A couple of years ago, I changed jobs. I was very pleased with the change and it was a big career opportunity for me. It gave me a whole new level of psychological energy and self esteem after a quite stressful and mentally unhealthy period in my previous job. My new job was as a manager in an organisation that I had been working with externally in my previous position. Therefore, already before I started, I knew many of the people in my new organisation - at least superficially - including many of the colleagues I was now going to work closely with.
One of my new close colleagues, Eliza, was a woman my age who had previously held the position I was now taking over, but who was now managing another unit in the same department. I had had some contact with her before and had the impression she was a bit grey, dry and boring and had been much more focused on technical aspects of the job than I thought was appropriate.
In the beginning, when I had just joined the organisation, I had some recurring conflicts with her. I found that she had too many opinions on how I did my job and I generally found that she was an obstacle in several areas where I wanted to make my mark on things. My staff, some of whom had also worked for her previously, equally harboured some not too hidden resentments against her, which was also feeding my general antipathy.
However, I gradually changed my opinion of her quite profoundly as time went by. I realised that she usually had very good points, when she suggested something else than I did. I also realised that she was very smart. And I understood that she was quite ambitious on behalf of her staff and the organisation and actually was trying to make good decisions. At some point I realised that she was actually also trying to help me in her odd ways and I decided that I wanted to learn as much as I could from her. Of course she also had flaws, including not paying much attention to other peoples' feelings, which probably explained why my staff weren't that enthused with her. But it also goes to show that the idiocy about first impressions lasting is pure nonsense.
On closer acquaintance she was not boring at all. Well, she was maybe also not bubbling. But she had her moments where I truly appreciated her dry sense of humour and sarcasm. And I began enjoying making her laugh. She had long blonde hair in a pony tail and wore very large glasses in the fashion of the time. She was a little bit chubby, but she was quite sexy. The glasses helped that, as well as the fact that she almost always wore high heels, cute dresses and pantyhose. I began to enjoy listening to her and I was probably gazing at her in meetings. I liked her body figure and I liked watching her talk.
As a middle aged manager, I was myself of course no particular prize regarding looks. With 43 years and a recent age-related-metabolism-change chubbiness of my own, a generous description would have been that I had a "dad body". However, between the chubbiness, my hairyness including a full beard and thick, dark eyebrows and my short stature, I can't exclude I had a certain bearish ruggedness that some women could find attractive in lack of better. Especially for those who also liked sprinkles of grey hair.
Eliza and I sort of developed a friendly competition to do best in the meetings among the managers in the department in terms of impact on decisions and the level of positive attention from the department head. Well at least I developed a friendly competition with her. She was far ahead of me to begin with, because of her experience in the organisation, but little by little, I felt more and more like I caught up with her to the point where I began feeling like a close second; Still clearly behind her, but ahead of each of the other among the handful of managers in the department. At least that was how I perceived things, but I can't say that this was necessarily how the others perceived it. This progress - in my own opinion at least - I owed very much to the inspiration she gave me and what I was now learning from her.
I was enjoying her company more and more as a friend, I thought. I was not really sure whether she felt the same. But I sensed that she was in general opening up a bit. Maybe that had something to do with me, but it could easily be any number of other reasons. I was never the one to overestimate my own impact on others.
In any case, we began having regular coffee meetings with no agenda in particular and talked about both work and private matters. She was - as I - married and with two small kids. I sensed that she - as I - was experiencing the typical marriage rut at that point, where any sense of romance or relationship excitement had long ago been consumed by everyday tasks, wiping runny noses, and kids vrashing into the bedroom at night. Eliza and I usually met in her office, which was slightly more out of the way than mine and with an unobstructed view over the habour, which in those years was in the process being transformed from an industrial area into high-priced condos and shops.
Some time passed like this, without me realising that I was in fact developing romantic feelings for her. But then at some point, when she was busy with a project of her own, I didn't see her for a couple of weeks, and then it hit me: I missed her. Like I would miss a crush back in the days before serious relationships and marriage. When I saw her again, it was with this new perspective, and I hardly knew how to behave. But we soon fell into the same easy-going pattern, joking and laughing. I may have been imagining this, but I sometimes got the impression that she too was slightly nervous around me, like I had become around her.
Then things started changing. At one point in one of our coffee meetings, her foot accidentally touched mine under the table. Instead of retracting it, she kept her foot resting on top of mine, while we continued to converse. We were never ones to hug or touch each other before, so this very small gesture seemed to hold some significance. It greatly excited me, and I couldn't stop thinking about it afterwards. However, I was very careful not to overreact. This was a sensitive matter, the two of us being already married and not otherwise on the verge of separating or divorcing. But she repeated the foot game again, so I figured it could not have been accidental. It must have been a signal and a question, I convinced myself. I too had to signal back. I sat closer to her in our next coffee meetings - to her one side rather than across from her - and at one point, when she had her hand placed palm down on the table next to her coffee mug, I placed my hand next to hers, the two hands just touching. She didn't remove it. I don't know how I was managing to keep up the regular conversation. This was very exhilarating.
From there it was pretty clear what was going on. It didn't take long before we kissed. This was in her office in another coffee meeting. It had to be quick as there was the risk of being caught or raising suspicion. She tasted sweet and smelled flowerly. It was a wonderful sensual kiss. What a surprising turn of events from a beginning like that. Again, it goes to show that those around us may hide an interesting inner world on their own despite whatever first impressions they make.
We actually didn't speak about the new situation. We simply lived it and continued our conversations and cooperation on different projects as before. But we would instinctively switch from intellectual to physical mode when alone and done with the most urgent conversation topics, as if syncronised. But we only kissed and touched and didn't at first do anything more. That would have required a lot more planning and a more explicit agreement on what we were actually doing. Besides the kissing and the cuddling - I lived for the way she would let her fingers slide from below my ear, across the back of my neck and down across my back - she would place her hand on the front of my pants, and I would gently cup her breasts on the outside of her dress. Her breasts felt so firm and round and warm. This was pure teenage joy relived. It was so sexy to make out with her like this.
