Upper Hand

I interviewed for an executive assistant position with a new company. The job involves working for three of the company's vice-presidents. After I was chosen I was asked to come in and sign an offer letter. The human relations manager told me vacation time was negotiable. The offer gave me two weeks after 90 days. I asked for three.

The human relations manager then spoke to the senior vice-president, a man who is to be my direct supervisor. When he questioned her, he asked if she told me two weeks was more than the usual a person gets when hired. She told him yes, which was a lie. So, by covering her ass, it made me look bad.

My first thought is, if this comes up in conversation, I will be straightforward and say, "I was told vacation time was negotiable, so I asked her for three weeks." Do you think I should leave the subject alone, bring it up on my own, or tell him if asked?

April

April, the zoologist Desmond Morris observed that we spend a great deal of time exploring our higher motives and an equal amount of time ignoring our lower ones. You want to view the personnel manager in terms of honesty, integrity, and ethics, but there is another way to see her actions.

For decades psychology has ignored the concept of dominance, but it is a daily fact of our existence and our awareness of it starts when we are very young children. In any group of people or animals, some individuals hold a higher rank than others.

You are about to work for three high-status individuals. As a new hire your rank is low. The personnel manager, faced with a choice of appeasing a dominant individual or protecting a low ranking one, yielded to power. People caught in the middle typically lie when cornered. Viewing this from the most base level, her behavior is not surprising.

The best thing to do is let this go and hope it is forgotten. If you bring up the issue, you will be confirming you asked for three weeks, which will not be seen as a positive in your bosses' eyes. It will make you seem greedy and demanding. From their point of view, you are a tool to ensure their success. They do not want you missing in action.

You have also been shown you cannot trust the human relations manager. This means you should never trust her, and it also means you should never let her know that you don't trust her.

Wayne & Tamara

Inclined To Leave

I have been with my husband four years. Recently he confided that he had a homosexual encounter when he was 15. He insists it was experimental and awkward for him more than anything. He insists he is heterosexual and has no idea why he allowed it to happen. Evidently his friend came on to him, and he allowed this friend to perform oral sex.

Honestly, I feel like packing and leaving. I never doubted my husband's sexuality, but I can't grasp a man experimenting with another man. I know it happens with young women, but this seems totally different. I don't want to be intimate with him anymore.

You can't be straight and do something like this, right? I have no problem with gay men. Many of my friends are gay.

Meredith

Meredith, we'll give you a fact, a probability, and a possibility. First, adolescents often experiment with sex, and this is aggravated by their parents' failure to provide guidance in this area. One encounter at 15 doesn't carry much weight.

Second, without knowing more we would surmise that your husband's boyhood friend was himself sexually abused.

Third, if you're ready to leave your husband over this, is it possible you were thinking about leaving even before he confided in you?

Wayne & Tamara

Wayne & Tamara are the authors of Cheating in a Nutshell and The Young Woman’s Guide to Older Men—available from Amazon, iTunes, and booksellers everywhere.