How do I avoid a train wreck?

Post Reply New Topic

I'm in a relationship. He's about 20 years older than I am, and has Stage IV cancer. Currently he is no evidence of disease (NED), and takes chemo 15 of every 21 days to stay that way. Average life expectancy for someone in his condition is 2 years; he was diagnosed a year ago.

It's ALWAYS been a rocky relationship. I was on my way out when he was diagnosed, and couldn't in good conscience leave him like that. My thought was to stay with him til his health stabilized, then leave the relationship. Since his diagnosis, he's had several "aha" moments and our relationship did a 180º, so I decided to not leave after all.

I'm pretty sure I'm an Aspie; I test in the "you should be concerned" or higher areas in online self-assessments. Being "not NT" runs on both sides of my family: I have a female cousin on my dad's side who is diagnosed with Autism, and a female cousin on my mom's side of the family who was diagnosed as "hyperactive" back when nobody thought girls *could* be hyper. I've suspected for years my dad has Asperger's, and suspect my maternal grandfather was (he passed away). My suspicion is strong enough that I'm going to schedule an assessment soon, just because I want to know.

I have a coworker who's also probably an Aspie. Everyone who works with him knows he's "different." (His score on the online self-assessments is higher than a lot of the scores officially diagnosed Aspies post in their signatures here.)

We've worked together for 4 years. About 18 months ago, we had a misunderstanding/disagreement and it was like the battle of the Titans. We resolved it 2-3 weeks ago and I'm glad, because it feels like I was reunited with a friend I'd really, really missed.

I've recently begun to suspect that he has stronger feelings for me than just coworkers who are friends outside of work. I think that's part of what led to our disagreement, but I didn't clue into that until WAAAY late in the game.

We're both peculiar, in many of the same ways...which is partly why we're friends. We're weird about different things, but we are both weird. We have our routines and have our desks set up in ways that our coworkers think is kind of OCD...like we don't mix our blue pens with our red pens, or our gel pens with our highlighters and permanent markers. It was hard for me when I changed desks and had to put my red, blue and purple gel pens all in the same pen cup.

I read people and communicate better than he does; he often has me handle written and face-to-face communication for him.

He is much more at ease with me than with other people. The two of us have our own way of speaking to each other which sometimes causes our coworkers to just shake their heads, including nicknames for each other and "running jokes" that they don't get.

We're both sensitive to sensory input, but in different ways. On sound, we're about equal. He's more sensitive to scent and taste than I am; I'm more sensitive to light & visual input than he is. Neither of us can stand scratchy, poky, itchy things. He had to trade me post it notes because a certain color of a certain brand "stunk", whereas I can't handle having mis-matched push pins on my project board. We're both exhausted after dealing with people all week.

Neither of us touch people we don't know, and we're both quite selective as to who gets to touch us. I recently touched his hand to give him some candy he likes, and it was almost like we were holding hands. After that, he sits next to me or across from me at staff functions and during our lunch breaks. There have been several times when he almost touched (like he wanted to and held back) or touched my hand when I was using my computer mouse.

We both have a thing about food, but his is much "worse" than mine. I just don't like a lot of variety outside of "home cooking" whereas he has all these things he can't or won't eat and he's extra-careful about germs. At lunch earlier this week, he was very hungry so I cut my roll in half and offered the other piece to him. Usually he declines food which other people have touched. He ate it, even though I'd touched it. He also ate fries from my plate. He lets me use pens from his desk; as far as I know, I'm the only other person who can use his pens, or whose pens he'll use. (If someone else uses his pens, he cleans them with antibacterial wipes.)

He talks about things with me that he doesn't talk about with other people. Personal things, about his family and his interests outside of work.

It feels like I'm being courted, which is sweet and endearing but also kind of scary. The guy I'm in relationship with never did that.

It isn't that I don't want to return those feelings, it's that I can't. Not right now.

How do I handle this? I want to be sensitive of his feelings, and I don't want to spark another WWIII.

Stand aside of the train tracks...in fact, stand as far away from the rails as possible.

While you are watching from a distance, witness the wreck unfold until its apex.

Walk away unscathed.

