I (then 31-34M) need help processing her (then 27-30F) relationship with me and lingering office rumors about us after I left the job

OK, its not quite what that title sounds like but I'm not sure how else to phrase it in a single sentence without being even more misleading. I left the job for a much better career opportunity unrelated to the gossip, but I just had dinner with former co-workers last night and a co-worker was still still teasing/poking at my supposed relationship with the woman in question (let's call her Maya for the purpose of this post).

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Some quick bullet points:

• As far as I am concerned I've only maintained a professional relationship in the office and very normal friendship during lunches with "Maya".
• At that time, Maya was living with her boyfriend of 7 years who's much better-looking (he has a strong resemblence to Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and equal or better pay than I at the time. They're married with child now. They were college sweethearts.
• I was in a senior/supervisory role to Maya. I directly trained her for the job. I was known to be a strict trainer/supervisor. You can make me swear in court or on the graves of my ancestors and I will say I never gave any preferential treatment for anyone.
• Despite her prestigious educational background, she falls under the "dumb blonde" archetype (she's not blonde): That is, she's attractive; I think both men and women in the office would agree she's 8-9 on a scale of 10 for the sake of illustrating this. However, she's unquestionably friendly and personible with a 10 personality, all of this makes perfect sense given her previous job, which I can't share because it was a very public-facing job that would give away too much identifiable information about her. However, her work quality and "common sense" was poor outside of training and training performance metrics and probably relies more on booksmarts and just knowing how to ask questions rather than make decisions.
• I've left the job for over a year now for completely unrelated reasons (a promotion + better compensation). Our interactions dramatically reduced since she got married, though not quite none. Its zero since her maternity leave and even after she came back from leave which was a couple months before I quit the job. I've only spoke to her once since leaving. My supposed "relationship" with her was still joked around by former co-workers on more than one occasion since then, including last night's dinner.

​

I'll start with the story, then provide context to why this still bothers me after the TL;DR.

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"Maya" came on board in 2014 along with "Amber", "Bob" and "John". (John is not at all in this story but its weird to leave him out completely). They were trained together. Since we had 4 supervisors and the program requires 4 weeks of training, we decided to do a rotation for 1:1 dedicated training for each person by a different supervisor each week. That way, each supervisor also have very clear direct assessment of their abilities.

(Amber is the person I had dinner with last night along with 3 other former co-workers not mentioned here.)

​

All 4 of us agreed that Maya was the best performer of the 4 during training. She would consistently score 92-95% (except for the first week, which was mid 80's) which was assessed independently by each of the supervisors. The historical average for trainees is 75-low 80's %, few seasoned employees ever break the 90% threshold.

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[Initial meeting]

Of significant note was I had week 2 or 3 with her. As she came for the first time to go over her work, she was giggling. I asked her what's so funny, I don't remember what exactly she said but basically to the effect of "Nothing", but throughout the process she would burst out giggling.

I kept a straight face throughout the process and have RBF (resting bitch face), mind you. However, this wasn't so unusual for me because growing up people would try to have staring contests with me and lose (I never lost), and a certain type of people would uncontrollably burst out in laughter. I don't have staring contests with males besides my brother (cuz that would be weird), but both my brother and maybe 30-50% women I had staring contests with would burst out giggling, sometimes even before we start, or before I even turned around to engage the challenge.

So in my mind, it was probably something between "She's nervous and is trying to lighten the atmosphere", and "She's one of those people who burst out giggling for little to no reason." However, Maya is definitely the only coworker/subordinate I've had who would uncontrollably laugh around me, despite my intimidating reputation.

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[Dilay Work]

In daily work, Maya does seek help and guidance more so than the other 3 from her "class", and possibly even exclusively asks for my help. However, that is not at all unusual, most staff members have a preferred go-to supervisor for a variety of reasons, and it was acceptable within our org because of the flat structure. I don't feel that she particularly asks for excessive amount of guidance, but I'm also indirectly responsible for 300+ team members and have 30-50 "regulars". She doesn't come up top in frequency even among my "regulars".

