Dear Luv Doc,
I’ve been reading your work for a few years now, and I come to you with a humble offering. I started my first job around four years ago, working for a company no one will care about. The important bit of this story is that I very quickly grew to have a crush on one of my co-workers. As a few revolutions around the sun passed me by, I found myself growing closer to her, gradually understanding the very strong feelings I’d had developed. Long story short, these emotions could never be communicated, mostly out of cowardice on my part, and she moved out of the state about two years ago. A few months before she moved, a different co-worker of mine asked me out, we went on a few dates, and now we are in a healthy relationship of over a year. The thing is, I occasionally think about my first crush, and the emotions that I felt for her come rushing back. Every time this happens it feels like getting hit by a pile of bricks, and I wonder if I’m doing something wrong by not telling my current girlfriend. Mr. Doc, this is an unfair question. Am I a bad person, and what is the correct course of action?
Best regards, Paul
You sound pretty normal to me Paul … well, except the bit about how you went on a few dates with this co-worker and now you’re in a relationship of over a year? For the sake of maintaining my loose grasp on reality I am going to assume you didn’t just go on two dates and then – poof! – you were in a long-term relationship. You have a job, so there’s no way you’re in third grade. I choose to believe you went on at least a baker’s dozen dates, each one successively more enthralling than the previous. You tried a variety of sexual positions – some of which would make a porn star blush – and arrived at a compromise that didn’t make you act all weird the next day at work … because you both agreed that there was no need to be even more annoying to your co-workers than you already were. That’s what I choose to believe, because your explanation sounds bonkers. “Did you hear about Paul from accounting? Went on two dates and then bam! He was tied down for over a year.”
I know you’re probably thinking that I’m focusing on the wrong thing here – that I’m getting tied up in the minutia, but not so. “Facts matter,” as so many politicians and pundits opine these days about getting firehosed with such a torrent of outrageous lies and misinformation you can barely hear them shouting into the microphone. Well, here are the facts of your story as I see them: You started work at this “company nobody cares about,” which, between you and me, seems like code-speak for SpaceX. There you met a hot co-worker (Let’s call her co-worker #1) and, after two years of knowing her on a mostly – perhaps entirely – professional basis, you developed a deep, unrequited, uncommunicated infatuation for her. She moved out of state and did not do you the favor of taking your feelings with her.
Co-worker #2, with whom you have a “healthy” relationship for over a year, is actually down in the trenches with you, both domestically and professionally, showing her complete ass, as it were, day in and day out. Yes, you may still have some illusions about her, but you’ve taken a really long test drive, so you basically know what you’re getting. There is no way she can compete with co-worker #1 because co-worker #1 at this point exists entirely in your imagination, and I imagine she is a lot closer to perfect. I bet she is enthusiastic about and skilled at all 64 positions of the Kama Sutra and she probably doesn’t even have bad breath when she wakes up in the morning. What a catch! The classic “two in the bush” scenario.
Here’s the deal, if you’re truly twisted up about the one that got away: If it’s actually affecting your ability to be present and engaged with the person you’re currently in a relationship with, yes, the right thing to do is to tell her, blow everything up and catch the next plane to Iowa or Alabama or wherever the object of your true affection is so you can profess your undying love. But, before you buy that ticket, let me suggest that you try looking at your current relationship in terms of what you’ve gained and not by the fictional relationship you’ve given up.
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This article appears in July 3 • 2026.
