I’ve been with my boyfriend, Jake, for five years. He’s worked at his current job for a few years, and until recently I’d never met any of his coworkers. One in particular—let’s call her Amy—has started to worry me.
Jake sometimes does favors for her, like fixing her car or things around her house. He told me all his coworkers were much older than him, so I didn’t think much of it. But one night while he was asleep, his phone kept blowing up. When I checked it to see who was calling, I noticed several unread texts from Amy. One of them said, “Great Jake, now everyone thinks we’re fucking! 😂”
I asked him about it the next day. He said they’d both been late to work and it was just a joke, but I told him it made me uncomfortable. He invited me out with his coworkers that night so I could meet her.
It didn’t help. Amy isn’t much older than him at all—and she’s very flirty. All night she touched him, leaned on him, put his arm around her, and even kissed him on the cheek like it was normal. They constantly teased each other in a very flirtatious way. She told me she “loves him like a brother,” then casually talked about sleeping with multiple coworkers and even getting someone to cover her shift after sending nudes.
Later she started crying at the bar about being lonely, and my boyfriend ended up comforting her. He acted like all of this was completely normal and that he wasn’t doing anything wrong.
I can’t ask him to cut her off—they work closely together—but I feel uncomfortable and honestly disgusted knowing this has been going on for years. I don’t know how to set boundaries when they’re forced to be around each other at work.
You are not imagining this, and you are not overreacting. What you are describing is not harmless coworker behavior. It is a pseudo-relationship happening right in front of you.
When someone is sharing physical affection, flirtation, private jokes with sexual undertones, emotional caretaking, and ongoing personal access with another person, they are stepping into relational territory. Those are not neutral behaviors. They are the same behaviors that build closeness, bonding, and attachment in real relationships. Whether he intends it to be romantic or not, the impact is that he is sharing emotional and relational space that belongs to you.
This is why “work wives” and “work husbands” are not cute. They are not funny. They are not harmless. They are a way people normalize emotional and flirtatious attachments that bypass the primary relationship while pretending nothing inappropriate is happening. They blur lines, invite intimacy, and slowly drain trust, all while giving the people involved plausible deniability. Over time, they create exactly what you are experiencing now: confusion, insecurity, and a quiet erosion of safety in the relationship.
Your nervous system is responding because something real is happening. You feel unsettled because your relationship is not being protected.
Working with someone is unavoidable. Behaving like they are your emotional partner is a choice. He cannot control where he works, but he can control whether he flirts, allows physical contact, engages in sexual humor, becomes her emotional support person, or maintains private texting that crosses relational boundaries. Right now, he is choosing comfort and convenience over actively protecting your relationship.
The conversation you need to have is not about her. It is about what you require in order to feel emotionally safe in this relationship. It sounds like this:
“I am not okay being in a relationship where my partner shares flirtation, physical affection, emotional closeness, and sexual humor with another woman. I need clear boundaries that protect our relationship, because I can’t stay in something that makes me feel replaced, dismissed, or unsafe.”
Then stop talking and pay attention to what he does next. His response won’t just be about this coworker—it will be about whether he is willing to protect the relationship he says he wants with you.