I keep comparing myself to her and I feel so awful that I could not understand him as well as her.
I tried to reconcile with him and he seemed on board, although I gave up when he kept saying he wanted to stay in touch the Schmoopie. One day he would say he loved me, the next he would pull away and say he needed space, and that I am horrible for bringing up the affair and for making him feel terrible.
It was hurting me so much I ended it. He then said he didn’t want to be with me anyways because of how badly I have reacted to this and that I have shown him my true colours.
I know he is probably just being defensive, but it hurts to not be wanted by someone you love.
Apart from the cheating, the relationship seemed so amazing and so central in my life.
How can someone who seemed so in love with me from the start, and pursued me so much, do this? I am struggling to reconcile these two parts of him and I think it is keeping me stuck. How do I trust that he sucks and kill that hope that he will come back and be apologetic? How to cope with the good memories? I don’t have any bad memories from him prior to D-day.
Also, I work with him and the Schmoopie. I try and stay professional but it is so hard. Any advice would be much appreciated.
Love,
Devastated Chump.
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Dear Devastated Chump,
You met him at work, huh? And he love bombed another woman at work, huh? Sounds like a job for human resources.
I know you still feel attached to this fraudulent man but this stuck out to me:
The Schmoopie eventually said she didn’t want to risk her marriage for this and I think she actually got creeped out.
She got creeped out.
You don’t have any evidence that she’s an affair partner. She may have enjoyed his attention and flirted back, or she may have not known what to do with his torrent of texts. Often women cajole men in the workplace they wish would go away. From what you’re reporting, they didn’t have sex, they had coffee? And he’s telling her he lusts her.
I understand that is HUGELY upsetting to you and you’re getting pulled into the undertow of the pick me dance. But change focus — this guy is perving on women in the workplace. He’s a predator. You just fell for it.
I met him at work in what seemed like a magical romantic way. He used to say how much he loved me, supported me constantly and treated me amazingly well. I was convinced he was the love of my life.
Normal relationships can begin at the office. I’m not disputing that. But your superlatives scream love bombing to me. “Magical romantic way.” There’s nothing romantic about fluorescent lights and copier machines. How was it magical? “Constantly” and “amazingly” and “perfect.” That sounds over-the-top.
Love bombing feels awesome.
Who doesn’t want to feel intensely desired? Who doesn’t want to believe they’re special? But healthy love isn’t a rom com. It’s awkward and human and often flawed. It starts organically and builds gradually. It feels safe and reciprocal. Friendly. Not like a battering ram.
You’ve only been together 1.5 years and you “moved out.” Which tells me you moved IN. Which sounds kind of rushed.
My point is — this guy is a fraud. You ascribed depth and meaning to a man who feigned a commitment to you. When you wake up and see who he REALLY is, you won’t miss him or his sparkle schtick.
How can someone who seemed so in love with me from the start, and pursued me so much, do this?
He’s not that deep.
It’s a game to him, for validation. For power and control. And it’s pointless to try and untangle his ugly little skein of effupedness. Look at the EVIDENCE. He built you up to tear you down. He CHOSE a woman at work to destabilize you with. He KNOWS you all work together. He triangulates and undermines because that’s the high for him. Not actual connection to another human being, but being the puppet master.
He kept saying how this girl understood him like nobody ever has, even better than me, but that it was only a two-day thing and he actually rejected her when she tried to kiss him.
No one else understands him like she does? Ridiculous. That’s deliberately cruel. He’s goading you into the pick-me dance. People who love you don’t goad you into humiliating contests. FWs do that.
Also, it doesn’t even make sense. A “two-day thing” and this person knows you better than anyone?
He’s an idiot.
Either he projects this intensity on to people he doesn’t know — crazy — or he manufactures this bullshit to hurt you — crazy.
I tried to reconcile with him and he seemed on board, although I gave up when he kept saying he wanted to stay in touch the Schmoopie.
The woman who is creeped out by him and doesn’t want to pursue a relationship? That “Schmoopie”? He’s saying this to hurt you. INTENTIONALLY. To wield power. To see how much you care and if you’ll be his chump.
One day he would say he loved me, the next he would pull away and say he needed space, and that I am horrible for bringing up the affair and for making him feel terrible.
