Conflicted

In some ways, I'm a different person at work. At work I am surrounded by individuals who are involved, to some degree, in the same profession. Our interactions are based on the fact that we all work in the same place and need to communicate in order to complete our tasks. There are some individuals that I consider friends but during the work day, we 'hang out' only for short increments of time if we are bullshitting and are usually involved in some work-related 'thing.' At home I do not talk about credentials, accreditation, client satisfaction, provider abrasion, dead lines, projects, etc. I don't talk about work too often, I hope, when I'm at home.

This is all and well and, I'm sure, very common. Aren't we all generally at least a little different when we are in the office? No matter how 'individual' or 'unique' you might think you are, no matter how much you want to say "I'm so myself ALL the time", you behave differently. Disagree? OK, when is the last time you were in a meeting and farted openly and not by accident but just because you had to? I make my point.

The one problem with having two different worlds is when you have a dilemma in one that cannot be discussed in the other, and that is what I've come across just now. There is something at work that makes me uncomfortable and I don't like it but I can't talk about it with J or my friends because you can't totally grasp the situation unless you work at my company. And I can't talk about it with people at work because it would feel wrong, like 'bad' gossiping, a breach of trust, or I don't know, just wrong some how. How do I make this clearer? OK, let's pretend I had a problem with J. Let's say I found out that he was looking at web-sites that featured naked photos of his male students (he would never do that and this has nothing to do with him, I just needed an example). He isn't cheating on me (people look at porn, deal with it, it doesn't hurt a relationship unless the porn is a home video of your spouse diddling someone else), the site is legal (the students are 18 and above OK? And they all signed releases), and it is a public site, not e-mailed photos. I would be very uncomfortable with this and before I brought it up with him, I'd want to get some perspective.

What would I do? I certainly wouldn't ask anyone at work, not even Birdie, who I consider a bonafide friend. Why not? Because she wouldn't really understand the whole picture. No one would outside of my relationship with J just because I feel you would need to have put in the time (7 years this May) in order to understand who he is as an individual as well as who he is in respect to me (and vice verse, switch he with I and then fix the verbs). Also, I think you'd have to be or have been, through something very similar to really understand. And I'd have to understand my own feelings before I could talk to anyone. Would it bother me? I don't know. It doesn't bother me if he watches porn so why would it bother me if he looked at pictures of naked young men? Would it make a difference if they were his current or former students? Would I be uncomfortable if I found out he was bi sexual? Would I feel threatened or question my femininity? I have no idea.

I think you get my point. Happily, this has nothing to do with J or my marriage and is situated absolutely in the work place. But I can't talk about it with J because he doesn't understand all of the little intricacies of my office or my work and he doesn't know the people the way I do. And he wouldn't understand how I could be conflicted about an issue simply because it came up at work when in other circumstances I'd have no trouble saying 'this is how I feel about this.' And I can't talk about it with my friends because with the exception of one, they don't really understand what it is I do. I can't even put it here because there are some people I work with who might read this and, well, like I said above, it just wouldn't be right.

It is, as the British say, a bit of a sticky wicket. Very annoying too.