“How lucky I am to have something that makes saying good-bye so hard.”
I first heard the phrase “office spouse” when it was used in relation to me. Up until that point, I did not know that such a thing even existed, let alone that I was/had one. The circumstances in which this information was revealed to me were less than ideal – at a work function, to a senior lawyer within my ministry, who I was attempting to impress with my vast legal knowledge in the hopes that he would hire me to work in his office. This apparently caused concern to my (as of then unknown to me) office spouse who felt the need to announce to everyone within earshot that *I* was *his* office spouse.
The all-knowing Wikipedia defines “office spouse” as follows: ″Work spouse″ is a phrase referring to a co-worker, usually of the opposite sex, with whom one shares a special relationship, having bonds similar to those of a marriage. A ″work spouse″ is also referred to as ″workplace spouse″ or ″office wife″. This would be an accurate description of our relationship at that time.
I first met this office spouse in the summer of 2007 when I was eight months pregnant with Baby Chicken. Not the ideal circumstance in which to meet someone you are attracted to, particularly when you are already involved in another significant, complicated romantic attachment with the father of your unborn child. Boy Toy, as he came to be known amongst my friends, was smart, cute, funny, keen, and - hey! - what was up with that tongue piercing?!?!? Aside from the pierced tongue, in my mind he represented all the potential I had seen in my ex-husband in our younger years together. But Boy Toy was the real deal.
I remember he added me on Facebook while I was away on mat leave with Baby Chicken but, as with all of my best relationships, I am unable to recall how exactly our friendship evolved from there. Lunches, emails and, with the advent of the Apple iPhone, incessant iMessage conversations….. My attraction to him blossomed and our interactions developed a flirtatious tenor. *BUT* he was eight years younger than me (cougar much?!?) and I was in a position of authority towards him during his articling year. I was walking a fine line in some of my communications with him, often joking that some of our interactions were ample grounds for a future harassment claim on his part. But I trusted him implicitly, often confiding in him things that I told no other person.
When I was on mat leave with BoBo, Boy Toy began to date the woman who I sensed he would marry. At a Xmas party I attended for the sole purpose of seeing him, I asked him about this, suggesting to him that he had met the woman he was going to marry. He acknowledged that this could be true. A year and a half later I was hit out of the blue with a text message announcing their engagement.
And so our office marriage ended as his real life nuptials began. I cut off all contact with him. I removed his phone number from my cell phone so that I could never be tempted to text him, deleted him from Facebook so I couldn't see what was going on in his life, and ceased all social and office contact with him. It was very immature of me but my emotional attachment to him was strong. I don’t know what I expected was realistically going to come out of our flirtation – I was at this point rather happily married to the Dragon, now with two babies – but I could not handle the fact of his impending marriage. Looking back, I don’t know how I managed to exorcise him from my life or to continue the disconnection for so long. But I did. Our office decree nisi was granted and remained intact.
The lines of communication reopened only very recently when I was assigned my first homicide file. Faced with the choice of which lawyer I would chose as my junior, I cornered him in the hallway of the courthouse and asked him to work with me, telling him that he was the only person in the office who would not annoy the living daylights out of me. It was an offer he could not refuse.
A few weeks ago, Boy Toy came into my office, closed the door and sat down. I hope that my face did not belie the extent of my shock and my sadness when he announced that he would not be able to work with me on the homicide as he would be leaving the office in the fall, transferring to another office in a city far away, closer to his wife’s family, so they can find more affordable housing and start a family. While the timing of the announcement came as a surprise, I can’t say that it was unexpected as he had long since stated that it was not in his plans to stay at this office forever.
His impending move ends an eight year chapter of my life, one which has run almost as long as some of my “real” marriages. Yes it was premised in fantasy, yes it was fraught with drama and tension and frustration (the majority of which was my own creation) but he has been my close friend and my confidante. His presence in my life offered me stability when I could otherwise not find it. He helped fill the void which resulted from the end of my first marriage, and represented what I missed most about my former spouse in the early days of my divorce while I struggled to navigate my relationship with the Dragon. Oddly, I do not regret the years that I did not speak to him. While I had no problem skirting the bounds of propriety in relation to my own marriage, I never, ever wanted to do anything to compromise his. And the only way for me to ensure that was to cut off all contact with him. I am well aware that it is no coincidence that my relationship with the Dragon has solidified considerably in the time that I did not have contact with Boy Toy. Our marriage thrived without the distraction.
I have just come from what is going to be one of my last lunch dates with the Boy Toy. During lunch he told me a long story the moral of which was as follows – sometimes there are people in life who we like (or even love) but the timing is not right to be with them. (Did he see or understand the parallel to our relationship?) His story made me want to cry for I have often thought that had I met him at a different time and under different circumstances, our friendship might well have blossomed into all that I once wished it could have been.
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