One thing I do often is in-the-moment feedback; that is, provide feedback to their job performance as soon as I spot something egregious. However, I don't like to just go up to them and tell them that they're wrong, my approach is usually hand them a copy of their work, ask them their thought process, and whether or not they see something wrong with it.

Maya *never* has an issue with this. Most others might sometimes feel a little frustrated but I think they understood why I approach it that way; to teach them to fish rather than hand it to them. However, Bob was very sensitive and feel pressured about the teach-him-to-fish approach and seems to think I'm targetting him, giving him a hard time, and outright complained why I wouldn't just tell him the answer. I'm fairly sure Bob and his then-GF, "X" (also at the same workplace) are the source of the rumors about Maya and I. (Tangent: Bob and X weren't technically public, I actually think Bob and X were in an FWB arrangement but X finally managed to "upgrade" and married a different co-worker but that's a whole other drama I don't want to get into. X was also known to be fairly cutthroat and backstabby despite her smiley presence around bosses.. again, whole other drama.)

​

I suspect the fact that Maya never felt intimidated by me or frustrated by my scolding may have sparked the perception I was going easy on her. However, even then I'm not sure how true or unique that was, as I was surprised by the sheer amount of visitors (and one person who cried, a complete surprise to me) when I announced my last day of work and positive reception when I met several of them again this year at a public convention. (To avoid conflicts of interest, I was asked to leave the same day I informed the senior manager that I accepted the new job, though they paid me for the next 2 weeks anyway) I don't think Maya was so unique or out of the ordinary in her positive response to my strictness.

​

[Lunches]

I did "regularly" have lunch with Maya maybe once every week or every 2 weeks. This was something people talked about. On her end, it should be completely normal; she always has lunch with someone daily with all kinds of people (peers, supervisors, managers, persons in a different team, persons in a different building, etc.) On my end, I suppose there might be a perception that I only eat with her, but the truth is I never initiate to have lunch with someone at work because I don't feel the need to seek out socialization at work and very few ask me to join them for lunch. Maya was the only "regular" who consistently asks.

​

I definitely noticed the gossip early and informed her I'd like to reduce the frequency of our lunches to avoid the perception of impropriety and we reduced it to once a month. However, gossips persisted to the point my manager called me into her office after observing Maya's poor performance and told me "I want you to rethink carefully why did you recommend Maya for additional responsibilities."

​

Unfortunately, this was a "Read the actual damn report!" situation. I didn't actually say that in that particular instance, though I am on good enough terms with my now ex-boss to actually say that regularly as we can be perfectly open and honest that way as long as the door is closed. (The only thing I miss about that job; a boss you can be brutally honest with.) This was one of those cases where once a manager has been promoted away from the frontlines they focus on raw numbers and lose touch. I reminded the manager that she was actually there and sat down with all 4 supervisors and we all agreed that Maya's initial performance metrics were really high. However, I recommended Maya for a written communications-oriented opportunity because of her journalistic experience and proven communication skills. The manager instead assigned her to a much more delicate decision-based responsibility usually reserved for much more experienced team members.

The manager agreed and acknowledged the misunderstanding. However, there was clear insinuation that the gossip has reached her ears and that's what she's thinking of. That's when I realized it's gotten out of hand and I really needed to "break it off", so I met with Maya and told her I'd like to stop having lunches with her. Maya protested at first because she experienced office gossip at her previous work place too and doesn't think one should change their behavior because of gossip and that we should just ignore it. I explained to her that had we been peers I'd agree, but as someone in a supervisory role any perception of impropriety can be harmful to work.

​

[Interactions/Conversations]

Maya never made secret about the fact she has a boyfriend, lives with him, and that they're close. She wear a work-related accessory daily which her boyfriend bought for her. This was clear literally from day 1 (lunch socials with trainees etc.)

She did often ask about personal questions from astrology signs to blood type to age to # siblings, etc. which I all treated as regular casual conversation. When she did repeat ask about astrology sign I was like "Didn't I tell you already?" (I have impeccable memory) and "Why are you asking for coworker astrology signs?" and she was like "secret!" I just assumed she's probably one of those girls really into horoscopes and was possibly thinking of introducing me to a single friend or something.

