I got (briefly) accidentally almost-engaged, and you can too!
...or at least Tanya can, too.
Alright guys, buckle up, you’re going to have to learn a lot about me for this story to make any kind of sense: the story of how I accidentally almost got engaged to a former coworker 25 years older than me who I did not realize thought we were dating. Truly, a more relevant topic for my fanfic would be hard to come by.
In the end, it all comes down to context: the context we think we are operating under to make assumptions about the minds & intentions of other people that we cannot perfectly know. While I don’t think of myself as particularly unique as a person, I have some pretty specifically-unique contextual factors that led me to being able to misinterpret someone, while taking me out to a fancy-symphony event, telling me they wanted to buy me a ring and me somehow thinking they did not meant it...you know, that way.
Context 1: People really like to tell me things
I have a pretty weird relationship with many of my coworkers, as well as many people at large, who consistently volunteer personal information to me they probably should not, especially of a sexual nature and/or make possible sexual references towards me that they also probably should not do. I 99% of the time laugh it off and I mostly think it is fun/funny, and I can’t figure out if this is a good thing or I just have this-is-probably-sexual-harrassment Stockholm Syndrome.
Many, or possibly even most, of my male coworkers (I work in Finance and it’s a lot of men) behave vaguely inappropriately towards me. I always get invited to other people’s client dinners to be the “young woman” at the table. They’ll tell me which of my dresses they want me to wear more often. I get touched A LOT in a way that isn’t clearly a violation of boundaries but is definitely not a way that a guy would touch another guy. I drive a stick shift and cannot tell you how many jokes I get about me & what I can do with “sticks”. At happy hours, my coworkers pick me up and carry me places in bars or lean over behind me to help me aim my poolstick; it was determined I could do a “dumb sex line girl voice” quite well and at one point in college, when my company was redoing our answering machine-service voice, as a joke my coworkers gave me a bunch of Not-Explicit-But-Implied Sexual References Of What Our Company Will Do For You and recorded me saying them to send to our boss as fake answering-service lines. My boss found this fucking hilarious, as did I.
Some of the better things that people have said to me impromptu, with no real good context for why they would just volunteer this to me out of the blue:
> (Man) A friend of a friend of a friend who I’d spent all of an hour with trapped me in a ~2 hour long personal history of how he’d gotten into furry porn (it was his college roommate’s fault, also this was 2012 and I’m not saying confessing a furry porn addiction is mainstream in 2022, but it was WAY weirder in 2012).
> (Man) While in a regular 1:1 session, my boss has told me things about his ex-girlfriend that made me go look at a can of Coke to see if “Warning: Can for external use only” was anywhere on it. This was an ex from 30+ years ago so not like, something that happened recently he was having an OMG Can You Believe It moment over.
> (Man) A coworker trapped me in a ~30 minute explanation of how he thought porn websites had tricked him into a diaper porn fetish.
> (Woman) at happy hour went on an hour long rant to me about all her sexual fantasies, fetishes, favorite things, etc while I kept trying to make contact with other coworkers to come save me, but they did not.
> (Men & Women) Always want to confess BDSM fetishes to me. Always.
> (Man) Sent me a dick pic, while I was at work, that he had taken AT HIS DESK (especially egregious because a trading floor is not known for its privacy). He then pinged me on the company chat system to tell me he’d texted me something. This was the only time I put my foot down and determined it had gone too far, and responded negatively - I stood up, looked at him across the room, shook my head, and mouthed “not cool”. I then replied in a way I knew was intentionally a bit mean about the, shall we say, size aspect if you read it that way, and pinged back “I don’t know what you expect me to be able to do with this” which I also meant quite literally like, why would I want this shitty picture you snapped in the worst possible photographic conditions. That was the end of that, so I didn’t involve HR or anyone else.
