Take One For the Team?

Let me preface the story with a general observation. Whether you and in the gender majority or minority in your office/industry, there are bound to be some awkward interactions with coworkers of the opposite sex. As previously mentioned I am the only non-married female developer (out of about 50) in the company and often find myself struggling to identify with my colleagues around the water cooler. While most of the development executives are married, my associate colleagues are not. The associate I work most closely with is a guy who is two years older than me but we are very different. While I am the gregarious extravert, he is the more tacit, all-business counterpart. When I first started working with him, we were slow to talk about our lives outside the cubicle. But that all changed when we started riding 50 miles together out to the construction site from the corporate office on a daily basis. We had to open up and talk social. I learned that he has been dating his college girlfriend for three years now and they are quite serious (surprise – a serious guy in a serious relationship…who would have thought?!) At the time I had also been dating a guy for about a year so it was a nice comfort, buffer zone. We would ask about our respective significant others and then run out the clock with construction jibber jab until we got to the site. So when my boyfriend and I broke up less than a month into starting my job, I feared that my new fragile bond with my coworker might also be shattered if I told him that my relationship had ended. SO, I pretended that I was still in a relationship for about three months post-breakup until we were more socially established. Worth it?