Oh yeah, I feel the sorry. Again, it’s all part of the same come-here-come-here-GO-AWAY game FWs play, with some blameshifting thrown in. You’re the horrible person. You make HIM feel terrible. When the truth of it is, he’s the horrible person. I missed the apology.
Beware. He will hoover.
I am struggling to reconcile these two parts of him and I think it is keeping me stuck. How do I trust that he sucks and kill that hope that he will come back and be apologetic?
There’s only one part of him and it’s all f*ckwit. Internalize that.
You do not want him to come back. Freaks like this usually do, because they have to test their powers. Get a hit of validation, feed on kibbles of centrality. Either that, or he stone cold discards you. But given your daily proximity and his probable awareness that you still care, he’ll circle back. He may attempt a lame apology, or ramp up the love bombing (stay strong!) or be deliberately cruel and love bomb some new office mark.
How to cope with the good memories? I don’t have any bad memories from him prior to D-day.
Realize only you made those good memories. You were real and he was a fraud. There’s no there there. I’m sorry. Being chumped is a big club, but this sh*t is completely survivable.
Stay no contact.
I’d start job hunting and also consider a long chat with Human Resources. It doesn’t sound like you’re in the U.S., but over here what he’s doing could be construed as creating a sexualized workplace environment and that makes your company liable to lawsuits.
Just remember, this cluster has nothing to do with how lovable and desirable you are. It has nothing to do with the other woman. You just crossed paths with a disordered person. Don’t compare yourself to the other woman, don’t make it personal. (Even though it feels very personal.) He’s the freak.
Avoid the office freak.
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Well, it’s a long, long list of lies. Where to begin?
He is a garden-variety jackhole, and it really can be quite a shock to discover that people like this exist in the world. It took me years to see it in my own case. I kept expecting FW to act like I would act — like a moral person. I had never encountered a completely amoral person before — someone who would intentionally upset me to feel better about himself — but now I recognize them and move away quickly.
DC,
In short:
LFTT
Imagine a big game hunter with a den full of dead animal trophies that he killed, skinned and mounted on marble bases or on the wall. One day he goes out and scopes a magnificent tiger that he thinks he has a connection with. It stares right into his eyes across the fauna, then disappears silently, only to reappear the next day in the same spot. He feels sure this tiger might be his spirit animal and he feels torn between shooting it and turning into a rug for his lair or seeing if he can tame it. He felt that if he spent more time around this tiger, he could become more tiger-like and magnificent himself.
He decides to tame it. Every day he brings the tiger live prey animals until the tiger begins to anticipate it and eventually allows him to get closer and closer until one day he’s close enough to pet it. It allows him and, from there, he feels powerful, as if he’s captured this extraordinary animal and made it his pet. Eventually the tiger even follows him to his lodge, sleeps by the hearth and becomes playful with him, even missing him when he goes out hunting again or when he’s in his den or taxidermy studio which he doesn’t allow the tiger into lest she see all the tigers before her that he slaughtered.
Because of his bond with the tiger, he considers giving away his previous tiger trophies and decides he’s not going to kill them anymore. Instead he shoots rhinos and elephants and, because he doesn’t want another hunter to kill his pet, he feeds the tiger from his kills so she won’t roam the rain forest anymore.
But at times when he’s petting her neck, he thinks of how beautiful his tiger’s fur would look nailed to his wall and how his hunting buddies would envy his prowess. One day her fur wouldn’t be as glossy and might not look as good as a trophy so he was missing the window to kill and skin her. Then he catches himself imagining his beloved pet dead and feels terrible for a moment.. until he realizes that, if the spiritual connection he thought he had with the tiger was real, he would never be thinking of killing her. He wasn’t that type of person, so the fault had to lie with her. She was just a plain, average tiger, not a spiritual being sent to him by God. Maybe she was even a particularly bad and disappointing tiger.
But then there was that other tiger he saw the day before that stared at him across the palm leaves with her bright gold eyes. Maybe this was his spirit animal and the other tiger had simply been put in his path for her fur. Or maybe he could cage his tiger at home and charge money for people to see her. So he repeated his earlier seduction strategy of bringing prey animals to the same spot every day to see if this new tiger could be tamed. But, after two days, the new tiger snarled at him as he tried to step closer.
