Strange events with my co-worker

Hello,

So, I just want to tell you about some events with my tester (I mean, my co-worker, just I call him tester since I write computer programs and he tests them).

So, I started working with him about a year ago. I am young gay male in my 20s. He is also young male in his 20s, just straight with wife and kids.

Now, I would have to say that I am madly in love in him. I just think about him the whole day and just any mention of his name makes a big smile on my face. And I have been in love in him for almost a year now. Ever since I started working with him I felt it.

And the thing is, why I am into him so much is that he is nice to me. But I mean super super nice. He never said anything bad about me, he allways likes to joke, he complements me often in team meetings, he wants to help me with anything, whatever I ask, even if it is not his job, he allways laughs at my jokes more than the rest of the team, even at the stupid ones, he often smiles to me when we talk 1:1, he end our 1:1 calls with stuff like "take care, allright?" or something more personal than just "bye", we often chat in the work hours, or in the private time, sometimes even at night, also, we gave eachother some nice nicknames; I mean, I have a nickname which the whole team uses for me, but, with this guy it is special since he gave me another, private, one which only he uses. The same thing is with me. I gave him a private nickname.

So, all in all, he is super friendly like noone else is, and super nice.

And well, to tell you more about this chatting part, since it will be the focus of the question at the end.
So, as I said, we often chat at work and we talk about all sorts of things, mostly work-related, but often about private things too. We use our nicknames and, well, I often send him hearts or kiss emojis in my messages. Also we like to joke and to tease a little. This is especially true for me since i tease him quite a lot, and make quite a lot of jokes. He does the same to me, just he does it more rarely (like i do it 5 times to him and he does it once to me) and his jokes are a little more lightweight, if we can call them like that, mine are a little bit more hardcore, if we can call them like that. So, in all, we can say that I tease him more than he teases me. Also, some jokes of mine are a little sexual, perhaps a little perverted. Unlike his, which are not perverted.
Furthermore, I have been often very very nice to him, perhaps sometimes too nice and that can be interpreted as light flirting (what is what I intended it to look like). I try to give him signals that I am into him, just I did not specify it explicitely. Now I did not pick up any explicit signals from him either, but him being so nice and everything and emojis and jokes and compliments, it looks like to me like he likes me, and my company. Perhaps he did not intend to flirt, I do not know, but he surely likes this.


Now, I asked him many times, especially when I made some of the more, how should I put it, hardcore or sexual jokes, if he finds them disturbing or inapropriate. And he told me, no, he likes my jokes. And I said that some of my jokes might be stupid to what he replied that he likes stupid jokes...
I also asked him several times in this one year time span if he minds my messages in general and he said no, he said that it is pleasent to work with me for him and that I am free to ask him whatever and that he is ok with that. And, I also asked him if he is ok with me asking him personal questions, and he said that he is just fine.

So, everything seamed to be fine and I had no idea that something may be wrong. This similar form of conversation kept going for almost a year.



However, it turs out that I was very wrong with my assumption and that this was not fine like I thought it would be. After a year of very very nice time spent with this guy, he, for some, to me unexplainable, reason, decided to file a sexual harassment complaint to our team leader. Just all of the sudden, without any warning signs or anything what could made me think he does not like it. Especially because this type of little bit flirty conversation is going on for a year now without any problems. One would think that if he has a problem that he would do something a long time ago. But no. Also, I did not do anything sexual to him, I did not touch him, I did not ask him for sexual stuff, I did not ask for pornography or anything of this sort.

What is even stranger is that I unofficially found out about his complaint by other communications sources a few days before our team leader officially confronted me with this complaint, and, that day we were talking like usual and he was talking to me normally without any signs of problems. I then asked him if everything is ok between us two to what he replied, yea, everything is ok. And I asked him one more question one more time, if my messages bother him to what he said that they do not, just that he is sorry but sometimes he is too busy with kids to reply the same day. And that was it. That was after he filed a complaint.
Needles to say that the team leader was very mad at me after he got the complaint.