There were a couple occasions after lunch while privately in the car she would overshare something TMI. I asked her if she's a younger sister to an older brother (she in fact was), because in my experience women who grew up with an older male sibling tend to have very poor sense of boundaries for appropriate conversation. One of such times I remarked "That's a bit TMI, do you often go around tell people these things?" she insisted she only shared that with me.

One thing that was SUPER unusual was while at her desk answering a work question for her, I noticed on her computer screen that there was a thumbnail of the picture file of me on the desktop (!!!?!???!) She quickly covered it when I asked then she deleted it and changed the subject. Remember, I was thinking maybe she was trying to set me up with her single friend or something at the time. Also, that particular photo is the photo I use for the office internal chat, so no stalking required (honestly she wouldn't even need to save it to desktop unless she's sending it to someone) so I didn't think much of it.

As our company provided gym services and the job requires 10 hour work days, its not at all unusual for people to head to the gym during break or before/after work. Maya would set up gym dates with me but also bring a friend this one time. At first I thought "Ah, so this was her game the whole time!" except.. no.. she literally just introduced her friend's name then hurried off to do their own thing. There was no additional information nor follow-up.

​

Eventually around 2 years later she became engaged to her then boyfriend now husband. It was apparently a big deal and office gossip of the day. Bob's-then-GF "X" was very inappropriately and publicly "offering her condolences" to me and say things like "Don't worry, you lost Maya but you still have me!"

​

I really don't want to talk about X, but I think I need to explain a little bit more. X is 100% manipulative. At first I thought she's just immature and highly unprofessional with a crush on me, often making inappropriate remarks like "Hellooo~" "Hi." "How come you didn't hi back?" "I did?" "But there's no loooovve in it!" There was one time I was speaking with my manager about gossip and the going-ons in the office. I mentioned I thought X might have a crush on me with inappropriate interactions. My manager at first said I was full of myself then I shared some of such overt flirting/suggestive remarks. Then my manager remarks that's strange because X is always "telling on" my work and conduct. I don't think X realize despite the seriousness of both me and my manager we actually have a very strong trusting relationship. Much later I learned that another co-worker who worked on X's team, despite having had X at her wedding as one of the bridesmaids, decided to quit the job because she couldn't stand the office politics and working with X, who appearently has been going behind her back to their boss to criticize her work, leading her work constantly questioned. So, yeah.. X is the type you want to stay miles away from.

​

Eventually there was brief semi-private chat with her to congratulate her. She made a couple remarks that definitely stood out, something along the lines of "If you really like a girl you should say something." I definitely picked up on that, but dismissed it because why? She must know what she just said and what it sounded like? Why would she say this now? Why would she accept the proposal then say this to another man? I don't even think we have the kind of relationship built up to warrant this kind of remark. It also never crossed my mind someone who's proper, doesn't appear to a manipulative/cheating type, would would ever think/do something like this, much less someone who lives with her boyfriend, of 7 years, much less someone who just got engaged, much less without what I believe to be any significant established relationship with the person she said that to.

So I dismissed it. I simply said I need someone I could say that to and its hard to meet someone when you work 60-70 hour weeks (truth, which is probably one of the biggest reasons why office relationships were so rampant in our department). Our interactions including work-related significantly dropped since.

​

[What I need help processing]

In my life there seems to be multiple instances where totally unavailable women seem attracted to me, despite being very nice persons whom one would never think to be an irresponsible/cheating type (I wouldn't even associate with them if I had reason to believe an individual lacked scruples). However, I wanted to share and get help processing this example not just because it was brought up again last night but also because this case was unique in

1. I did in fact suspected it at some point and had enough elements to indicate she was in fact attracted and wanted me make some kind of move. 2) Everyone around us apparently saw it, though perhaps for the wrong reasons. 3) Maya is the only one of all similar encounters who was upfront and consistent about her relationship status, whereas other women generally either a) never said a word about their relationship in conversations with me (I'd learn from mutual friends or from "researching" social network accounts when there's growing closeness), or just mention it once but never again as if their significant other didn't exist. - even though all of these women appear to completely nice and proper, including one who's a very sweet introverted catholic who went from sending memes/videos upping the suggestion by remarking how I spoil her with food to abrupt end all interactions cold turkey, she's suddenly with a new boyfriend and her previously FB-official boyfriend was stealthily deleted with no timeline updates.

