Ok I know I’m not the victim here and I’ve made some dumb decisions. There is a man who’s 40 in my office and I’m 27. When I started working there, he started hitting on me pretty aggressively – I kinda reciprocated, not aggressively, but I flirted back. I definitely felt a spark between us – he’s very good-looking and kind of intelligent. He made it clear he had a partner and 2 kids – but he still hit on me a lot, spoke to me heaps, etc. We’ve never slept together, we’ve never even spent time alone. I should have shut it down but I didn’t – I guess I liked the attention from a very good-looking man.
At some point a switch went off in my head. I started feeling bad for his partner – he never spoke about her in a respectful way, or his kids (two daughters). Then I started listening to the way he spoke about other women and I realised he had strong misogynistic tendencies. I decided to stop talking to him – basically I just started ignoring him unless it was about work matters. This coincides with the time we got a new CEO – he’s very serious and the workplace culture changed, we all got a lot more professional and focused. Me just doing my job and not talking to him seems to have REALLY set him off. He seems furious at me and looks at me all the time in this kind of yearning way – he only seems happy once I look back at him. He seems REALLY frustrated that I’m ignoring, almost rageful. I think other people in the office have noticed his rage towards me and they seem concerned. Maybe that’s enough – should I just keep ignoring him? Should I talk to him? He also seems jealous when I talk to the other men in the office – even if it’s just ‘hello’ or about work matters.
Any advice? I don’t think any of this warrants an HR conversation. I just want him to respect that I don’t want to flirt anymore and I find his misogyny repugnant.