No contact wasn’t possible because we work together
TwoWeeklyMeetings · Posted 7 Sep 2026, 07:25
I’m 46 and I ended an 18-month situationship with a woman I work with earlier this year. We are not in the same team, but our jobs overlap. There are two meetings a week where we both need to be present and probably half a dozen emails a month that genuinely require an answer from the other person. Changing jobs was not realistic for either of us. That became my excuse for why no contact was impossible. At first we said we would keep things professional. Within three days she sent me a message after a meeting saying I looked tired. I replied that I hadn’t slept. She asked if I wanted to talk. By lunchtime we were discussing the relationship again and by Friday we were back at her flat. Nothing had changed. She still did not want a committed relationship and I still did. We had simply found a route back in that looked responsible because it began with work. We repeated this twice. Every time, the first message was technically innocent. A question about a client. A joke about somebody talking for too long in a meeting. Then one of us would ask how the other was really doing and the whole thing would reopen. In April I wrote down what contact was genuinely necessary. Work email about shared projects: necessary. Speaking in meetings: necessary. Messaging privately after a difficult call: not necessary. Lunch alone because it would be awkward to say no: not necessary. Checking whether she had gone into the office that day: definitely not necessary. I told her I was going to keep our communication to work channels and work content for three months. I did not ask her to agree that it was the right thing. I just explained what I would be doing. The first few weeks were horrible. I became absurdly alert to her voice on calls. If she sounded cheerful, I wondered who she had been with. If she sounded flat, I wanted to ask whether she missed me. I drafted messages in my notes app and deleted them. But the boundary eventually became boring, which was exactly what I needed. We could discuss a deadline without it becoming a discussion about us. I stopped hanging around after meetings in case she stayed. I moved our chat out of my favourites and turned off the little notification preview that showed her name. Nothing dramatic happened. She did not suddenly realise she loved me. I did not stop caring overnight. Work simply stopped being the loophole through which we kept restarting the relationship. It has been five months now. Last week we were both at a colleague’s leaving drinks. We spoke in a group for a while, then I went home without manufacturing a reason to message her afterwards. That felt bigger than it sounds. I used to think no contact only counted if somebody vanished completely. For me it meant removing emotional access while allowing the boring, necessary contact to remain boring and necessary. I still wish the relationship had been different. I just no longer use a calendar invitation as evidence that it might become so.
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I would be careful about calling those first personal messages innocent. After the pattern restarted twice, both of you knew what a private check-in could reopen. Keeping the boundary explicit seems more honest than relying on good intentions.
Honestly, the boring-boundary part is the whole thing. Work contact stayed work contact. You did not need a dramatic vanishing act; you needed fewer loopholes.
Seeing his car at work would make the boundary much harder, but your example shows why keeping every exchange practical matters. A polite conversation does not have to become emotional access again.
Moving her chat out of your favourites sounds tiny, but it removed one of the automatic routes back into watching for her. The boundary worked because it changed the ordinary details, not because you suddenly stopped caring.
That “innocent” Slack question is exactly the kind of loophole the post describes. Writing the personal message in your notes instead may help you keep necessary work contact from reopening everything.
What did she say when you explained that contact would remain strictly professional? Her response matters less than whether you maintained the boundary, but I am curious whether she understood the work channel could no longer lead back into the relationship.
Did you mute or remove her on personal social media as well? Necessary work contact can stay contained while tagged photos and private updates still reopen the emotional access you were trying to close.
Going home after the leaving drinks without creating a follow-up message is such a specific sign of change. The contact itself was unavoidable; the old second conversation was not.
The messages drafted in your notes stood out to me. You allowed the urge to exist without making it her responsibility to settle it, which seems different from pretending necessary work contact meant you should feel nothing.
The list of necessary and unnecessary contact is so practical. You did not pretend work could vanish; you stopped letting ordinary work messages become an automatic route back into the relationship.
Keeping the boundary boring sounds simple, but the post shows how many small choices it required. Going home after the leaving drinks without creating a private follow-up was a meaningful test of it.
The repeated restarts show why necessary work contact needed a narrower definition. Keeping project messages practical allowed the boundary to survive without pretending that colleagues could disappear from each other’s working lives.
Keeping work communication inside work channels is such a clear boundary. It removes the emotional loophole without pretending that colleagues can disappear from each other’s professional lives.
Working together created repeated opportunities to restart the connection, but it does not prove either person was merely convenient. The useful part is how they separated required professional contact from emotional access.
Changing a repeated pattern after five months is still meaningful. The post is not claiming a grand achievement; it shows how a specific boundary made unavoidable contact manageable.
Working together made a clean disappearance impossible, and it took repeated attempts to identify the loophole. Limiting communication to necessary work allowed both people to do their jobs without constantly reopening the relationship.
The part about work becoming a loophole was very clear. Keeping necessary contact boring sounds less dramatic than disappearing, but probably required more discipline.
Seeing his name on Slack would make the boundary much harder. The distinction between necessary work contact and emotional access is useful, especially when complete no contact is impossible.
The five months were not simply a failure to behave professionally. He was trying to separate necessary work contact from the emotional access that kept restarting an eighteen-month relationship, and that took practice.
Tracking every change in her mood would keep the connection alive even without private messages. The useful shift here was learning to respond to the work in front of him without treating her tone as information about their relationship.
Sharing a desk makes a clean break impossible, but it does not make every form of contact necessary. The poster’s list of work-only contact might be useful to adapt to your situation.