On a Sherlock note (because that's what we're good for):

You're obviously in love with this bloke from work. He's the younger, vital "equal" you're looking for. He's also an "out" for you, which you desperately need since you've mixed yourself up with this walking corpse of a boyfriend. Do you realise you only dedicate two very short paragraphs to him, your current, supposed boyfriend, yet you dedicate TEN paragraphs (of varying length) to your co-worker?

I would think cancer treatment merited more attention than a sliced sandwich roll.

I suggest you stop sustaining yourself on some bizarre belief of gained wealth with Mr. Cancer and pursue your fawn at work. Don't worry, he'll die just fine without you there.

The difference is due to me knowing how the man I'm in relationship with feels about me.

If my suspicion is correct, I don't want to be guilty of having encouraged something I'm not in position to follow through with. I also don't want to discourage it in such a way as to inadvertently spark another WWIII at the office, as it could likely result in one or the other, if not both, of us losing our jobs.

Ten paragraphs about my boyfriend would probably have you wanting to reach through your monitor, shake me soundly, and ask me what in hell I'm still doing with him. The day, 2 1/2 years into our relationship, I tip-tap-clicked into what I thought was my own yahoo! email only to be confused because what I was looking at wasn't my email (much like the confusion which results when one takes a sip of one's soft drink, having ordered regular Coke, to find they've given you diet) should have been enough to end it. By the time it registered that I was looking at his email rather than my own, I realized that what I was seeing warranted a further look...and thus I discovered 3 years of correspondence to 2 women he'd met via an online hookup/cheating site. One was local, the other was within 3 hours' driving distance. The actual meets took place before we met, it was sporadic correspondence (like once every 2-3 weeks), and I didn't see anything that trashed me or our relationship, so I didn't dump him on the spot.

Instead, I gave him the option to go to counseling, set their email as spam, put site blocking software on the computer, etc. and never do it again.

Boy, was I dumb.

Fast-forward to 2 weeks ago, when I--not sure of the sequence of events--go to use the computer and find it's already logged into his gmail account. Full of crap from dating sites. At about roughly the same point in time, I get out of the shower to overhear yet another speakerphone conversation in which he is expressing dissatisfaction with our relationship and complaining about me to a friend or one of his sons.

I've been a good partner to this man, and in return I got the privilege of putting up with his online dating crap for nearly 5 years.

In the 8 months since his diagnosis, I've been his only caregiver. His sons are too busy with their own lives to bother. I've used my own medical and holiday leave to accompany him to appointments and procedures; now that it's exhausted, my employer has allowed me to flex my schedule and I work 6 days a week in order to maintain a full time work schedule. I paid for 6 months of couples' counseling on my health insurance plan to support him in the months preceding and immediately following his diagnosis. I set up his medication, help with his skincare (side effects of chemo), attempted to help him with financial repercussions of his decision to retire without health insurance, bring him lunch and spend the remainder of my lunch hour with him while he's at infusion, etc.

All that, and the single thing he has to say about me to his friends is that he can't stand my housekeeping. It makes me want to say to him, "I've a newsflash for you, Slim: Every time you've set out to clean up *my* mess, the resultant discussion has revolved around your realization that they're your belongings, not mine."

Apparently, I'm loyal to the point of my own detriment.

As has already been pointed out, Mr Cancer will die just fine without you being there. Why are you sticking around? To look good to by-standers?

I don't see why a possible, more in-your-mindful, wishful-thinking office romance should lead either you or the other kind being fired, or setting off any kind of warfare....

I see no way to avoid a bad situation. You have feelings for the co-worker, and you are committed to your boyfriend. If you push away the co-worker, you will regret it. If you hook up with the co-worker, you will feel guilty because you are cheating. If you leave your boyfriend, you will feel guilty for "abandoning" him. Which option do you want? None of them are pain-free.

The take-home message I'm getting from y'all is that I'm reading the situation with my coworker correctly: he's definitely interested, and I'm picking up on that vibe.

What kind of decent human being would leave someone who has Stage IV cancer and who's nearly a year into a 2 year prognosis?

What person with a modicum of self esteem would stay in relationship with a partner who's messing around online, has met up with someone at least once during the course of the relationship (although it supposedly didn't go anywhere), etc.?

Crap, I wish it were that easy! Maybe it is?

I wouldn't still be with him if he hadn't been diagnosed. He was in rough shape, forum-friends. Untreated, he'd have passed by now. He responded much better than expected and unusually well; for that I'm grateful. He had some very wonderful experiences this past year--a really cool "trip of a lifetime" rafting trip, had all his kids & grandkids together for the first time ever, etc.

