Whenever people at work start saying how good my friend and my crush look together, I find myself watching her face. She blushes. She smiles from ear to ear. Everyone else seems to be enjoying a bit of harmless matchmaking. I’m trying to keep my heart from sinking in the middle of the department.
I’m single, in my early thirties, and I became close to this friend when I first started working there. He’s in his mid-twenties. Over time, he’s become one of those people everyone seems to like. The office doesn’t just want to find him a girlfriend; apparently, almost every single woman in the place deserves consideration. Unfortunately for me, that includes the woman I have a massive crush on.
I’ve been making an effort to talk to her every day. Nothing grand: I want to get closer to her, and I like seeing her smile. Those conversations matter to me because they’re my chance to know her a little better. Then I see how she lights up around him, and the small bit of hope I’ve been carrying suddenly feels embarrassing.
It would be easier to describe this as jealousy of a stranger. He isn’t one. He’s my friend, someone I got close to before all the matchmaking started hurting. The person I keep measuring myself against is also someone I’ve enjoyed being close to. That leaves me with a feeling I don’t particularly like having toward someone I like.
The comparisons come quickly. He’s younger, taller, more handsome. He outranks me and earns more. I can list all of that with an accuracy that would be useful if anyone had actually asked for a comparison. Nobody has. I’m the one lining us up and treating every difference as another reason she would choose him.
The attention from everyone else makes it harder to leave those thoughts alone. A private crush is already enough to overthink. An office full of people enthusiastically suggesting a different man turns it into something I keep encountering at work. Their comments don’t have to be aimed at me to land somewhere tender.
Her reaction is the part I can’t shrug off. The blush and that huge smile look like interest to me. They might be, but I don’t know what she wants, or whether she sees either of us that way. Still, watching those moments, I’ve started feeling rejected before there has been an actual rejection.
I went from wanting to talk to a woman I like to wondering what I lack beside another man. That shift has made it difficult to enjoy the connection I’m actually trying to build. Even an ordinary conversation with her now has this comparison hanging over it, although she hasn’t asked me to measure myself against anyone.
I want some perspective, and I want to stop feeling inadequate. I’m also trying to work out how to move on from a crush I still see at work. For now, I’m still making those daily efforts to talk to her, while the rest of the department keeps finding reasons she and my friend would make a lovely couple.