A challenge! It drove him mad that this new tiger was out of reach! Then he realized the problem: the new tiger could smell his pet tiger on him and saw him as a threat. If only he could scrub off that scent so that the new tiger would let him close.
When he went to his lodge that night, the hunter would not pet the tiger and put her in a shed. But even if he avoided going near his tiger and even when he scrubbed himself head to toe, the new tiger would not let him near and eventually disappeared. This made him furious and he blamed his tiger at home, the old “ball and chain,” and began seeing her as inferior and regretting he’d ever brought her home. One day he saw a burr stuck to her fur and thought she looked mangy. She didn’t but he needed to rationalize his violent impulses towards her and pin the blame on her.
Sensing the tension and also sensing another tiger’s scent on him, the tiger became cautious and standoffish around him, . He began barking insults at her and giving her game that had gone bad. Eventually the tiger escaped and returned to the rain forest but with a heavy heart because the naked ape with shoes she had tamed had betrayed her and sought to replace her. But her heartbreak would have been cured in a second if she’d ever visited his lair and had seen all her brethren skinned, stuffed and mounted all over the grisly game lodge that he never let her into.
The end.
Anyway, the tale about the trophy hunting serial thrill killer who gets fleeting whims that he’s a devoted wildlife conservationist is supposed to be a parable for the deceptive danger of a sexual predator who views human beings as objects to be used and dispensed with but who occasionally gets whims that he has a normal human capacity for attachment and love. If partners of individuals like this never find the violent porn stashes or proverbial belts with the notches on them (the dating websites, cam girl sites, collection of phone numbers scribbled on bar napkins, etc.), they can suffer from the mistaken impression that these freaks are actually human (and not just rapey naked apes with shoes).
I love love love this analogy.
Well this certainly describes most of our chump journies…sigh. We thought we had normal partners and they turned out to be serial killers , oops I mean serial cheaters.
Love this, HOAC.
Friedman’s Fables didn’t have any sexual predator parables so I had to make one up. Call it Friedkin’s Fables (director of The Exorcist). 🤫
This, man isnt showing a single weakness or fault, he is a FunHouse of crazy.
I want to point out one particular one demonstration of crazy:
This is the “The problem is not what I did, the problem is how you reacted to it”. Most of us here had that crap served up after we reacted like any normal person would after a betrayal. False equivalencies all over the place. My Cheater betrayed me grossly and when confronted, he said that I “defied him at every turn”. Pushed to give an example of my defiance, he said that I used bleach in the laundry. We had 3 kids with muddy socks, so yes, I did this.
WIth regard to his filp/flopping “I love her/you” its over but I will lust over her at work but you should forgive me and I want you blah blah. I spent like 7 years completely stuck in trying to understand things he said that directly contradicted other things he said. After he died, I finally….eventually realized that the deep central issue was that he sucked. CL’s columns on “trust that he sucks”…read them over and over and believe them. Please save yourself years of trying to understand him…he simply sucks.
(If some past trauma made him this way, it is his job to get help, not your job to submit to abuse trying to fix him. I think I was years into wreckonsillyation when I heard for the umpteenth time that he was crushed when he was cut from his HS basketball team. Really? I survived alcoholic mentally ill parents without becoming a betrayer…I didnt need that crap).
Yeah, they contradict themselves because they are lying a great deal of the time. My FW would contradict himself not only within the same conversation, but on a couple of occasions, within the same sentence.
After mine said, “But you got so angry,” I said, “What am I, Ghandi?!”
People tend to have, y’know, emotions when they are abandoned and lied to.
😄 I love that response. My FW used to hate my sardonic responses to his stupid complaints too.
For example, every time he complained that I was “only focused on his faults” and why couldn’t I be positive and be grateful about (he named some trivial task or behavior which is bare minimum or less for a husband.) I would respond; “Would you like a parade?” and; “Oh, should I pin a blue ribbon on you or do you prefer a rose?”
You should have seen his face. Thanks for reminding me of how funny it was to watch. Good times.
I got, “I’m surprised you’re taking it so badly,” not after a little out of town kissy face but after several multiple-year affairs. It was a good wake-up call. If fw was really surprised based on my past behavior, I resolved that my future behavior would never give anyone the impression that I was cool with being treated like shit.
