I have feelings for a colleague

You did not plan this. There is someone at work, and you have started to notice when they are in and when they are not. You save things up to tell them. Meetings with them in are better. You have replayed a conversation by the coffee machine more times than it deserved, and the other night, at home, you were thinking about them while your partner talked about the boiler.

You feel guilty, and a bit alive, and you are not sure which feeling to trust. This is a page for working that out before you do anything.

What it usually means

Work is an unfair comparison. At work you are competent, sharp, dressed, caffeinated and solving problems. The colleague sees that version of you and you see that version of them. Neither of you has seen the other one with norovirus, or arguing about whose turn it is to ring the landlord, or silent after a bad day. You are comparing the best hour of a stranger's day with the whole of your partner's.

Add proximity, shared pressure, a bit of in-joke, and the plain novelty of being found interesting by someone new, and you have most of the ingredients of a crush. It is very common. Most people in long relationships have had at least one and said nothing.

So the feeling, on its own, tells you little about your relationship. What it might tell you about is what you are missing. People tend to fall for a colleague who gives them something they are short of at home: attention, being listened to, laughter, being treated as clever, being wanted. Look at what the crush supplies. That is the useful information, and it is information about you and your relationship, not about the colleague.

What it does not mean

It does not mean your relationship is over. It does not mean you have met the person you were meant to be with. It does not mean your partner has failed you. It does not mean you are a bad person. Those are stories the crush will try to tell you, in both directions, because a crush is a very energetic thing with no interest in your long-term wellbeing.

It also does not mean you should act on it to find out. People who sleep with a colleague to see whether it is real tend to find out that what was real was the wanting, and the wanting goes quickly once it has been met.

What to do

Stop feeding it. You do not need to be cold, and you probably cannot avoid them. But stop the private messages, stop the lingering, stop the lunches for two. Every crush runs on fuel. Cut the fuel and most of them fade in a few months. If you find you cannot cut the fuel, that is worth noticing.

Do not confide in the colleague about your relationship. This is the single most common route from crush to affair: "my partner doesn't understand me" said to someone who seems to. It feels like honesty. It is recruitment.

Look at home with the information. Whatever the crush is giving you, ask whether you could have it with your partner, and whether you have asked. Often the answer is that something has gone quiet, nobody said so, and the first person to notice was the one by the coffee machine. That is a conversation you can have with your partner without a name in it: "I've realised I miss feeling like you find me interesting" is true and survivable.

Decide about telling, carefully. There is no rule that says you must. If this is a crush you intend to let die, confessing it can wound your partner to relieve your own guilt. If the feelings are not fading, or you have already crossed lines you would not want crossed in return, then honesty is owed, and sooner is kinder than later.

If you want to act on it, be honest first. People do leave relationships for colleagues and sometimes it works out. But the ones who do it well end the first relationship because it is over, not because the second one is waiting. If you are reaching for the colleague because you have been unhappy for a long time and could not say so, the unhappiness is the thing to deal with. When it is simply a mismatch looks at that without flinching.

The quieter question

Underneath a crush there is often a question about who you have become. The person your colleague sees (the funny, engaged, lit-up one) is you. If that person has gone missing at home, it is worth asking where, and whether the relationship made them disappear or whether you let them. Who were you before? is free and is about exactly that. The crush will pass or it will not. The question is worth keeping either way.