So, things went pretty bad pretty fast.
Why I am posting this here in psycho-reationship forum is to ask you what the hack is going on here?
Does anyone have an insight on how he thinks?
Why would anyone who does not like a communication style, sexually inclined jokes in particular, chose to bare with them for a year without a say?
And the most importantly, why would not he say to me, "no, I do not like this type of conversation"?
Why would he repeatedly be saying to me that he does not mind this?
Most importantly, why would he return heart emojis to me if he does not like it, or why would he be smiling to me every time we talked and complimenting me and using my nickname which he made up for me if he does not like a little bit flirty conversation?
What is even more strange is that he continues to talk with me like nothing happened even after he filed a complaint.

Although it is true that if you took some of my messages sent to him out of the context and read them, it might seam like sexual harassment, but, I claim that is it not since if you look at his reponses to those messages it is obvious that he liked them and did not mind me writing those stuff.

It looks alsmost as if he was trying to reinforce this behaviour of mine just to have enough material for a complaint.


Why would he do that?
Can anyone explain a psychology behind such unepected behaviour of his?
Am I really the bad guy in this story?

How should I respond to this complaint?
Should I fight and try to prove that he liked it and did not give me any clue that he does not like it?
Or should I just say, yea, allright, I am sorry, I will not do it again and just stop talking with him (other than the bare minimum we have to talk as our job positions of developer and tester require us to do)?

I would love to talk with him about this complaint to try to make sense of why he did this, but I was strictly forbidden by our team leader to ever mention this topic to the tester.

I simply can not understand, perhaps I am dumb when it comes to social interactions, why he did what he did. I spent hours thining through everything what happened between us and I can not understand a reason he had to do this.
Was he perhaps told to do so by someone. Also, I am not 100% sure that he was the one who filed a complaint; it might be that the team leader is monitoring our messages and he did it in his behalf. I do not know, but this, although unlikely, makes more sense than the guy with whom I have been such a good friend would do it.
Is it possible that he figured out that he likes this a little too much, in regard to his marital status, and that he wanted a quick way of ending my emotions toward him?

Also, I have to mention that we are not in any kind of superior-inferior relationship. I am just a worker like he is. So, I do not have any power over him. I would understand it if I were his boss, or if that was a young shy girl who would be afraid to say something and chose to rather say something to someone else. But we are both in the same rank. No power one over another. So he had no reason to be afraid especially since we have been so open to eachother for such a long time.

What I can not get is, why would anyone chose to lie about it for a year and pretend like everything is ok, pretend that he likes it just to handle this on such bad way, over simply telling me "hay, I am not confortable with sex jokes, so can you please cut it off" what would result in expressly resolving this problem, 1:1, without involving the whole team in our problems?

Can anyone explain this, please?

Hi.

That's quite a story. One thing that jumped out at me is that you do not know for sure if he was the one that filed the sexual harassment complaint or not. I have never been involved with such a thing, on either side, so I don't know how it is handled. Are you allowed to ask who files the complaint? Are you allowed to ask your friend if he files the complaint?

Office flirting or flirting-like is always complicated and should be avoided, regardless of who is involved. Since you seemed to talk to him as it went along, regarding whether or not he was comfortable with such things, it seems to me that he should bear some of the responsibility regarding how intense it got. On the other hand, some people have a hard time telling another person how they feel about things. But that doesn't seem to be the case.

It is not unusual for someone to be two-faced about how they treat a situation. For some, it could be that they are uncomfortable with confrontation, as I mentioned above. For others, it could be a way to exert mean-spirited control over someone, playing a sadistic game.

But you don't know if it is him. I can't say what you should do because there are pros and cons to any decision. If an apology is good enough and then they will drop the whole thing, maybe that's the way to go - and then tone down the banter with your friend. Or if you want vindication by proving that your friend participated in the flirting-like behavior, you could go that route. But if you don't know who did it, that could make things complicated.

Good luck.

Hi SYOBSYOT,

I'm sorry for what happened to you.

To the question : how should I respond to the complaint?

I would say : yea, allright, I'm sorry.

I would take some distance with him and the day he wants to talk, be open for talking, with no jokes.

