I’m not sure what went wrong, and I don’t know where to begin. Like most stories this is a complicated one, but it also could be that I’m over-thinking things. The only reason why I’m even attempting to share this story is because I’ve witnessed the amount of wise and intelligent support this community provides, and I’m wondering if it could help me as well.

I work in an industry that attracts highly neurotic people. Very driven, overachieving, cold-blooded perfectionists that do all that they can to keep their jobs and get paid exorbitant amount of bucks. Coming out of college, this culture bewildered me–mostly because I couldn’t relate to the people I worked with. There were the insecure managers that were on mad firing-sprees all the time. Then there were the incompetent ones that kept on creating unnecessary work for others to do for them, and refused to listen to any other mode of execution. Then of course, there were the over-qualified, highly cerebral alpha males/females that were bad communicators and didn’t feel as though anything anyone did was good enough for them.

After going through a chain of extreme types of personalities, one day I finally met a wonderful manager. This person was ‘sane.’ No, completely nice and genuine of a person. It was almost surreal. I’ve never met anyone that tried to invest so much in me, in terms of time and effort. I was on cloud nine, and was motivated more than ever. But I still had my guard up; you never know when people’s true colors might show. I guess my cold, professional behavior took him by surprise–and I noticed that he had taken it a bit personally. He inquired why I wasn’t making an effort to get to know him or his colleagues on a more personal level. I was pleasantly surprised, and explained that in the past it did me no good to really get close to a colleague–that managers have hurt their employees, turned their backs on them, etc. He understood what I meant, and said that this team was different, and that they had each other’s backs.

Long story short, a few more conversations took place since then where he revealed some other things that I have said or done that he had taken personally. I was confused; I’m not usually an offensive person, why was he taking things that I was saying and doing so personally? I found myself explaining my actions and words over, and over, and over again to him. Discussion around work rarely took place; it usually had to deal with what I had said to him, or done. I thought, maybe I’m insensitive for him–so then I tried to go an extra mile to be nice. But it was only a matter of days before he found another reason to be angry about. The final tipping point was when he was giving me a cold shoulder all day (he’s very passive aggressive)–and when I approached him to ask if something was wrong–he bursted out in fits of anger. Of course my natural response was trying to explain myself (once more), to which he cut me off and said: “I’m not having this conversation right now.” And then he got up and left.

I thought to myself, this guy is out of his mind! How unprofessional and immature. Next day, he didn’t even show up for work. Instead, he emailed and chatted me a few times a day–continuously apologizing for being out of the office because he was “sick.” He was over-compensating for his behavior without really saying sorry for what he had done to me. I just acted normal and kept our interaction minimal. Two weeks later, when I thought things had cooled down, I tried to open up the subject. I said, so are you still angry about that whole incident–I want you to know I didn’t mean it in an xyz way. I was expecting an apology, but instead he took a completely different approach: “I stormed out that one time because you were giving me the snobbiest look.” My mouth dropped. “I’m a patient manager so I’m listening to you right now, but normally you shouldn’t be defending yourself and giving explanations like this.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. He continued: “And when something like that happens, a bad manager would ignore their employee, but because I’m not like that I kept our communication going.” I just nodded and didn’t respond, but in the back of my head I thought to myself–okay this guy is DEFINITELY crazy. No more communicating with this guy.

But here’s the problem: I am hurt, and I feel shut down. Whenever you try to explain yourself to someone, it means you care about what they think. It means you are emotionally investing in the person. And by having done this over the course of several months, I realize now how much I had invested in my relationship with him. I actually found out recently after that him and his fiance was going through a very rough time. So maybe he was letting it out on me, but too embarrassed to admit it. Either way, I am very disappointed that he turned out to be this way–the once caring, genuine manager that I was so excited to work for, only ended up to be one of the many ‘crazies’ in the industry. It’s almost as though he’s lured me into his web by putting up the nice-guy front, but really ended up being a nightmare. I can’t even reason with him and I have a hard time understanding and forgiving irrational people.

Obviously I’m really paraphrasing here; a lot more has happened and there are many details I chose to not include. Some of my friends argue that he possibly had feelings for me, and maybe needed someone to blame when him and his fiance fell apart. I don’t know. But it’s the first time I really had invested emotionally into a professional relationship and I’m saddened by the thought that the “gem” I thought I had found, wasn’t really a gem at all. And because I put him on such a high pedestal, it makes me think that maybe I’m the one that’s to blame–maybe I’m the one that did something–and that he’s the ultimate victim.

Any advice, insight, and support would be greatly appreciated. Any specific questions are also welcome, if you need clarification.

Thanks a ton.