'AITA for checking with my coworker to make sure we’re just friends?'

"AITA for checking with my coworker to make sure we’re just friends?"

So I (31M) started a new job in March of last year. Up to this point, I worked in solely male-dominated industries (I’m talking like 95%), but my first couple days on this job I quickly realized the ratios were going to be the exact opposite.

I only say this to say outside of my wife and family, I never made any friends that were women as an adult. In comes my new coworker Ashley (34F). She wasn’t my direct supervisor, but we had weekly one on one meetings and slowly hit it off from there.

Ashley began initiating conversations with me on Slack fairly frequently. First it was just about work but it quickly got personal as she began sharing pictures of herself, her husband, her dog, etc. Instant red flag for my wife, but I just assumed she was over friendly. Nothing she talked about was out of line or even flirty.

After a couple weeks we began chatting just about all day at work and conversations began to get exceedingly personal (politics, religion, family issues, etc.) I assumed this was all normal for women to share with their friends and I’m a pretty open guy. A couple months in though,c myself.

Ashley sent me multiple pictures of herself in a hotel room dressed up, she started sharing even more deeply personal info, she started texting me outside of work, the frequency of messages rose, she initiated nearly every conversation, etc...

At this point my wife had accepted our friendship, because I assured her it was purely platonic and she has no reason not to trust me but I decided to talk to my sister to get her opinion.

I told her about our friendship and she said it sounded more like a romantic relationship than platonic. Now this was not all one sided, as I did enjoy talking to her and saw her as a friend. I didn’t have to respond to her texts outside of work but I did.

With that being said, I decided to send her a text saying I was worried our friendship might be giving off the wrong impression and I wanted to know her thoughts. She responded saying said she had never thought about it and it’s been fun talking about work but wasn’t sure what I was even asking.

I decide to say we should stick to chatting about work for now because it felt like a really weird way to respond to a friend wanting to have an honest conversation. I had no ill will and intended to talk with her the next day in our one on one.

She proceeded to cancel that meeting and has essentially refused to talk/slack/email with me one on one in any capacity for the last month. We were in person for a meeting together and she walked the other direction as I walked towards her. I’m not sure if she thinks I’m going to report her to HR or what.

The problem is we are still working on a very large project together and I feel like this dynamic is not beneficial to the team or the project. AITA for just checking in on where we’re at?

Here's what people had to say to OP:

lovebombme2u said:

You need to be on a management forum. This isn't the audience you want to judge. (30 years mgmt experience). I think you handled it badly. These conversations are never done over text or even the phone.

Rule of thumb...bad news, sensitive conversations...always in person. You can text accolades...but don't try to resolve anything via text. You basically blamed her by saying that "you should stick to chatting about work"...and changed the rules. They way she answered was fine.

This is why you don't do this over text. Talk to her in person. Also, avoiding you isn't helping and shows she's hurt and lacks maturity. Next time, just slowly back off ... or better yet, never get in this situation to begin with.

ImaginaryPark6311 said:

You might want to get ahead if this with HR, before she does, if she hasn't already.

omgmimiso said:

NTA if she is now ignoring you she either got her feelings hurt which is another red flag btw cause a casual friend would not take hurt to your question or she thinks you would report her to HR which shouldn’t matter to her unless she feels she was cruising a line with you out was planning to.

HR isn’t going to serve consequences for platonic text messages so my thought is she thinks she she’s crossed a line or was wanting to.

Bog-Mallow said:

NTA she was being very inappropriate and is now being very immature. Serious red flags as to her mental stability. This could have damaged your marriage if it had continued but you now need to see HR in case she tries to turn it on you.

ServelanDarrow said:

The issue here is your skewed idea of friendship not being compatible with marriage. YTA.

International-Fee255 said:

YTA. Basically you've been having an emotional affair with a coworker and your playing innocent. You need to speak to HR about this to cover your back. From now on, stick to work only with coworkers.