I would try to avoid to involve colleagues more.

We don't know if he complained himself or some colleague, if he was influenced, if he is ambivalent. Of course if he didn't feel comfortable he should have talked to you. Maybe he didn't find the way to. Maybe the wife felt uncomfortable with messaging.

I think that, if possible, the best is to take some distance, internally and externally.

Thank you, Otter, for your reply.

Are you allowed to ask who files the complaint? Are you allowed to ask your friend if he files the complaint?

No, I did ask the team leader about who filed the complaint and he did not want to tell me. He told me that I can ask only if I am going to fight it, but this time he told me that he ignored it and that this is why he will not tell me who filed the complaint and that this is the reason why I am not allowed to ask the tester about it.

I figured out that it was probably the tester who filed it since the team leader described what was considered inappropriate, and I know for sure that there is one and only one person to whom I wrote such stuff. So that is how I know it is a tester.

But, one strange thing happened with the team leader more recently, when I wrote one message to the tester and an hour later the team leader called me and said that that message was inappropriate and he added that the tester was not the one who told him about that message, although he did not want to specify where then did he get that information. (The message was not inappropriate, by the way, all I wrote to the tester was something like "Sorry if some of my messages bothered you"). And the team leader considered that inappropriate since he told me that I am not allowed to ask the tester about it and this sentence inclines that I might be aware of the complaint. And that is pretty strange that the team leader requested that I do not mention this to the tester, effectively saying that I should pretend that I am not aware of the complaint.

That is pretty strange request.

But the strangest thing is how did he find about this "inappropriate" message if, as he says, the tester did not tell him about this latest message.

Which got me thinking...
What if the team leader is reading my messages. He has a password for my account, and I am not able to change that password, so, in theory, he could read my messages if he wanted.
And that means that it might really not be the tester who minds this communication, it may be the team leader; it might be that he filed the complaint in behalf of the tester.

So these new information only got me more confused.

If an apology is good enough and then they will drop the whole thing, maybe that's the way to go

It has already been dropped. No action will be taken regarding this complaint. Just instructions for me are very strange. I am not allowed to talk about it, including an apology, but instead I should silently stop with all flirt-like messages and sexually-inclined jokes when talking with the tester.
That seams like the team leader does not want the tester to know that I know about the complaint which can mean only two things:
Either the tester told him this in a confidence, as a friend to friend and requested him not to take any action, which might be if he is afraid of the confrotation, like you said, so he is asking me not to talk to the tester about it since that would give out the information to the tester that the team leader did told me about this anyway; or, the second option, the team leader read my messages and found this to be sexual harrasment and filed a complaint in behalf of the tester and he does not want me to talk to the tester about it, since if I do, I will find out that the tester is not the one who filed the complaint and I will then know that the team leader read my messages.

I can not remember of any other reason why would the team leader request me not to talk about it.

Thank you for your reply.

I think that, if possible, the best is to take some distance, internally and externally.

Yea, but that is extremely hard since he keeps being super nice to me and I keep being in love in him.

But yea, that would definitely be the best option. Given his marital status, that should be the only correct option to do.

Hello SYOBSYOT -

The Team Leader should not have told you it wasn't the Tester. If he is not going to tell you who it is he shouldn't have told you who it wasn't either. That said, I think his concern about using the company e-mail or discussing it on company time is correct. And yes, I think he probably has access to all e-mails used on their server.

If you contact the Tester off-hours and off the premises, privately (no company e-mail) then it becomes a personal and private matter for you and the Tester, the company should not be involved. The Tester can, at that time, assess his feelings about being contacted away from work.

But I realize this isn't just about logic and legal things, the heart is involved too. I know simply pulling the plug can't be easy. given your feelings for him. But I think whatever you choose to do (talk to the Tester) you should make sure it is done away from work. I'm not saying you should do this but if you need some sort of closure and you think the Tester would understand...


Good luck.

Hi SYOBSYOT,

The context sounds very confusing. Someone complained and you don't know who, someone reads your e-mails,

I would be very careful.

Take your time, take time to think. To observe. Whatever you do, no need to hurry.