> (Woman, this one takes the cake) Female coworker and I were sharing a bed in a hotel room, and when we woke up the next morning, she told me she’d had trouble sleeping and asked if it woke me up. I said it had not, because I sleep like a fucking rock once I fall asleep, she had not bothered me at all. She then said, Oh, Good, and proceeded to tell me that in her quest to fall asleep, she had gotten busy with herself while laying next to me in bed. I investigated as to whether this was an attempt at a lesbian come-on. It was not. She just wanted to tell me to make sure I wasn’t bothered by it. It kind of seemed like she could have just not told me, given that I’d already indicated I had slept soundly and was unaware of this, so would have been none the wiser.
> There’s a lot more less-noteworthy examples, and I’m not even going to begin to detail the amount of more “standard” off-color remarks about sex, porn, penises, etc, that goes on in my work life, as generic off-color remarks are very standard on trading desks, but I hear a lot of them.
Anyway, suffice to say, I could make a really interesting report to HR on a lot of people if I wanted to. But, I am a very all-in-good-fun person, and generally do not take things wrong unless I really need to. Why people behave like this towards me, I can’t say for sure, but I think it’s because I am really surface-friendly, so people feel like they are welcome to tell me anything, but also give off a very “I do not actually care about you or your life” vibe, and so they feel I am a sort of judgement-free zone, which is kind of true, because I don’t care.
End Result: when people who actually ARE interested in saying off-color things to me in a more than “good fun” way, I tend to respond way more positively than I probably should, which can be read as encouragement that I like *that person* specifically and am allowing them to get away with it. For example, when the man in question said to me, who was wearing heels & nylons, that he has a fetish for women wearing heels and nylons, my brain just sorta went “K” and my mouth just sorta went *happy smile because it is not that weird and also not a long story* “Oh, that’s pretty normal” <= buddy, this is not an indication I enjoyed being fetishized by you, specifically, I was just happy it was so much less weird than what I often get.
Context 2: My Miniature FriendZone FinDom Escort Service
Ok, now, here’s where it’s going to start getting kinda weird. So, what you have to understand about me is that I did not try to manipulate people into making this happen. I really was just trying to be nice and keep everyone happy. That’s all.
Alright, so, being a single woman of prime-dating age around a lot of men, I’ve had more than one coworker or former coworker ask me out. To be honest, you have no idea how happy I am to be turning 32, the age at which one former neighbor assured me women become undesirable as dating prospects, shortly before he asked me to flash some tiddy. I respected that this man had known me since I was 17 and waited until I was 30 to ask, since I have visually changed very little between these ages, so I didn’t report him to his wife.
The thing is, I’m not really that interested in dating. I would like a long-term partner, but I don’t care if we’re romantically involved. So, naturally, I always turn my coworkers down when they ask me out. Most of them take it in stride, none of them have ever gotten mad, but occasionally, they will try the “let’s just hang out as friends”.
Now, I am not unaware that this guy often expects he will be able to win me over, so does not really want to just hang out as friends. But, I try to be nice to people and give them the benefit of the doubt. If the person in question is a person whose presence *I* legitimately enjoy as a friend, I will very clearly explain that I have no interest in dating generally, they have no chance of convincing me to change my mind, but I do like them as a person so if they really want to, sure, we can hang out as friends. On occasion. These guys are fully aware they are volunteering for Friendzone duty, okay?
Now, being a woman who is old enough to know How Men Are, I still kind of...watch my back on this count. So in a bid to make sure I am not *accidentally* leading a guy on, even though I’ve told him we are Just Friends, I want to make sure he understands he is not a priority for me. Like, even if I say it’s as friends, if I go out every time he asks me out, clearly that’s going to send the wrong message. If I reply to his texts too often/fast, same thing. It’s hard to explain this without sounding like a manipulative bitch, but really, I was trying to help, and make sure guys don’t end up getting mixed messages on my level of enthusiasm for them.
So, I will frequently not reply to texts, and I will only go on *select* “dates” with them. Naturally, what ended up happening is that I selected the most appealing dates. Naturally, what this ended up looking like is that what you have to do to get my attention is offer me Fancy Things that I might not want to pay for myself. I feel like I could not be making it any more obvious that I do not actually want to date them but am willing to hang out with them alone only if they’re paying good money for it, which actually isn’t true - these people are people I do enjoy hanging out with, my selection pattern just ended up making it look like I’m only hanging out with them for money. But I felt that helped make the messaging more clear, you know?
