I’ve heard my entire life that you shouldn’t work at the same place as your significant other. I don’t believe that’s true at all. I’ve seen it be done and I have done it. It isn’t the ones in the relationship that ruin it… it’s the jealous coworkers.

Here’s a little short of how a couple jealous coworkers almost ruined my relationship.

I started a job where my boyfriend worked. He advised against it but I insisted. The hours were perfect, the pay was good, and I’d get to see my family more. Who wouldn’t want that??

My boyfriend and I decided to keep our relationship on the down low to avoid conflict. But that didn’t work. I soon wanted everyone to know I was one hundred percent in a relationship and here’s why.

It didn’t take long for the rumors to start. I heard I was trying to date one of the fork lift drivers, that I was a lesbian, that I had hooked up with men in other departments, and that I was showing my body to coworkers. It was completely ridiculous and it didn’t stop there. A women, lets say her name is Mary, was supposedly one of my boyfriends friends there and had been for years. Except she didn’t like me at all. She had apparently been trying to hook him up with different women over the years and was his wing woman. But when it came out that we were together, she wasn’t amused. If anything, she was mad. It was her job to pick up slack when things at work weren’t running the way they were supposed to be running. Was my slack ever picked up? Not a chance. I watched her actively avoid me countless times. This is the person my boyfriend claimed to be a friend? This is the one that was so eager for him to be dating someone? I’m glad I don’t have friends like that.

That was just the first one.

A few months later, I make a work friend. We’ll call him Derek. We worked in the same department and got along really well. If we happened to go on lunch or break at the same time, we’d sit together or at tables beside one another. It was not a daily thing and we didn’t go out of our way to do this. It happened just a few times a week but that was enough to get the rumors flying. The second woman, we’ll refer to her as Carrie. I had been warned about her but she seemed harmless. Boy, was I very wrong. She went around the entire building telling my boyfriend’s closest friends that I was cheating on him with Derek. She also went directly to my boyfriend. Take a guess at what happens next.

Bingo. All of those people go to my boyfriend saying that they heard that I have been cheating on him with this guy. When he appproached me at home about this, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. HE BELIEVED IT!! How?? We spend every second together and he always knew where I was and what I was doing. He was even with me most of the time! I didn’t even talk to Derek outside of work and he knew that!

For the next few weeks, my life was a complete mess. Not only did everyone at work think I was cheating on my boyfriend, my boyfriend belived everything he was hearing. In my opinion, he should have shut that sh*t down the moment he heard it and not even entertained it.

But Carrie made a huge mistake. She admitted to one of my fellow coworker friends that she made everything up. I wasn’t even surprised when this person came to me as soon as it happened and told me that she admitted to everything. I immediately went to my boyfriend with the new.

And guess what. He still believed the rumor because, “That’s just what everyone was saying.”

I could NOT believe what I was hearing. Even after Carrie admitted to trying to ruin our relationship, he STILL BELIEVED HER!

I continued having the occasional break or lunch with Derek. We sat on separate tables but still close enough to talk. My boyfriend approached me one day and said, “I see you’re still taking breaks with Derek. Don’t you think that looks bad?” I didn’t miss a beat and said, “Nope. Because nothing happened. And if you want to believe that it did, that’s your problem.”

It actually caused us to break up for a while. But I soon found out that Carrie was selling photos of her body to strangers and hiding it from her husband. I was just the one she chose to ruin because she wanted to take negative attention off of herself. Isn’t it such a great and fantastic world we live in??

To this day, a year and a half after all of this drama, I really do believe that my boyfriend at the time thinks I was hiding something from him and that hurts more than the rumors.

I want you to know that you aren’t alone when it comes to workplace jealousy. There are some real monsters out there disguised as decent coworkers.

Do you have horror stories about jealousy in the workplace? If so, I’d love to hear them!