​

Back in grad school I had one such situation and I asked a female friend to help me process it. She basically tried to normalize the behavior for me which I had and still have trouble acknowledging and accepting. "But she has a boyfriend!" "So?" was basically what it came down to, both in terms of "Why would she be flirting/suggesting/interested." and in terms of "I'm not about to disrupt someone else's relationship". She knew I watch Sex and the City and tried to draw examples from there to illustrate how its not necessarily "immoral cheaters" who run into those situations. That didn't really help, though, SATC is written for women from a woman's perspective, what was the men supposed to do in these stories? There's nothing ethically actionable for the men involved in the situation and I feel like the women should be much more upfront and direct in what their situation is and what do they want. (The convo actually got to how I identify with Aidan, but let's not go there)

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TL;DR Former co-worker/subordinate had a crush on me despite being engaged. Office gossip did not stop even after she had kids, I've left the job, and we stopped talking. There was actually a whole lot of nothing happened.

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[Additional Context]

Dinner last night was with "Amber", Amber's husband (same workplace), and 2 other former workers. Amber was from the same onboarding "class" as Maya.

I've met Amber maybe 4-5 times since leaving the company a little over a year ago, always in a group setting. The conversation does in fact often touch on my relationship status. Of those 4-5 times, 2-3 times she would bring up Maya and remark how I always treated Maya differently (not true.) Last night, Amber was semi joke-telling on me to her husband how I was alwasy strict with and scolded her, "unlike with Maya, he was always nice to Maya." (still not true.)

The time before that, maybe half a year ago, it was originally just some random gossip about someone or some celeb, I don't remember. Amber was trying to describe how attractive the person was. I asked, "How do you mean?" so Amber responded "Like Maya, attractive but not supermodel level" without thinking, I very innocently answered "Oh, I see what you mean" (perhaps I shouldn't have) and Amber latched on to that and said "So Maya is your type, huh?" Keep in mind that by this point Maya is already married with child for almost a year if not more than that and I hardly spoke to her.