Also, in a bid to make it Beyond Obvious they do not hold a special place in my heart, I make sure I regularly inform any of these guys that other guys are taking me out to nice restaurants, theater/symphony events, what have you. They are NOT SPECIAL and shouldn’t take my acquiescence to hang out as a sign of anything. I just really don’t want them to think I led them on!
Now, I work, as do all of these men, in the Finance Industry. The place men are always trying to prove to each other whose dick is bigger and swingier, and often, because of my career track record, feel they may even need to compete with my own proverbial BSD. So where has this led? Where has this led, you ask? To a constantly-escalating competition where I recently had to completely ghost someone who offered me a $20,000 vacation to the Maldives because it sounds kind of false to say “no, I’m not interested”. Obviously I’m interested, I just don’t want to be trapped on an island with someone I don’t want to sleep with.
Even so, whenever I accept something that feels a bit “extra”, before I commit to going to something, I will repeat: you should only invite me to this and/or pay for me if you want to because you enjoy my company *that much*, because sitting across/next to me and hearing me talk is all you are getting beyond a standard hello/goodbye 1-second hug (I generally revoke “all in good fun” touching privileges for these guys, for obvious reason). I have never slept with any of these guys, I have never kissed any of these guys, I have never held hands with any of these guys, I have never even hugged any of them too long.
It occurred to me in 2019, as I lay in a penthouse hotel suite in Seoul paid for by a college friend I have this sort of relationship with, which was all to myself, as he was visiting his family and staying with them and just took me around to do tourist stuff while providing me the benefit of translator/tour guide, that it was possible I was running something of an escort service. Needless to say, I have this sort of relationship with the guy in question in this story.
Now, I now what you are all thinking. Author, you must be 11/10 hot. No one could possibly get people to do this if they are not 11/10 hot. The answer is yes, I am 11/10 hot, if the scale is adjusted for what I’ve seen of Ohio. I am an 11/10 Ohio. But alas, that makes me something like more of a 6.5 on a real scale. I am not hot. My family consistently rates me as its ugliest member (they are all unfairly good-looking). I doubt anyone looks at me and finds me actively unattractive, but I’m just like on the better end of Plain Jane-looking.
The answer to this, I think, lies in a really funny twist of fate: I have such a bad fear of failure I attempt to exert almost no control over the direction of my life, for fear I will choose the wrong direction. But wherever life sets me down, I will go on that course at 200% energy, because I have a fear of failing on that course. The duplicative effect of these fears of various types of failures manages to average out such that I come off like I rolled a charisma stat of 100, because whatever I am doing, it is all systems go like I am convinced I probably can really do it, and because I also appear to not select for what I’m aimed at, it seems like I’m convinced I can do anything & everything.
This type of charisma has a really funny affect on people. My entire dad’s side of my family shares this personality to some degree, and despite the fact that all of our kind of extreme personalities together makes for some truly blow-out fights, we are all *really* close because it’s really hard to talk to other people about some things, like when I was trying to explain to a work-friend that I was worried I was going to get all 3 jobs I’d interviewed for (on different parts of the trading desk, so I’d have to be around the people I turned down) and didn’t know how to handle it, it came off really arrogant. Like, you think you are going to get all 3 jobs you interviewed for instead of none? Who tf do you think you are? But the thing is, in my life, too much of a good thing is almost always more of an issue than not enough. I did get all 3 job offers. It can sound like the Regina George “why are you so obsessed with me?” but when I’m with my own family, we all know that we really mean it, like: “I’m not really that great or interesting, I just kind of...exist wherever I am at full force...why...why ARE you so obsessed with me? I really don’t get it.”
....my middle brother also independently and accidentally developed his own Gay Friendzone FinDom Escort Service. He gets offered better things than I do. Very unfair. We already know about the “caused police to think my average suburban family was running a large heroin-trafficking organization” story. This is how my family rolls.