A hook up with the coworker is absolutely out of the question; neither he nor I are wired that way. A relationship, otoh, would not be out of the question.

It might be nice to be with someone who wants to be in a relationship with an eye toward long term commitment, who wants to be a husband, have a wife, belong together, etc. Or, it might be a worse mess than the one I've got.

I can imagine the conversation now, "Coworker Dude, you're cute, we click and I'd like to see where that goes...but we gotta wait for Mr. Cancer to die first." Yeah, right.

I think the thing to do is shelve "whatever" with my coworker, resolve things one way or t'other with my boyfriend, chill for a couple of months, and then take a look at what's on the table.

My boyfriend gets the results of his most recent PET scan on Monday. They've switched chemo since the last scan, and he's worried the results of this scan won't be as good as the others.

It's a crappy situation all the way around, isn't it.

How bad is this cancer in terms of his day-to-day health? Can he get around?

I ask because my mom dated a man for 5 years while his wife was dieing of cancer.

You don't have to leave them, really - if it gets to a point where romance isn't possible, just make yourself happy. It's not like you can't stay around and help him with his hospital visits and chemo or whatever.

MissMaria, I feel for you. And don't suggest you abandon your boyfriend.

But at a certain point, there is nothing wrong with saying you can't take this, you need something more to yourself. If you feel the need to try to change him, a lot to ask and inappropriate if you have given up and no longer want him to change, you give him a chance by explaining what you feel and what you need, which is to not hear or learn he is devaluing you to himself or others, which can only be accomplished by his stopping this behavior,

Otherwise, you can offer to remain his friend and tell him you like and care about him but not more than that, or if he is far enough gone I suppose you don't have to tell him. People will judge you all the time, he is judging you, you are judging him, the only end to judging I can see is if he changes (unlikely) or you leave.

Be safe, hold each other close. And if your still really worried about a possible train wreck, don't bother to board the train at all.

In order to avoida train wreck, I suggest you avoid getting on a train.

Right now, he can still get around fairly well. He has more limits than he's willing to accept and often pushes himself too hard on one day and pays for it the next two.

For all intents & purposes, we've already reached the point where romance isn't possible.

In my initial panic mode, I'd forgotten: just because someone is/seems interested, doesn't mean I have to reciprocate. That realization removed a lot of the pressure I felt to "make a decision now" and brought an immediate sense of relief.

I'm a big believer in "you don't poop where you eat" meaning: you don't get into intimate/romantic/sexual relationships with your coworkers, even when there is no workplace regulation against such behavior. Workplace rules or not, if the relationship goes south, one or the other of you (if not both) will quite likely find yourself looking for a new job.

Ideally, I would have had the opportunity to talk with my coworker. That didn't happen, so I emailed him at our personal accounts, rather than our work accounts. I focused on how important it is to me for the two of us to continue to get on well with each other, and made him aware that not knowing what went wrong in the first place contributes to my fear of making a wrong step and putting things back to when the situation was awful for both of us.

He composed a reply he did not send; he said he'd rather talk in person than respond in email. Although we haven't resumed the discussion, things feel much more relaxed between us.

For the immediate future, I'm content to let things ride. I've invested 5 years in the relationship with my boyfriend. I get on well with his kids, and he gets on well with mine (between the 2 of us, we have 6 adult children). His friends have accepted me, my family have accepted him, and we have a life together. Soon enough, that will change.

Even if my boyfriend was not in the picture, my coworker is off limits by virtue of being a coworker. Further considerations: I have a financial goal which ties me to this employer for another 3-4 years and my coworker needs to complete his accounting degree (4-6 classes).

If our employer doesn't do something to address the pay disparity between mid-level and management-level staff, they'll lose us both within the next 5 years as we're both mid-level staff and presently don't earn enough to reach our long term financial goals. This is a consideration for us both. (Our employer commissioned a pay-equity study about 4 years ago and discovered our management staff are paid more than their for-profit peers within our community, and our mid-level staff are paid significantly less. Since management expected to come out with a raise as a result of the study, nothing has been done to move forward based on the results.)

By the time my goal is met and his degree is finished, who knows in what way the situation will have changed...or not.