I asked my supervisor whether his girlfriend knew he was having an affair. He told me she didn’t. That answer removed the one explanation that might have made what I was seeing less troubling: that there was some arrangement I knew nothing about.
He is 35, and he has been with his girlfriend for four years. For roughly six months, he has also been involved with a woman we work with, who is 30. They arrive at work together and leave together. I know he takes her on dates. This isn’t a suspicion built out of one lingering look or a message I happened to glimpse.
Some of the details I’ve heard make the deception seem almost routine. Apparently, he tells his girlfriend he’s going to work, leaves home in his work clothes, then changes at our coworker’s place and spends the day with her. Eventually, he goes home. I keep getting caught on the changing of clothes: an ordinary part of getting ready, fitted into an entire day his girlfriend apparently knows nothing about.
At work, he also talks quite happily about his life with his girlfriend. He shares stories about where they go and what they do together. There’s no obvious break between the man describing that relationship and the man carrying on another one. I’m the person hearing both, struggling to put them together.
As I understand it, the coworker knows about his girlfriend. He has apparently told her he only wants sex. She is in love with him and believes he will eventually leave his girlfriend for her. Those are very different expectations to bring to the same affair. I don’t know what he says to her in private beyond what I’ve heard, and I can’t explain why she believes the ending will be different from the one he has described.
Then there’s his girlfriend, whom he says is unaware. I catch myself wondering how she hasn’t noticed, as if four years together should provide some reliable way to detect another relationship. But I don’t know whether she suspects anything. I don’t know what their evenings are like, whether they’re having sex, or what explanations she has been given. His claim that she doesn’t know is not the same as access to her thoughts.
The more unsettling question is how easily he seems to move between the two relationships. I can see the practical arrangements; I can’t see how he makes them feel acceptable to himself. Hearing him speak normally about his girlfriend while knowing about the affair makes that gap hard to ignore.
I’m considering telling her anonymously. She would have information about her own relationship that, according to him, he is deliberately withholding. If I were in her place, I would want to know. But anonymity doesn’t make the workplace part disappear. He is my supervisor, and getting involved could create a mess with someone who has authority over me. Staying out of it would avoid that intervention, while leaving her with whatever account of his days he chooses to give her.
I haven’t told her. So far, I’ve asked him a direct question and received a direct answer. He knows she doesn’t know. I still haven’t decided whether to tell her.
