I’m fast becoming the other woman to a friend of mine. I don’t like it, but I’m also incredibly lonely in a town where I’m an outsider in many ways, including that all my friends are married and seem to frequently forget that I exist, even when I regularly reach out. I’ve felt forgettable all my life, and have been craving the kind of attention he’s been giving me. I know he’s unhappy in his marriage – we’ve talked about it at length – and I try to gently redirect his compliments without accepting them, but I’ve never asked him not to compliment me in the first place and I’ve never drawn a hard boundary about it. He and I have fundamental differences that make us incompatible – he has kids, for example, and I don’t want kids – but it’s like I’m watching a train wreck. I feel dirty, like I’m disrespecting his wife, and in many ways, disrespecting him as a husband and father. Even so, I find myself looking forward to his texts, wondering if he’s thinking about me, wondering what it would be like if he put his hands on me, wanting to be with him alone and see what happens. I won’t, and I will draw boundaries, but damn if it’s not going to hurt a lot. And PS, we work together, so this s*** could get us fired on top of everything else. Major facepalm.