“Boyfriend in a secret office romance has lunch alone with a new female employee... Am I being petty?” [What Do You Think?]

[Financial News]  A woman’s account has emerged after she became upset that her boyfriend, with whom she is secretly dating at work, had lunch alone all week with an introverted new female employee.

On the 29th, JTBC’s “Scandal Supervisor” featured the story of A, a woman in her 30s who is secretly dating a male colleague in her department.
A said, “To keep people from finding out we’re secretly dating at work, we only talk about work at the office and have lunch separately. But after the coworker my boyfriend usually ate with changed jobs, he started having lunch with different people, and then at some point he began eating with one female employee.”
She continued, “The other person is a new employee who has been here for two months. She’s so introverted that she doesn’t seem to get along well with her peers. At first, I thought he was just looking after her as a senior, but it wasn’t just for a day or two—they ate lunch alone together all week.”

After work, A met her boyfriend and confronted him. He said, “The new employee eats alone every day, so I was just looking after her. Why are you upset?” A replied, “Even if we’re keeping our relationship secret, isn’t it a bit inappropriate for you to have lunch alone with another woman?” Her boyfriend reportedly retorted, “This isn’t about men and women; it’s just a senior looking after a junior who’s having trouble adjusting. Are you jealous?”
A lamented, “He actually treats me as if I’m narrow-minded. Do I really have to understand and think of him as a senior looking after a junior? I’m so frustrated.”

The panelists who heard the story had differing opinions.
Psychiatrist Lee Kwang-min said, “The junior also needs to adjust by eating with different people, but she may be unable to say no because the senior keeps asking her to eat with him.” He pointed out, “In effect, the senior is hindering the junior’s adjustment.”
Psychology professor Sanghee Park also said, “Why are they eating alone together all week? Does he really need to keep eating one-on-one with an introverted junior who doesn’t even eat with her peers, while playing the good senior? If I were the girlfriend, I’d find this suspicious too.” She criticized him, adding, “He knows his girlfriend can see all this, yet he keeps eating with the junior. That shows far too little consideration for his girlfriend.”
By contrast, attorney Seo Hyejin said she focused on the fact that they ate together while the girlfriend was watching.  “If there had been another motive, they could have gone out to eat in secret, but they ate without any issue in a public place,” she noted. She added, “It might have become a problem if this had gone on for too long, but I think it may be fine that he helped an employee who was having trouble adjusting.”
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