After a year of frenzied flirting, I was unable to control my desire any longer. I shut myself in my office, switched off the lights, closed the electric blinds, summoned Henry and had sex with him on my desk.
It was a wild impulse; a moment of utter recklessness that could have cost me my job and my marriage of three years. I also had a baby, who was just 18 months old, and Henry was in a relationship. But far worse was the fact that at 25, Henry was 15 years my junior – and I was his boss.
At the global tech business in London where we both worked, I was a company director and he was part of a sales team. He was many rungs beneath me on the corporate ladder. Part of me loved the power of summoning Henry to my office to finally consummate our relationship. I was calling the shots and it felt sexy and exciting.
It did, of course, occur to me that I was aping that old cliche of a male boss sleeping with a much younger female employee, albeit with the gender roles reversed.
These sorts of encounters – which come with an inherent power imbalance – are frowned on in the wake of #MeToo. Yet, obviously, they still happen. And, as in my case, a female leader is just as capable of falling for a very junior man. It’s a hot topic, featured in TV’s most gripping show, Industry, when powerful Nicole makes sexual advances to two female interns, then starts an affair with a male one, Robert, before that ends rather difficultly.
And it’s also explored in Nicole Kidman’s new film, Babygirl, where she plays a chief executive whose career and family are threatened after an affair with a young male intern. On screen, as I experienced in life, the power dynamics between them shift and evolve, raising the stakes for both of them.
For while the female boss may start off with the upper hand, as affairs intensify and morals are increasingly compromised, the balance can shift in her employee’s favour. As I would find to my cost.
Like Kidman’s character, I was unhappy in my marriage. That’s hardly an excuse, but it did mean I was vulnerable when Henry showed an interest, and is what sparked my incredible recklessness – a word nobody would ever have used to describe me before.
I’d married my husband Tom in 2015, when I was 38. Perhaps ironically, we’d met working for a different company, when we were both single and on similar career footings. I was attracted to him because he offered stability and my family and friends thought he was great. We were both heavily invested in our respective careers – Tom’s a financier – but beyond that, I suspect that in reality we had little in common.
He wasn’t the romantic type, or a man who paid me lots of compliments. But we were both eager to start a family, settling in Kent to give our future children a rural life.
After three years of marriage and a baby, however, any emotional and physical intimacy had waned and I felt under-appreciated – and increasingly fearful about being stuck with him for the rest of my life. Returning to work six months after my baby was born, I was happy to get the structure back in my life.
Henry and I saw each other regularly when I headed up our weekly team meetings or carried out quarterly appraisals. He had dark brown hair, smiling blue eyes and big, strong arms. He was always well turned out, and wore a subtle fragrance. You had to be close enough to smell the warm, woody scent. I was attracted to his charisma, confidence and sense of fun.
From my vantage point as head of a team of 200, I noticed he was always the one who would place a metaphorical arm around anyone feeling down. Henry spotted that I was unhappy, too. He started pointedly asking if I was all right.
The flirtation began innocuously enough with the simple raise of his eyebrow one day when I mentioned that his team’s performance was ‘on the up’. I remember thinking, ‘Oh, I’ve never seen him raise his eyebrow like that at anyone else.’
After that, the flattery gradually became more blatant. He’d cheekily call me ‘boss’ and was thoughtful, checking whether I needed lunch or a drink.
The chocolate bars he left on my desk were welcome tokens of a relationship that was a little more than just professional. Henry had a knack of telling me what I needed to hear, but subtly – he’d always notice if I’d had my nails done or my hair blow-dried, for example.
I was someone who had always prided myself on my professional appearance – going to the gym every other day, having regular manicures, my blonde hair highlighted every six weeks and an immaculate and extensive wardrobe.
I recall him complimenting me on my new mummy curves and telling me that my personality could light up any room. Given my isolated position as head of the team and the lack of attention I received from my husband, I found these overtures hard to resist.
After a few months Henry came into my office one afternoon, closed the door behind him and asked with uncharacteristic seriousness, ‘Are you actually all right? You seem so downhearted . . .’
