Workplace Awkwardness

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Since I’m really tired tonight, and therefore having trouble coming up with a more serious topic, I’ve decided to regale you all with a tale of workplace awkwardness. For context: I work in a department of six people (myself included). Two of them are the manager and the supervisor, the other three hold the same position as me. The four of us get along pretty well, and we chat a lot among ourselves during the work day. One of my colleagues is in his late 30s and has a 3-year-old daughter. Another is in her 50s and has a daughter who’s my age and married with three kids. Those two have a constant friendly banter back and forth about all sorts of things, one of which is that he doesn’t want any more kids, and she keeps telling him he’s going to have another one. He usually tries to deflect this onto my supervisor, who just turned 40 (though she looks and acts much younger!) and is married but has no kids yet, but last week, I somehow got dragged into it. To make this easier, I’ll call him MC (male colleague) and her FC (female colleague).

The Coming Out Plateau: Awkward Holiday Interactions

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Over the past few weeks, I’ve spent a lot of time with my family and friends. I’ve seen a lot of people that I see on a regular basis, as well as some who I very rarely get the chance to see. In general, I tend to be pretty introverted, and I much prefer spending time with people one-on-one over being in larger groups. However, during the holiday season, most of my interactions are on a larger group scale. This year, that brought up a whole new set of issues and awkwardness, as I ended up in groups where some of the people knew about my asexuality and some did not. It seems that I’ve reached a sort of plateau in my coming out process that makes the holidays a little more difficult to navigate.

Assumptions of Ignorance

I’ve noticed over the past couple of years that society has an annoying tendency to assume that if you don’t have personal experience with something, you couldn’t possibly understand it. Parents assume that people who don’t have kids couldn’t possibly have any understanding of what it’s like to be a parent, of how to parent, or of anything remotely related to parenting. People in all sorts of professional fields assume that people outside of that field couldn’t possibly understand any of the terminology or concepts that they work with on a daily basis. People in relationships assume that people who are single and especially those who have never been in a relationship couldn’t possibly understand the nuances and dynamics of being in a relationship. And people who have sex assume that people who don’t have sex, and especially those who have never had sex couldn’t possibly understand the new complexities and different dynamic that sex adds to a relationship. (I want to pause here and just note that I realize all of these statements are generalizations. Obviously, not EVERY person in these situations makes these assumptions or acts in this way. I’m simply commenting on a general phenomenon that I’ve observed, and in no way intend to target or offend anyone reading this who may belong to one of the groups of people I’ve mentioned!)