I've just now started an account here because I could use some insight from people who understand polyamory to give me honest and truthful thoughts.
I've been in an open marriage for 14 years now. My wife and I have very well rooted with understood guidelines for the relationship between us that includes freedom to pursue other relationships so long as we are honest with each other and our partners, ensuring that they are honest with theirs to ensure that the relationship between the two of us is our primary relationship amongst all others. Since the beginning of our marriage, my wife has had 3 other partners besides myself and I have had 2. Of all of these "external" relationships the only one that ended on principle was one of mine because the other woman had no interest in being honest with her husband about the nature of our relationship together and so I made a conscious decision to end it despite my physical attraction to her. The only purpose of this previous paragraph is to establish that I've had what I consider a successful marriage in an open lifestyle to date and that's not the focus of what I need to talk about.
Anyways, here's the situation I'm in that I could use some independent thoughts about. There is a woman with whom I've started to have feelings for. Simple enough on the surface, but she's someone I work with. For the first year and a half I worked at the company I'm at, I kept my feelings for her strictly professional because our working relationship was too close to let anything else interfere with that. However, about 6 weeks ago, I received a promotion involving moving to an entirely different department that professionally separated me from having anything to do with the work that she does. I'm clear on the fact that our friendship has continued after our professional separation as we've continued to have casual interactions afterwords at a friendship level completely independent of professional/business necessity. I'm also clear on the fact that my attraction to her is entirely on the intellectual/spiritual basis as opposed to lustful front, which has made this a challenging issue for me to figure out how to deal with. She has (as far as I know) not been in a relationship with anyone for many years (she's not exactly even close to what society considers physically beautiful). Further, I don't know where she stands religiously/morally on the concept of polyamory and I'm highly concerned about how I could approach her on the fact that I am interested in her without risking damaging our friendship if her view is not the same as mine. She knows I'm married and how much my wife and my children mean to me. She is single and has been living with a gentleman that is maybe 5 years older than myself for about 4 years (I'm about 8 years older than her). However, she has been living with this person because of finances and convenience and I'm fairly well convinced that there is no relationship between the two of them (to avoid giving too much details, she does work outside of her day job on the property owned by this person in exchange for rent and getting to use part of his property for her own purposes). Whether she has any romantic interest in me or not, I'm highly interested in helping her be a successful person in her professional career. She is an amazing woman who has all the qualities to become a highly successful woman in the male dominated business world. I'm in a position to help her and regardless of her feelings towards me, I'm interested in seeing that I do what i can to help her because while I have more experience than her, her innate brilliance is inspiring to me. So with that limited information, any thoughts about how I could approach this sensitive topic with her?
I've been in an open marriage for 14 years now. My wife and I have very well rooted with understood guidelines for the relationship between us that includes freedom to pursue other relationships so long as we are honest with each other and our partners, ensuring that they are honest with theirs to ensure that the relationship between the two of us is our primary relationship amongst all others. Since the beginning of our marriage, my wife has had 3 other partners besides myself and I have had 2. Of all of these "external" relationships the only one that ended on principle was one of mine because the other woman had no interest in being honest with her husband about the nature of our relationship together and so I made a conscious decision to end it despite my physical attraction to her. The only purpose of this previous paragraph is to establish that I've had what I consider a successful marriage in an open lifestyle to date and that's not the focus of what I need to talk about.
Anyways, here's the situation I'm in that I could use some independent thoughts about. There is a woman with whom I've started to have feelings for. Simple enough on the surface, but she's someone I work with. For the first year and a half I worked at the company I'm at, I kept my feelings for her strictly professional because our working relationship was too close to let anything else interfere with that. However, about 6 weeks ago, I received a promotion involving moving to an entirely different department that professionally separated me from having anything to do with the work that she does. I'm clear on the fact that our friendship has continued after our professional separation as we've continued to have casual interactions afterwords at a friendship level completely independent of professional/business necessity. I'm also clear on the fact that my attraction to her is entirely on the intellectual/spiritual basis as opposed to lustful front, which has made this a challenging issue for me to figure out how to deal with. She has (as far as I know) not been in a relationship with anyone for many years (she's not exactly even close to what society considers physically beautiful). Further, I don't know where she stands religiously/morally on the concept of polyamory and I'm highly concerned about how I could approach her on the fact that I am interested in her without risking damaging our friendship if her view is not the same as mine. She knows I'm married and how much my wife and my children mean to me. She is single and has been living with a gentleman that is maybe 5 years older than myself for about 4 years (I'm about 8 years older than her). However, she has been living with this person because of finances and convenience and I'm fairly well convinced that there is no relationship between the two of them (to avoid giving too much details, she does work outside of her day job on the property owned by this person in exchange for rent and getting to use part of his property for her own purposes). Whether she has any romantic interest in me or not, I'm highly interested in helping her be a successful person in her professional career. She is an amazing woman who has all the qualities to become a highly successful woman in the male dominated business world. I'm in a position to help her and regardless of her feelings towards me, I'm interested in seeing that I do what i can to help her because while I have more experience than her, her innate brilliance is inspiring to me. So with that limited information, any thoughts about how I could approach this sensitive topic with her?