Submitted October 05, 2019 at 10:30PM

OK, its not quite what that title sounds like but I'm not sure how else to phrase it in a single sentence without being even more misleading. I left the job for a much better career opportunity unrelated to the gossip, but I just had dinner with former co-workers last night and a co-worker was still still teasing/poking at my supposed relationship with the woman in question (let's call her Maya for the purpose of this post).​Some quick bullet points:As far as I am concerned I've only maintained a professional relationship in the office and very normal friendship during lunches with "Maya".At that time, Maya was living with her boyfriend of 7 years who's much better-looking (he has a strong resemblence to Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and equal or better pay than I at the time. They're married with child now. They were college sweethearts.I was in a senior/supervisory role to Maya. I directly trained her for the job. I was known to be a strict trainer/supervisor. You can make me swear in court or on the graves of my ancestors and I will say I never gave any preferential treatment for anyone.Despite her prestigious educational background, she falls under the "dumb blonde" archetype (she's not blonde): That is, she's attractive; I think both men and women in the office would agree she's 8-9 on a scale of 10 for the sake of illustrating this. However, she's unquestionably friendly and personible with a 10 personality, all of this makes perfect sense given her previous job, which I can't share because it was a very public-facing job that would give away too much identifiable information about her. However, her work quality and "common sense" was poor outside of training and training performance metrics and probably relies more on booksmarts and just knowing how to ask questions rather than make decisions.I've left the job for over a year now for completely unrelated reasons (a promotion + better compensation). Our interactions dramatically reduced since she got married, though not quite none. Its zero since her maternity leave and even after she came back from leave which was a couple months before I quit the job. I've only spoke to her once since leaving. My supposed "relationship" with her was still joked around by former co-workers on more than one occasion since then, including last night's dinner.​I'll start with the story, then provide context to why this still bothers me after the TL;DR.​"Maya" came on board in 2014 along with "Amber", "Bob" and "John". (John is not at all in this story but its weird to leave him out completely). They were trained together. Since we had 4 supervisors and the program requires 4 weeks of training, we decided to do a rotation for 1:1 dedicated training for each person by a different supervisor each week. That way, each supervisor also have very clear direct assessment of their abilities.(Amber is the person I had dinner with last night along with 3 other former co-workers not mentioned here.)​All 4 of us agreed that Maya was the best performer of the 4 during training. She would consistently score 92-95% (except for the first week, which was mid 80's) which was assessed independently by each of the supervisors. The historical average for trainees is 75-low 80's %, few seasoned employees ever break the 90% threshold.​[Initial meeting]Of significant note was I had week 2 or 3 with her. As she came for the first time to go over her work, she was giggling. I asked her what's so funny, I don't remember what exactly she said but basically to the effect of "Nothing", but throughout the process she would burst out giggling.I kept a straight face throughout the process and have RBF (resting bitch face), mind you. However, this wasn't so unusual for me because growing up people would try to have staring contests with me and lose (I never lost), and a certain type of people would uncontrollably burst out in laughter. I don't have staring contests with males besides my brother (cuz that would be weird), but both my brother and maybe 30-50% women I had staring contests with would burst out giggling, sometimes even before we start, or before I even turned around to engage the challenge.So in my mind, it was probably something between "She's nervous and is trying to lighten the atmosphere", and "She's one of those people who burst out giggling for little to no reason." However, Maya is definitely the only coworker/subordinate I've had who would uncontrollably laugh around me, despite my intimidating reputation.​[Dilay Work]In daily work, Maya does seek help and guidance more so than the other 3 from her "class", and possibly even exclusively asks for my help. However, that is not at all unusual, most staff members have a preferred go-to supervisor for a variety of reasons, and it was acceptable within our org because of the flat structure. I don't feel that she particularly asks for excessive amount of guidance, but I'm also indirectly responsible for 300+ team members and have 30-50 "regulars". She doesn't come up top in frequency even among my "regulars".One thing I do often is in-the-moment feedback; that is, provide feedback to their job performance as soon as I spot something egregious. However, I don't like to just go up to them and tell them that they're wrong, my approach is usually hand them a copy of their work, ask them their thought process, and whether or not they see something wrong with it.Maya *never* has an issue with this. Most others might sometimes feel a little frustrated but I think they understood why I approach it that way; to teach them to fish rather than hand it to them. However, Bob was very sensitive and feel pressured about the teach-him-to-fish approach and seems to think I'm targetting him, giving him a hard time, and outright complained why I wouldn't just tell him the answer. I'm fairly sure Bob and his then-GF, "X" (also at the same workplace) are the source of the rumors about Maya and I. (Tangent: Bob and X weren't technically public, I actually think Bob and X were in an FWB arrangement but X finally managed to "upgrade" and married a different co-worker but that's a whole other drama I don't want to get into. X was also known to be fairly cutthroat and backstabby despite her smiley presence around bosses.. again, whole other drama.)