'My coworker lied about not having a girlfriend': 28-year-old employee discovers work crush's double life, calls him out during the next company happy hour

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Ben Weiss • Writer and Editor
Jan 7, 2026 8:00 AM EST

This is why one should never pursue a relationship with their work crush.

Keeping one's professional and personal life separate can be difficult to achieve realistically. After all, you are spending the majority of your time every week with the same group of people. You see them as often, if not more, than some of your closest friends and family members. Therefore, it's only natural that you're going to get along with some of your coworkers well enough that you'll want to hang out outside of work. Still, one has to always protect oneself.

Of course, there is a difference between forming friendships through work and forming romantic relationships. The latter could easily lead to conflict, especially in this day and age when we have the cultural language now to speak to the complexities of the power dynamics at play in these relationships. This is not to say that it's impossible to date your coworker, but it is to say that there is always going to be risk involved, even if you are both at the same professional level and in completely different departments.

In this instance, however, a romantic relationship was never fully formed between these two coworkers despite the fact that they both were flirting with each other constantly. Eventually, the author discovered more about her coworker's private life, and what she learned did not make her happy. It also wouldn't make her coworker's committed partner happy either.

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  • The good news is that the author never seemed to fall for this guy fully before she made her discovery. If anything, she managed to avoid complicating matters even further. Still, it must have been a challenge to learn that the person with whom she was spending the vast majority of her week had been hiding a pretty great detail about his personal life. 

    Sure, one could argue in his defense that he was keeping his personal life separate from his work life, as many employees do. However, considering the fact that he had been spending so much time with the author outside of work and given the semi-romantic nature of their happy hour meetups, she deserved to know this detail from the get-go. What do you all think would be the right course of action moving forward?

  • "My coworker lied about not having a girlfriend"

    Burner so my company doesn't find this. I (28F) work in the same office as my coworker (28M). We started becoming closer about 6 months ago when my other coworker switched offices, and
    via confusedcorporate8
  • now messaging and laughing all day during work turned into texting outside of work. In the past month we started having a beer (this is allowed at my office)
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  • just us two in the office after work, and staying about an hour late every day just talking and not even working sometimes. it's definitely a point in the day that we both look forward to and message about, and i've been excited to go into work most days.
    via confusedcorporate8
  • We've hung out a few times just us outside of the office until this past week, which was a company happy hour. We made plans to go to a bar after the happy hour, but
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  • he got multiple calls in a row while we were on our way to the second location and tried to blow them off as nothing while letting them ring. When we got to the bar, he stepped out to take a call and was so different after coming back in.
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  • Almost just after we got there he mentioned he thought we should get going, which was strange considering he seemed to be really excited about going out and staying late.
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  • At that point I had to ask, would anyone in your life be upset about just us hanging out? He eventually said "kind of". I guess that means he has a GF? Ngl i'm shocked. Obviously I need to pull back, but we sit next to each other at work. On top of this, I
    via confusedcorporate8
  • found out that he's been using a burner account to view my stories on Instagram. (if you try to log into the burner it will show the first and last characters of the email address- and both
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  • made tooo much sense not to be him lol). He's been texting me normally, but i'm so confused and have been a bit cold, how do I act around him?
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  • Two colleagues, one male and one female, collaborate on a laptop at work.
    via Vitaly Gariev

    Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

  • Here is an update from the author!

    This is an update to a story I (28F) posted in Dec. I ended up deleting it out of fear of anyone finding it originally, but I pasted it at the end of this post if you're interested.
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  • Summary of the old story- My coworker (28M) and I started going out for drinks just us two, and we'd consistently stay late after work just talking. As described in the post at the end, I
    via confusedcorporate8
  • thought he had a girlfriend based on the events after our happy hour. I pulled away and honestly felt really shitty about it, but I know it was the right thing to do. I stopped texting him and staying late most days.
    via confusedcorporate8
  • A lot of people were telling me to just ask him about it, but I felt like I couldn't do it in the workplace. But i did it!!! We went somewhere local for what i told myself would be the last time and I asked him directly, and he said he knew that was coming. He explained that he and his ex had been broken up
    via confusedcorporate8
  • since May and he's in a toxic situationship that he can't get out of, but that he wants to get out of. We talked for a while about all his struggles and I asked a lot of questions too. He seemed super open to talking about it now that he had finally told me.
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  • He said that he completely understood how I acted after the happy hour, and didn't know how to make it better for a while, but still tried. (small example- I came in Monday and there were pastries on my desk after i didn't text all weekend lol.) I told him
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  • that I couldn't do drinks after work anymore if she's in the picture and that I didn't want to do anything that would make anyone upset regardless of if they're in a relationship or not. I
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  • told him I'm not going to be messy lol. He told me that in his eyes we weren't doing anything wrong, but that he understood. This is where it gets not so great.
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  • I finally found her on social media. It's absolutely clear that he is still in a very committed relationship where he purchases her gifts and consistently goes on dates with her. I know they've even gone on trips together since
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  • the alleged break up. I got lied to my face for a straight hour, and i'm so gullible that I was feeling grateful for someone finally opening up to me. I want to make it absolutely clear I am not considering pursuing him in the slightest after knowing this. I just
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  • know he's going to put in the effort next week. What would you do in the situation? Any tips on how to navigate at work lol? or feel free to just share thoughts lol
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  • The_Art_Rat Tell him you know the truth and you found her social media and you suggest he better straighten up around you or anyone else he may get ideas about or you'll tell her everything
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  • carmackie ⚫ Wow, good job seeing the red flags immediately. Just protect yourself and pull as far away from the guy as you can. He's obviously a pathological liar, so that's scary.
    via confusedcorporate8
  • ikigrl • Glad to see that you spotted the red flag and stopped it before it got too deep for you. He's a scum bag and is looking for a side piece in the office, unfortunately you have to work with him. As an old hag in the corporate world, I've been there myself... My two cents here - You have a few choices:
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  • 1. make it completely professional from here on and stop all out of office hang out with the guy. No more water cooler chats, no more pastries, just stick to the documents you're working on. Or
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  • 2. Speak to your boss privately (if you have that kind of relationship with your manager) and quietly express you might want to move office. Be prepared to tell them what happened if you go this route and the potential fallout. Or
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  • 3. Reach out to his GF - which I personally think is a terrible idea professionally even if it feels like the moral thing to do something - like this could blow up in your face and you may end up needing a new job. Completely unfair I know, but if you go this route, things can go badly wrong.
    via confusedcorporate8

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terrible coworkers workplace-stories relationships happy hour human resources cheating boyfriend unprofessional toxic-work-environment
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