My (27/F) friendship with one of the cute guys (30/M) at work is constantly talked about in our office.

We were both in long-term relationships until a couple of months ago. My ex had cheated on me. And his ex left him out of nowhere.

Anyway, we’ve pretty much always been good friends. But now that we’re single, people at work are always making jokes about us and saying that we’re secretly in love and it’s all very high school. At first it was kind of funny I guess, but now it’s just annoying. I feel like I can’t speak to him at all without people giving us eyes like we’re fucking in the middle of the office. It’s very strange.

Would it be too much to speak to HR about this? He’s a good friend of mine and I don’t want what everyone is saying to get in the way of our work relationship. It doesn’t bother him as much when people say things, but it does bother me ... only because part of me does actually have a small crush and it’s getting harder to separate that from the work we do together, which to me is most important.

What should I do?

If there’s some way I can handle this without creating drama or involving HR, I’m open to the suggestion.

tl;dr How do I make these jokes stop without creating drama or involving HR? I do actually like this guy, which is why the jokes are getting to me, and I don’t want this to get in the way of our work relationship.

Submitted April 26, 2019 at 06:47AM

We were both in long-term relationships until a couple of months ago. My ex had cheated on me. And his ex left him out of nowhere.Anyway, we’ve pretty much always been good friends. But now that we’re single, people at work are always making jokes about us and saying that we’re secretly in love and it’s all very high school. At first it was kind of funny I guess, but now it’s just annoying. I feel like I can’t speak to him at all without people giving us eyes like we’re fucking in the middle of the office. It’s very strange.Would it be too much to speak to HR about this? He’s a good friend of mine and I don’t want what everyone is saying to get in the way of our work relationship. It doesn’t bother him as much when people say things, but it does bother me ... only because part of me does actually have a small crush and it’s getting harder to separate that from the work we do together, which to me is most important.What should I do?If there’s some way I can handle this without creating drama or involving HR, I’m open to the suggestion.tl;dr How do I make these jokes stop without creating drama or involving HR? I do actually like this guy, which is why the jokes are getting to me, and I don’t want this to get in the way of our work relationship.