​I suspect the fact that Maya never felt intimidated by me or frustrated by my scolding may have sparked the perception I was going easy on her. However, even then I'm not sure how true or unique that was, as I was surprised by the sheer amount of visitors (and one person who cried, a complete surprise to me) when I announced my last day of work and positive reception when I met several of them again this year at a public convention. (To avoid conflicts of interest, I was asked to leave the same day I informed the senior manager that I accepted the new job, though they paid me for the next 2 weeks anyway) I don't think Maya was so unique or out of the ordinary in her positive response to my strictness.​[Lunches]I did "regularly" have lunch with Maya maybe once every week or every 2 weeks. This was something people talked about. On her end, it should be completely normal; she always has lunch with someone daily with all kinds of people (peers, supervisors, managers, persons in a different team, persons in a different building, etc.) On my end, I suppose there might be a perception that I only eat with her, but the truth is I never initiate to have lunch with someone at work because I don't feel the need to seek out socialization at work and very few ask me to join them for lunch. Maya was the only "regular" who consistently asks.​I definitely noticed the gossip early and informed her I'd like to reduce the frequency of our lunches to avoid the perception of impropriety and we reduced it to once a month. However, gossips persisted to the point my manager called me into her office after observing Maya's poor performance and told me "I want you to rethink carefully why did you recommend Maya for additional responsibilities."​Unfortunately, this was a "Read the actual damn report!" situation. I didn't actually say that in that particular instance, though I am on good enough terms with my now ex-boss to actually say that regularly as we can be perfectly open and honest that way as long as the door is closed. (The only thing I miss about that job; a boss you can be brutally honest with.) This was one of those cases where once a manager has been promoted away from the frontlines they focus on raw numbers and lose touch. I reminded the manager that she was actually there and sat down with all 4 supervisors and we all agreed that Maya's initial performance metrics were really high. However, I recommended Maya for a written communications-oriented opportunity because of her journalistic experience and proven communication skills. The manager instead assigned her to a much more delicate decision-based responsibility usually reserved for much more experienced team members.The manager agreed and acknowledged the misunderstanding. However, there was clear insinuation that the gossip has reached her ears and that's what she's thinking of. That's when I realized it's gotten out of hand and I really needed to "break it off", so I met with Maya and told her I'd like to stop having lunches with her. Maya protested at first because she experienced office gossip at her previous work place too and doesn't think one should change their behavior because of gossip and that we should just ignore it. I explained to her that had we been peers I'd agree, but as someone in a supervisory role any perception of impropriety can be harmful to work.​[Interactions/Conversations]Maya never made secret about the fact she has a boyfriend, lives with him, and that they're close. She wear a work-related accessory daily which her boyfriend bought for her. This was clear literally from day 1 (lunch socials with trainees etc.)She did often ask about personal questions from astrology signs to blood type to age to # siblings, etc. which I all treated as regular casual conversation. When she did repeat ask about astrology sign I was like "Didn't I tell you already?" (I have impeccable memory) and "Why are you asking for coworker astrology signs?" and she was like "secret!" I just assumed she's probably one of those girls really into horoscopes and was possibly thinking of introducing me to a single friend or something.There were a couple occasions after lunch while privately in the car she would overshare something TMI. I asked her if she's a younger sister to an older brother (she in fact was), because in my experience women who grew up with an older male sibling tend to have very poor sense of boundaries for appropriate conversation. One of such times I remarked "That's a bit TMI, do you often go around tell people these things?" she insisted she only shared that with me.One thing that was SUPER unusual was while at her desk answering a work question for her, I noticed on her computer screen that there was a thumbnail of the picture file of me on the desktop (!!!?!???!) She quickly covered it when I asked then she deleted it and changed the subject. Remember, I was thinking maybe she was trying to set me up with her single friend or something at the time. Also, that particular photo is the photo I use for the office internal chat, so no stalking required (honestly she wouldn't even need to save it to desktop unless she's sending it to someone) so I didn't think much of it.As our company provided gym services and the job requires 10 hour work days, its not at all unusual for people to head to the gym during break or before/after work. Maya would set up gym dates with me but also bring a friend this one time. At first I thought "Ah, so this was her game the whole time!" except.. no.. she literally just introduced her friend's name then hurried off to do their own thing. There was no additional information nor follow-up.​Eventually around 2 years later she became engaged to her then boyfriend now husband. It was apparently a big deal and office gossip of the day. Bob's-then-GF "X" was very inappropriately and publicly "offering her condolences" to me and say things like "Don't worry, you lost Maya but you still have me!"