It is a long post, but I sooo need advice

This is a VERY long story, so I will do my best to keep it short. I want everyone to give me their HONEST feedback. From October 2016 until January 2017, I experienced the worse period of my life. I know I brought a lot of it on myself, but feel that I was betrayed beyond measure. I will cut to the chase. It started out with one of my employees (he is a manager, I am his director), coming to me to talk about some of his issues. He suffers from anxiety and sleep deprivation. He confided a number of things in me from having suicidal tendencies in the past to anxiety issues to not having a loving relationship with his father.

I always listened patiently and gave him advice. At the same time, I have been dealing with so many issues of my own. Five months earlier, mom died unexpectedly and my wife has terminal, Stage 4, breast cancer. In fact, just this past Tuesday we were told she has entered her final stage of fighting this ::insert a piercing scream:: In addition, I work fulltime and am a fulltime student. I am a bisexual man, married to a woman that I love very much.

I found myself starting to open up to him and confiding things in him. Things such as I was molested from the ages of 9 to 11 by a male neighbor, my wife’s situation, and the fact that I am bisexual. I felt comfortable telling him because he and his wife (yes, he is married to one of our co-workers in another department) are very LGBTQ friendly (two of their BFFs that work under me and him are gay and lesbian).

I was developing him to replace me one day, so I have been providing needed (IMO) feedback. He is a very isolated and anti-social person and I am VERY social and outgoing. Eventually, the two started not to mix. He wanted us to be only “office friends” and nothing more. I was disappointed but I told him OK.

Leading up to all of this, I started to develop feelings towards him. I was so conflicted because he was my employee, he and I are both married to women, and he says he is straight. During this time, I started therapy and discussed with her (my therapist) my feelings for him. With her advice and approval, I decided to tell him how I felt. I told him how I felt and that IN NO WAY DID I EXPECT HIM TO FEEL THE SAME. I made that crystal clear. In my heart of hearts, I did not expect him to feel the same. I told him it was a part of my therapy to cleanse my conscious and issues, so I could move on. In fact, after I told him, he stood up, hugged me and said, “you are my friend and I love you.”

Fast forward one week and he and I went to dinner and agreed we were only going to be work friends. This involved no longer texting outside of work hours or hanging out. I had proposed this three months earlier, but he did not want it. He always gave me the impression he wanted us to be friends inside and outside the office. So, I was confused by his change of heart. From that moment on Tuesday night to the next Friday, I had to give him feedback on things to help him improve. They included his email writing to how he approaches employees of my other manager. But in particular, I had to talk to him about his temper and snapping at me for no reason.

In fact, that Thursday, I had to meet with him to talk about his attitude. He apologized for snapping at me the day before. I should also note that me and his wife (she is literally known as the company “bitch”) had been butting heads because I would not let her pilfer people from my team, who were also her BFFs, to work on projects for her because they had other shit to do. It should also be noted that she carries his balls around in her purse, so if she is pissed, he will be also. She is a spoiled brat that people in their circle bow down to. While I understood that is his wife, I was not going to let my relationship with him dictate what I know I needed for my team to do.

I will bring this plane in for a landing now…later in the day on that Thursday, I had was excited about some progress I made with my peers that would benefit his wife and him. I texted him (my fatal mistake) and told him about this BUSINESS breakthrough. After a few texts, I asked him if I was breaking the rules of our no texting outside work hours. He replied that “he had signed off already and was working in his garage.” The asshole that I was at that moment, snapped and pretty much told him “eeexxxcccussseee meee!!!” and I won’t text again. I instantly felt bad, but did not want to send another text. I resigned myself to talking to him the next day at work.

Long story short, rather than talk to me, he reported me to HR and accused me of sexual harassment and me forcibly making him my friend. I was DEVESTATED!!! I came clean to my wife (she has known for years I am bi) and she was really hurt. Again, she has cancer, so I lost our health insurance and she had to miss chemo for a month. Thankfully, I found another job before I quit in December because the investigators found me guilty of sexual harassment and pressuring him to be my friend. Note, I told them upfront that I told him that I had feelings for him. That was my fatal mistake for trying to be honest.

My wife and I are in a much better place. Honestly, she may be gone within the next year, so we are going to live life to the fullest. I have never in the 31 years we have been together, cheated on my wife. I never planned to with him. While I found him somewhat physically attractive, I was most attracted to his, what I thought, kindness and openness about his life. I feel like the biggest idiot that every lived. He almost destroyed me. I felt suicidal to the point I checked myself into a mental hospital the week this all happened. I was humiliated, suffering from anxiety, and guilt ridden. I am doing better now, but am so bitter towards him. He still occupies my mind and I hate it.

So, there I laid it out. I just want feedback. I am not a bad person. In fact, I am a very kind person, who was going through a rough time and trusted the wrong person. I own what I did. I should have NEVER told him how I felt, but I just felt I could trust him and he would understand. The next week he accused me of sexual harassment and ruined my life for that period of time. I am in college and have been taking leadership courses that help me understand where I went wrong, but also reinforce the fact that I was bonding with who I thought was my friend.

 

Thank you both for your replies. This was such an over reach on his part that I am still bewildered. The karma is already coming to him. One of his peers, that he and his wife HATE, applied for my job. She reached out to me and I coached her through the entire interview process. SHE GOT THE JOB!

She knows how he feels about her, because he and his wife treated her like SHIT when she first started. So, she has been piling the work on him and he is stressed out. He had to take off for a mental health break due to anxiety. As tent71 said, he is a big ass pussy. He helped drive me out and now has a boss that does not like him, nor he her. Like they say, be careful what you ask for.