I Was Manipulated By My Superior

by Anonymous

More than a year ago, I went through a series of tragic and life changing events—a marriage, a death, a miscarriage. I was at the height of emotional vulnerability, and in that vulnerability, I found a dear friend who was also hurting.

I reflect on our relationship now and know that we could have been good friends, but for a number of reasons, that relationship immediately became an affair, and an unfulfilling one at that. The person I'm speaking of is much older than myself, and my superior— he had no business sleeping with me, and we've both known that from the beginning. I believe, truly, that the start of the relationship was simply the culmination of a lot of hurt and a desire to help heal one another.

Unfortunately, it didn't happen that way. The relationship quickly began to feel abusive to me, but unintentionally so. I mean that I believe he was blinded by his own emotions; he wasn't fully aware of what he was doing to me. He was emotionally unavailable, but it was also clear that he didn't want to let me go, let me continue my life.

I know, also, that I played into that some; I didn't always tell him my feelings of hurt and manipulation because I really wanted him to like me. To make a long story short, things have ended between us, and I find myself reviewing our relationship with a clearer lens.

I think much of what he did and told me was in an effort to control and manipulate me. Once he realized that I had the power to ruin his life (as I'll describe below), he walked a fine line between pacifying me and hurting me. I believe he was hurting tremendously, and in some dark, twisted way, wanted to make me hurt worse.

I was always kind, always desperate to appease him. I'm left, now, feeling conflicted and confused—I thought I was doing everything right (even though a big part of me wanted to stop the relationship a long time ago). Anyway, I am in a position now to report our relationship in our workplace or not. If I do so—and I should say that I really don't want to—his life will be destroyed. I also know that I feel so hurt because I sacrificed so much power in the relationship, leaving me feeling taken advantage of.

Reporting our relationship (and yes, watching his life fall apart) seems like a way to take back that power I sacrificed. Obviously I am here, though, because I don't want to do that. I do feel like reporting the relationship is the right thing to do in that it would prevent this from happening again, but I also know that that is not why I want to do it.

I can recognize that my intentions are spiteful, and if I am going to do the right thing, I would like to do it for the right reasons.