my boss’s wife cheated on him in front of me, and now he’s icing me out at work

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

A reader writes:

I work for an office of 20/30somethings with a strong drinking culture — our events inevitably end up in pubs late into the night and include all partners, funders, etc. This is not abnormal in my industry.

The other night, we were all out late after a successful event and the boss invited everyone to his house for an afterparty. His wife and I got separated from the group, and she was very keen on “remedying” my singleness, so started talking to a random guy outside a nightclub and invited him back to the house “for me.” My boss very quickly Irish goodbye-ed and went to bed, and I fell asleep on the couch with people chatting around me.

When I awoke, I saw my boss’s very drunk wife kissing this random dude, then leading him by the hand upstairs. I didn’t want to leave in the middle of the night, so I waited until I could catch the first train in the morning. Eventually I heard someone walk down the stairs and out the front door. I was sneaking out when I was surprised by his wife, who said, “Did you hook up with that guy?” I blurted out, “No, but you did!” and she burst into tears, saying she was married and so embarrassed.

I left, and then received a call from my boss asking me to tell him everything that happened and then asking, “What do I do?” and requesting that I not tell anyone at work.

Since then, my boss has barely spoken or looked at me, to the point that higher-ups have called for a meeting to ask about the office dynamic. I am at a loss for how to deal with this (beyond never drinking with my coworkers again). I don’t think I can tell the higher-ups why my boss is being so cold to me, but I’m not sure what to say.

You can indeed tell them what’s going on with your boss, and you might need to.

First, though, if you want, you can try talking to your boss directly. Whether or not that makes sense will depend on your relationship with your boss and what he’s generally like, but in some cases it might move things forward if you say, for example, “My sense is that you’ve felt awkward around me since last weekend, and I want you to know that I don’t consider that any of my business whatsoever. As far I’m concerned, I’ve wiped it from my mind and never plan to think about it again! I do need to talk to you as my boss, though, so I’m hoping we can go back to our normal relationship, which I really valued.”

You could also say, “Rupert and Margaret have asked me what’s going on with the office dynamic. I don’t think what happened the other week is any of their business — just as it’s not any of my business either — and I’d like to be able to tell them everything is fine between us. Can we put this behind us before I have to meet with them?”

Or, with some people, you could skip that and just look for opportunities to interact as normally as possible with him, as often as possible — on the theory that he’ll take cues from you and if you’re making a point of demonstrating “I’m comfortable just being normal and not dwelling on what happened,” it’ll make it easier for him to relax back into a normal dynamic. With some people and in some situations, this is remarkably effective.

But if neither of those approaches work or feel doable, then I do think you’ll need to seriously consider telling your higher-ups what’s going on when they ask. You don’t need to get super specific (“Jeb’s wife hooked up with a random dude and I saw it”); you could say, “I witnessed something awkward between him and his wife at a party and he hasn’t seemed comfortable talking to me since then. I don’t consider it any of my business and I’d like to move forward but I’m not sure how to navigate it.”

Is that an awkward thing to say to higher-ups? Sure. But it’s not okay for your boss to freeze you out (over anything, ever, but especially over something like this) and if that’s the path he’s picking, he’s the one choosing awkwardness, not you.