​I really don't want to talk about X, but I think I need to explain a little bit more. X is 100% manipulative. At first I thought she's just immature and highly unprofessional with a crush on me, often making inappropriate remarks like "Hellooo~" "Hi." "How come you didn't hi back?" "I did?" "But there's no loooovve in it!" There was one time I was speaking with my manager about gossip and the going-ons in the office. I mentioned I thought X might have a crush on me with inappropriate interactions. My manager at first said I was full of myself then I shared some of such overt flirting/suggestive remarks. Then my manager remarks that's strange because X is always "telling on" my work and conduct. I don't think X realize despite the seriousness of both me and my manager we actually have a very strong trusting relationship. Much later I learned that another co-worker who worked on X's team, despite having had X at her wedding as one of the bridesmaids, decided to quit the job because she couldn't stand the office politics and working with X, who appearently has been going behind her back to their boss to criticize her work, leading her work constantly questioned. So, yeah.. X is the type you want to stay miles away from.​Eventually there was brief semi-private chat with her to congratulate her. She made a couple remarks that definitely stood out, something along the lines of "If you really like a girl you should say something." I definitely picked up on that, but dismissed it because why? She must know what she just said and what it sounded like? Why would she say this now? Why would she accept the proposal then say this to another man? I don't even think we have the kind of relationship built up to warrant this kind of remark. It also never crossed my mind someone who's proper, doesn't appear to a manipulative/cheating type, would would ever think/do something like this, much less someone who lives with her boyfriend, of 7 years, much less someone who just got engaged, much less without what I believe to be any significant established relationship with the person she said that to.So I dismissed it. I simply said I need someone I could say that to and its hard to meet someone when you work 60-70 hour weeks (truth, which is probably one of the biggest reasons why office relationships were so rampant in our department). Our interactions including work-related significantly dropped since.​[What I need help processing]In my life there seems to be multiple instances where totally unavailable women seem attracted to me, despite being very nice persons whom one would never think to be an irresponsible/cheating type (I wouldn't even associate with them if I had reason to believe an individual lacked scruples). However, I wanted to share and get help processing this example not just because it was brought up again last night but also because this case was unique inI did in fact suspected it at some point and had enough elements to indicate she was in fact attracted and wanted me make some kind of move. 2) Everyone around us apparently saw it, though perhaps for the wrong reasons. 3) Maya is the only one of all similar encounters who was upfront and consistent about her relationship status, whereas other women generally either a) never said a word about their relationship in conversations with me (I'd learn from mutual friends or from "researching" social network accounts when there's growing closeness), or just mention it once but never again as if their significant other didn't exist. - even though all of these women appear to completely nice and proper, including one who's a very sweet introverted catholic who went from sending memes/videos upping the suggestion by remarking how I spoil her with food to abrupt end all interactions cold turkey, she's suddenly with a new boyfriend and her previously FB-official boyfriend was stealthily deleted with no timeline updates.​Back in grad school I had one such situation and I asked a female friend to help me process it. She basically tried to normalize the behavior for me which I had and still have trouble acknowledging and accepting. "But she has a boyfriend!" "So?" was basically what it came down to, both in terms of "Why would she be flirting/suggesting/interested." and in terms of "I'm not about to disrupt someone else's relationship". She knew I watch Sex and the City and tried to draw examples from there to illustrate how its not necessarily "immoral cheaters" who run into those situations. That didn't really help, though, SATC is written for women from a woman's perspective, what was the men supposed to do in these stories? There's nothing ethically actionable for the men involved in the situation and I feel like the women should be much more upfront and direct in what their situation is and what do they want. (The convo actually got to how I identify with Aidan, but let's not go there)​TL;DR Former co-worker/subordinate had a crush on me despite being engaged. Office gossip did not stop even after she had kids, I've left the job, and we stopped talking. There was actually a whole lot of nothing happened.​[Additional Context]Dinner last night was with "Amber", Amber's husband (same workplace), and 2 other former workers. Amber was from the same onboarding "class" as Maya.I've met Amber maybe 4-5 times since leaving the company a little over a year ago, always in a group setting. The conversation does in fact often touch on my relationship status. Of those 4-5 times, 2-3 times she would bring up Maya and remark how I always treated Maya differently (not true.) Last night, Amber was semi joke-telling on me to her husband how I was alwasy strict with and scolded her, "unlike with Maya, he was always nice to Maya." (still not true.)The time before that, maybe half a year ago, it was originally just some random gossip about someone or some celeb, I don't remember. Amber was trying to describe how attractive the person was. I asked, "How do you mean?" so Amber responded "Like Maya, attractive but not supermodel level" without thinking, I very innocently answered "Oh, I see what you mean" (perhaps I shouldn't have) and Amber latched on to that and said "So Maya is your type, huh?" Keep in mind that by this point Maya is already married with child for almost a year if not more than that and I hardly spoke to her.