Very confused and not sure of best way to deal with this situation.

I moved to new job a couple of years ago. I am the boss in my department. A man from another department does some work in my department on occasion. When I first met him I felt an attraction to him, but wasn’t looking for romance. I did mention my attraction for this man to one of the girls who works for me and she mentioned that someone thought that he was attracted to her in the past. She said she was not interested in him in any way. As she is a bi-sexual woman in a commited lesbian relationship and I wasn’t pursuing the man, I didn’t worry about it.

The man and I have been friendly flirts all along. About 6 months ago the man began flirting with me more seriously. I’m very shy and as I am the boss (not his), I am really careful. We had just about got to the point where I expected him to ask me out when out of left field this woman began throwing herself at him. I have never known her to behave this way.

I’m really not good at this as I have been single parenting, career focused for the last several years. He has always been polite and respectful, but things have gotten really weird. I have no idea anymore if he is encouraging her for the fun of it, trying to make me jealous, just trying to fend off her advances politely or hoping for a threesome. He recently made a joke about his “being in the middle”.

To completely complicate it all, this woman is my assistant, a very good employee and a good person. I’m very fond of her as a friend and don’t want her to be hurt.

After the “being in the middle” joke I panicked and left the room. He called me about an hour later on the pretext of asking something work related that we both know he didn’t need to ask me about.

My common sense tells me to flat out get out of the situation and leave it at that, but unfortunately I can’t seem to let the attraction go. Help!

A few months ago I met a guy through a course I was beginning to like and we started to flirt a little. One day after we had a typical normal chat I saw him hugging a girl, trying to please her, giving her a quick kiss on the cheek... The simple body language I observed, the sad insecure look in that girl's eyes, which as a woman I perfectly knew what it meant, made me lose interest. I don't know what they had together, how serious it was, but a guy who's flirting with two or more girls in the same environment I've learnt by now that is a simple waste of time. Over the next few months I kept seeing him at the course and had a normal relationship, no more flirting on my part even if he started giving me obvious signs that he was interested, but as soon as I lost the attraction for him I could clearly see that we didn't even have that much in common and he wasn't a man I'd like to date.

Try to remove yourself from the game. A guy who flirts so much at work with women that even know each other is bad news. His ego must be very inflated right now, since he thinks that he's ''in the middle'', so don't give him that satisfaction. Besides if he was really interested in you, he'd reject this woman's advances in a way that you'd be able to tell and asked you out by now, don't you think?

A woman like you needs to be able to enjoy going to work, not having to deal with this kind of debilitating and upsetting situations, and a different kind of man. You'll be really pleased in the future if you take the right decision to simply pass this time.

Can you sit quietly and just contemplate what a quagmire you will be getting yourself into if you were to date this man who you work with (albeit in a round-about-manner)? If you can visualize you breaking up and having to see him everyday, see him in his "element" of flirting with anything in a skirt, wandering why you were not special when he was flirting with you but rather it's just his nature, the essence that is him ~ will it help you to think logically enough to not think with your heart/ego? Look within, can you see clearer now?

Thank you. You are all so right! Guess I just needed to hear someone else say it.