Not even friends or close family had asked that question, and it broke through the walls I’d built up. My woes came tumbling out; how unhappy I was in my marriage, the fact that my husband seemed completely indifferent towards me and the feeling was mutual.
Henry interpreted this as the green light to start messaging me outside of work – just to see if I was all right, or so he said initially.
One weekend he texted to say, ‘I hope you’re OK and if you need to get out of the house I can meet you for a coffee, you only have to say.’ Although I didn’t take him up on his offer, I was hugely appreciative of the thought.
Then, very late one Saturday night when I was at home nursing a glass of wine on the sofa, a text message arrived that changed everything. Perhaps drunk, perhaps just feeling reckless, Henry sent me a list of the explicit things he’d like to do with me. I was shocked. But instead of preparing to report him to HR, I realised how much I wanted him, too.
Perhaps because of the wine, I found myself reciprocating. On Monday morning, I felt incredibly awkward but, to my relief, he offered no innuendo, no telling glances. I relaxed – a little.
For the next couple of months, we sexted constantly when we weren’t at work, including at home when my husband was in the house. Though I didn’t feel guilty at that point, I was anxious that if he breathed a word of our exchanges it would make my position as his boss untenable.
I got the impression he was willing to run off into the sunset with me because he’d mention things that suggested a future together. Although this was more than I wanted, I didn’t tell him in case his attention waned and he decided to blow our secret wide open.
We hadn’t so much as kissed when he started steering our texts towards the topic of us leaving our partners. I’d dance around it, making our chat light and sexy again. Meetings in which he was present often felt embarrassing, knowing we’d been sexting all weekend and bringing each other to orgasm at the end of the phone.
Although at work there were rumours that Henry fancied me, that’s as far as it went. Nobody suspected I would have been tempted, both because I was married and because of my status. But, secretly, the sexual tension was becoming unbearable.
One of the oldest cliches in the book, we finally had sex at the Christmas drinks party at head office, a few weeks before we all headed off for the festive break in December 2018. With the fizz flowing, I couldn’t contain my lust any more. That’s when I summoned him to my office and we had sex on the desk – our colleagues were a few feet away outside. It was easily the riskiest thing I’d ever done in my life.
Afterwards, we hurriedly put on our clothes. He returned to the party and I made my excuses about having to get back for the babysitter and left. There were more illicit liaisons before Christmas – one in a bathroom at work, another in a boardroom and a third after hours.
Why weren’t the risks enough to deter me? I had far more to lose than him, including a six-figure salary and the respect of my peers.
In reality, it was finally giving in to my feelings and having sex that brought me to my senses and I realised how much I was risking.
During the Christmas holidays, I texted Henry with five simple words: ‘That will never happen again.’ He never tried to persuade me otherwise – and neither did he respond, which sent me into a tailspin about whether he’d reveal all at work.
Henry knew everything about me – my sexual fantasies, what it was like to have sex with me . . .
That’s when I realised how much power I’d given him. Even though he’d started the whole thing and I had the messages to prove it, as his boss I should have known better. In reality, though, the moment I replied to his sexts, the balance shifted in his favour.
He began to undermine me in meetings, questioning decisions I made in front of everyone. He’d give me a certain look, fixing me with a stare in meetings which I interpreted as: ‘Challenge my opinion and I’ll tell everyone what’s going on between us.’
I became a nervous wreck. Every time I saw him with any of my colleagues I convinced myself he was revealing all about our year-long mutual obsession, maybe even showing them some of our most explicit sexts, which included revealing photos.
Call it serendipity, but not too long afterwards, I was headhunted by another big tech firm and I gratefully left my old job – and Henry – behind in 2019. My marriage ended by mutual agreement later that year. Tom never found out about my fling and my career survived unscathed.
I’ve never had another workplace relationship or flirtation since, and I never will. My advice to other successful women is: steer clear. It’s not worth the risk of losing everything you’ve worked hard for.
Recently, I married a wonderful man whom I met at a friend’s birthday celebration in 2022. We know everything about each other with this one exception.
I’ve never been able to bring myself to confess all about Henry. Such is my guilt and shame at being a boss who slept with an office junior.
- As told to Sadie Nicholas. Names have been changed.
