I mentioned in my introductory post that I travel a lot for work. I spend at least 80% of my time travelling, the rest I spend at home with my wife.
Life on the road can be tiresome, and lonely. I'm normally well designed for this type of work but sometimes the loneliness can get the better of you.
The best example of what I mean is an experience that I had a few years ago. I was given a couple of admin staff for my team. They were provided to support my department given that we were all overworked and desperate for some extra support.
I met the first admin person. She was an older lady who immediately started flirting with me in a surprisingly intense way. I was shocked at how forward she was, and immediately organised for her to leave my department and never return.
The other admin person was lovely, and hard working. We quickly formed a friendship and worked closely together for weeks on end. Over time, we got to know about each other's personal lives. I'll call this admin person Danny. Danny was a young girl in her late 20s. She'd recently left a terrible relationship and took this position in my team as a chance to rebuild her life and become independent. I'd be lying if I said I didn't find Danny attractive. In fact, she was absolutely stunning in every respect.
As the days went by, Danny started to subtlety flirt with me. And I found this quite appealing. Remember the loneliness that I mentioned? Well this flirting made the loneliness seem less severe. In comparison to the intense and not at all subtle flirtations from the other admin person, the flirting from Danny was much more welcome.
At first, I didn't reciprocate at all, but I also didn't stop the flirtation from continuing. And as the weeks went by I started reciprocating as well. Which made me feel quite guilty indeed. The flirting didn't lead to anything physical from taking place but the intensity of the flirting certainly increased.
And after a while I noticed that Danny was organising to be close to me quite frequently. For example, when I was on a plane I would typically be in business class. And all of a sudden Danny was sitting next to me in business class as well. Whereas, normally, our admin and other personnel would sit in economy.
Again, I failed to discourage this from taking place. Danny was lovely, fantastic to speak with, and constantly warm and caring.
But, as things tend to do, the flirting went too far one day. We were sitting in business class, on a particularly long flight, and Danny rested her hand on my thigh while we were having a particularly deep conversation. And that's where I realised that I had let things go on in this manner for way too long. I had reached the point where I either cheat on my wife, or I bring this to a permanent end.
I chose my wife, and brought my time with Danny to an end. Danny received a transfer to a different department. And a department that brought with it a chance for promotion for her. I was guilty at not giving her any real explanation as to what I had done. But I suspect she knew the reasons behind my decision.
I realised that I had let the loneliness of my work, and my position within my organisation, get to me. And I needed to focus on the short time that my work allowed me to spend with my wife.
My wife after all is my favourite person on this little planet of ours. And nothing will come between me and her. Not even a gorgeous young lady with impressive attributes.