"Only time can heal your broken heart, just as only time can heal his broken arms and legs"
Miss Piggy
While Miss Piggy says it best when it comes to unhooking from an emotional fatal attraction, Miss Piggy never had to deal with a work-fatal attraction, mostly because she evidently had a great job!
A fatal attraction at work is someone who drains your energy when you have an encounter with them. This person could be a rival, a manager, or just a needy colleague.
I have never noticed how common fatal attraction patterns at work are, until I read the book "Working with You is Killing Me".
The problem with work fatal attraction is that, aside from mostly going unrecognized, they drain your energy, feed on your passion for your job, and in extreme cases leave you wondering whether you're fit for your job.
One of the patterns which I personally think is the most dangerous, yet the most common, usually feeds on people who are early on in their career, or are simply insecure.
Let me tell you about Salma: Salma used to work at my old company, she had had ten years of experience in the engineering field at the time, and she was appreciated by her new manager Nadeem, when she first started.
I met Salma two years after she joined the company, by that time, her working relationship with Nadeem had turned sour. He was skeptical of everything she did, he continuously pointed out benchmarks which he said she would never be able to achieve. Salma focused on reaching those benchmarks rather than finding a new job, and she resorted to plotting scenarios which never went according to plan.
For example, she would go into his office, and furnish a supposedly new offer she received –when it was obvious that the offer was nothing more than a game- and she would ask him to match it. To make a long story short, she never left.
In the end, although Salma managed to reach a few benchmarks set by Nadeem, Nadeem terminated her from the company shortly after.
The way I see it is, although Salma evidently has severely questionable wisdom, Nadeem's pattern of behavior was observable with some of the other employees as well.
As you can see, this pattern starts when the new manager makes it clear s/he believes in you, they encourage you, and make it clear that they think you're destined to have a great career.
Then suddenly, this manager becomes critical, demanding, and almost always disappointed in you, and no matter how hard you try, your work relationship is never the same, because the rules of the game were simply changed by the other person.
If you want to know whether you're suffering from a fatal attraction at work, ask yourself the following questions:
1. Do you prepare for the encounters with this person more than you should?
In other words; do you imagine how the scenario will go, what you are going to say, and how they're going to be impressed by it?
2. Do you feel consumed by having to analyze how the encounter went afterwards over and over in your head?
3. When you first met that particular person, were you thrilled at the potential they saw in you?
4. Do you feel physically tense or uneasy before and after encounters with that person?
5. Do you feel that something has changed, yet you cannot really put your finger on it?
If you notice one or more of these patterns in your work relationship with someone, this is when you know that you're suffering from a fatal attraction at work.
If you happen to be suffering from a fatal attraction, or an energy draining pattern at work, the first step towards unhooking is to recognize the situation for what it is; release your ego from the equation, and evaluate whether your passion for your job can survive having to manage your relationship with the energy draining person.
And whatever you do, always remember; what others think does not change who you are, and what you're capable of.