It also makes finding partnership really difficult. I don’t need someone to share my exact hobbies, likes/dislikes, opinions, etc. But I do want someone that matches my energy of what’s something like “passive chaos” - most people are either more passive and will take steps to avoid chaos when they see it coming, or are just actively chaotic and a total mess. I am really boring and have no interesting thoughts, opinions, ambitions, etc. But if life decides to nudge me off a cliff, I kind of just go with it and don’t try to resist.
I’ve technically illegally crossed an international border, because I accidentally rolled around with some Albanian Guys who needed to make a sudden trip to Kosovo for...reasons, but I don’t think I can get in trouble for this because I was technically kind of being kidnapped and wasn’t able to NOT cross the border illegally (there was a gun in the vehicle; my cell phone had been confiscated; I had no passport on me). But they weren’t really kidnapping me, I was just hanging out with them for a few days getting increasing vibes that something was a littttle off as we never seemed to pay for anything, but like, who was I to question things, we were having fun (I got introduced to them through my mom’s friend’s Albanian home repair guy who had a fiancee still in Albania...) and since we were already in the car on a daytrip together, they took me along on their journey and stuck me in a cafe with one of their female cousins + guard for a few hours overnight, and then we went back to Durres with no further comment. I have a distinct memory of being like “so if the business goes wrong, do I have to die? That seems kind of unfair.” After that, I decided maybe I should stop being driven around by them and getting free meals & hotels, so went off to explore the wonders of the Albanian Bus System.
Context 3: Inexplicable Amount of Luck
Occasionally related to the above “force of personality causes people to do weird things for me” but more along the lines of things that just...seem like they happen a weird amount to me, my sense of “this seems too good to be true” is just plain off. Usually, when it seems like life is trying to drop something too good to be true in my lap, there really isn’t a catch.
Some funny things off the top of my head that I feel fit this pattern:
I never upgrade my airline seat because 90% of the time I get upgraded anyway (and not because of Frequent Flier, I am too lazy to make accounts for these...), from anything to Main Cabin Extra up through first class;
I once won a charity cook-off event that I didn’t even enter (this was a legit cook-off, you got paired with a professional chef and there were all these rules like you guys had one minute to discuss what you were doing with the main ingredient <Wagyu Beef> and then had to put on noise-cancelling headphones so the pro giving me directions had to do it all by gesture, we got secret ingredients given to us partway through that had to be incorporated, it was timed, it was very confusing because I’d shown up late to watch it after a low-iron-induced nap and didn’t know any of the rules and got pulled up after someone who had entered chickened out and I mentioned to the security guard I liked cooking just like, as an aside, but bitch, someone paid $24,000 to charity to eat my plate of food even after watching me constantly touch my finger on it to taste it, lick my finger, and go <fuck people are watching>);
At a gala that I was already a plus one of a plus one to, so I didn’t get a ticket to the prize drawings, I picked a ticket up off the floor and won the grand prize (I now own an original Disney animation cel worth $6,000, that I recently finally got framed because I wasn’t treating it well enough since I got it for free and it got a small rip on it, good thing I don’t want to sell it haha);
At a whole other gala that I also was a plus one of a plus one to, I put $200 on the silent auction for a 4-person 10 day vacation to St. Lucia and won it;
We did a weight loss competition at my job and there was a gym on the bottom floor of the building that gave us a truly free “month” - not like a fake free month where you sign up and they give you a month for free but then have to go through hell and high water to cancel, like, they just put our names on the “accept into gym” list for a month, we didn’t get a pass, etc. During this month, the gym held a raffle. I won ~$500 worth of gym gear, divided between unisex non-clothing Underarmor stuff and a gift card to Lululemon. When the manager gave it to me I was like “you know I’m not actually a client? Are you sure you don’t want to give this to like, a paying customer?” and he was too lazy to redo the raffle. My Underarmor bag is now my family’s main duffel bag. It is very well-made.