This is such an important point — it’s not your job to submit to abuse trying to fix him.
such good comments already! I zeroed in on the thing about how you’re now showing your true colors. I hate this manipulative little bs turd and hope you do too. He wants you to turn yourself inside out demonstrating how nice you are. Fortunately, you don’t need trust. Here is the proof that he sucks, totally and absolutely.
He’s the one who absolutely showed his true colors.
Yes, I think this was a perfect example of projection.
I’m so sorry, but I also think this particular “schmoopie” may have been a target of sexual harassment rather than a willing participant.
This guy seems to use the workplace as his “hunting ground”. He may have looked innocent to DC when he love bombed her because both of them were probably single at the time, but he seems to have a clear pattern.
Also, I would like to mention that a sexualized workplace can turn into a nightmare for many people, not just those who are directly involved. For example, during the past decades, I was forced to change careers twice because on each occasion I was bullied by a coworker who was (allegedly) the schmoopie of a married senior manager (and, at least in one case, aggressively flaunting it). This is why I support the recommendation to DC to discuss this with HR and, if possible, look for a new job.
Just this very morning I found a photo of #2 cheater standing in the back row of a family picture. He, the cheater had arranged a lunch of the best fried chicken 🍗 in the state, towed his Spider motorcycle up with him and gave my children, grandchildren and I rides through the woods sitting behind him. The weather was a golden Fall day and the picture shows me so happy besides my son, his wife and the grands. My now Ex had this coy smile on his face when my daughter in law snapped it.. DDay was only 7 months away and my now Ex had been having sex at work as well as other entertainments gor at least 2 years. He was. 7 months away from an HR review where he got away with 1 day unpaid leave as punishment by an all male team. A cheater can do ANYTHING KIND AND NICE, be nurturing and loving, while carving you up for Thanksgiving dinner. They just feel a thrill and a shiver at your ignorance and trust.
My suggestion? Seek out another job, go to HR on the way out. Blow the whistle and leave the whole situation . This is not love, it is mental abuse, compulsive sexual acting out which I, as the wife of this crazy perso– who had zero boundaries, almost got me killed for saying No. GO NOW and save your love for someone who actually cares.
DC, this is a guy who doesn’t love anyone, he just loves the thrill of the chase. He’s ardent when pursuing someone, but after he gets her he starts to become bored, so it’s on to the next conquest. This type of as common as ragweed and even more noxious. There’s no mystery here you need to solve. Everything he has done and said is explained by the above. The push pull dynamic is also typical of this variety of freak. In addition to their control and cruelty motives, they actually can’t stand emotional intimacy and need to create distance by saying horrible things/silent treatments/disappearing acts, etcetera. Cheating serves this purpose as well.
In short, they are empty vessels who will never be normal. So if you can internatize that he is a freak and will never be anything else, you can start to heal. You can stop asking yourself why he does these things.
As CL says, you need a new job. Being around this toxicity on the daily is not sustainable. Or perhaps you can asked to be moved to a different area/different team at your job?
As for this other woman, it sounds like she was flattered at first, but when she said she didn’t want to risk her marriage and cut him off he still wouldn’t stop bothering her at work. It’s unclear what he specifically meant by continuing to lust after her, whether it extends to observable, repetitive flirtatious/pervy behavior towards her, but if it does, then it’s textbook sexual harassment and that may give you another option. If you see him do anything that meets the definition, you could report it to HR and possibly get him fired or reprimanded and moved to another role away from that woman. If you do, just be sure about what you’ve seen. Maybe check with HR first about what they would consider as meeting the company standard for a SH complaint. The fly in the ointment might be that the woman wouldn’t affirm the complaint because she’s worried her husband would find out they had a brief emotional affair.
So you should probably ask her first if she wants to report him and tell her you will back her up based on your observations.
And be prepared — when you get that new job or transfer, he will ratchet up his love-bombing toward you. That’s not love. That’s him not wanting to lose control, wanting to keep his drama supply. If you give in, the discard will happen all over again.
I know you want to believe he is sincere, but he is not. We speak from experience. No one who really loves you would be doing any of this.