Many times when I was traveling, random dudes offered me free things like “come to my house and my mom will make you a traditional dinner”; “hop on the back of my motorbike and I’ll drive you where you want”; I got laundry done at the Sacre Couer in Paris because a security guard got me coffee when I showed up at sunrise and I spilled it on my cardigan and then he took me along while he unlocked all the doors and I got to go to places you either can’t go as a tourist or you have to pay for.
Anyway, suffice to say, this makes it confusing! When people/life are offering me something that seems like normally would come with a catch, it usually is just a pure offer! So if someone says they wanna buy me a ring, I mean? Maybe they just do?
Context 4: Myself & Jewelry
Okay, related to the topic of “free things from life with no catch” and REALLY specific to being offered jewelry....
I have a ~$3k sapphire & diamond ring from my grandparents that I wear permanently on my right ring finger. One of my female coworkers complimented it one time, and then mentioned she had a very similar necklace.
I then mentioned that eventually, I aspired to accumulate not only a necklace, but earrings that matched my ring. My coworker then...offered me her necklace, because she said she never wore it. I was like, “umm...I feel like I can’t accept that? I mean, obviously I’d want it but like, I can’t take that from you?”
...needless to say, she came in with it the next day, and six years later, I am still in possession of this necklace and wear it often. A straight female coworker of mine honestly just gifted me a piece of jewelry worth several thousand dollars because I said I wanted it. These things can happen.
Also, immediately preceding the “hey I’d like to buy you a ring” offer, I’d specifically been talking about how I wanted to buy 2 more rings (I now have 3 “permanent” rings with real stones that I wear) - and it was clear that the fingers that would hold those rings were left thumb and right pointer finger. So I felt like, okay, I mean, THAT’S obviously what you mean to buy me. I said I wanted a ring, I indicated which fingers it would go on, and you are offering to pay for my next ring! Great. That’s something people would do for me. Yes.
Now, the real kicker here - said former coworker that wants to marry me KNOWS all this context. He has seen my “flirty” behavior with other coworkers. He should know he is not the only person on my friend-date list. He was a mutual coworker of the woman who gave me the necklace. So like, if this guy had been a total rando, I would understand maybe he didn’t have the right context to understand where my mind was. By I feel like he did have it, and I operated under that assumption.
In conclusion, TL;DR - my coworkers often say weird things to me that makes me react in an accidentally-encouraging way as long as it isn’t too weird that comes off as “I accept your flirting”; I go on Not-Dates with a number of men that I’m really really clear with them aren’t dates and I never do anything with them, but like, okay, fine, they seem like dates from the outside, I get it; people/life have a tendency to gift me things with no strings attached; I thought we were clear on which rings I wanted (not engagement ones), and, so:
I didn’t think I was dating this guy, and he was offering me a non-engagement ring as a token of extra-friendship with no strings attached.
He thought we were dating and heard me reply positively to the offer of a future ring purchase...and thank GOD followed up after our symphony show was done because he was overcome with happy emotions that the next I knew, I was ACTUALLY getting a ring/down on knee proposal and could go “oh no. No no no no. Not that ring. Not like that.”
Him: “But I can still consider you my girlfriend, right?”
Me: *Laughs from gut because of absurdity of this situation* “Absolutely Not.”
Him: “But you said you wanted to have a baby?”
I’m going to end up as a statistic of women that get killed by men, probably.
In all of this, I feel the most pleased that apparently people are willing to accept that I am the Iciest Coldest Boss Bitch that you are not even allowed to really touch me without being engaged to me so it would be reasonable to think we were dating for real when we hadn’t like, done anything together you’d expect people who are dating to do, besides go on Friend Dates.
So, let this be a lesson that these things can happen, people can believe you are dating without kissing/sex, and people can come to believe that they know the context of their relationship with someone, even though it might look weird from the outside, and speak/reply to the other person within the “personal” context, not the “objective” context, without...really making 100% sure the other person agrees.
And so, in long, Tanya & Lehrgen can *definitely* get into a relationship and engaged accidentally.
