Twenty years of listening to Manhattan’s relationship woes and I still remember Alexis. She sat in my office, designer boots barely touching the floor, hands wrapped around a coffee cup like it was the last warm thing in the world. Her husband had started a new job, and there was this coworker—an older woman who kept showing up at his workplace at 3 AM “to do laundry.” 😳
Alexis’s face was a study in conflicted emotions: worry mixed with self-doubt, frustration tangled with embarrassment at possibly overreacting.
“Am I crazy, Lola?” she asked. “He thinks she’s just a harmless old lady, but something feels… off.”
I’ve heard countless variations of this story over the years—the queasy feeling when someone orbits your relationship with just-plausible-enough reasons to be there. The creeping intrusion that makes you question your own perception. The uncomfortable position of appearing jealous or paranoid when pointing out what’s happening right before everyone’s eyes.
🎯 The Invasion of the Emotional Poachers
What fascinated me about Alexis’s situation wasn’t just the boundary violations—the 2 AM calls, the surprise appearances during night shifts, the oversharing about sexual history—but how perfectly it exemplified the emotional poacher archetype. This woman had created an elaborate framework where her presence appeared legitimate while systematically establishing emotional territory.
Most of us recognize boundary crossings when they’re dramatic—the ex who shows up drunk at your door at midnight. But we’re surprisingly blind to the slow-motion invasions, those seemingly innocent encroachments that happen one small transgression at a time:
- The late-night texts 📱
- The confessions that feel just a bit too intimate
- The manufactured emergencies requiring immediate attention 🚨
These aren’t random behaviors. They’re systematic attempts to create emotional dependence and specialness—all while maintaining plausible deniability.
🔍 The Invisibility of Female Predation
What kept Alexis awake wasn’t just the behavior itself but her husband’s blindness to it. “If this were a 55-year-old man doing this to a 25-year-old female colleague, everyone would see the problem immediately,” she said.
She was right. Our cultural frames around inappropriate behavior are heavily gendered. We’ve developed radar for detecting male predatory behavior, but female boundary violations often fly completely under the radar—especially when they come packaged in maternal or mentorship disguises.
The emotional scripts we inherit tell men to be flattered by older women’s attention rather than uncomfortable. They tell women to question their perceptions rather than trust their instincts. Alexis’s husband wasn’t failing her because he was oblivious—he was operating from a script that didn’t allow him to interpret these behaviors as problematic.
🔺 The Triangulation Test
What finally broke through in our sessions was what I call the triangulation test. Alexis described meeting this woman and watching her entire demeanor transform when her husband stepped away—the warmth vanishing, the engagement disappearing, the previously enthusiastic interest in their baby evaporating.
This moment revealed everything. People who genuinely care about someone also care about their connections. People who are grooming someone for inappropriate emotional intimacy see those connections as competition.
Ask yourself these questions when someone’s interest in your partner feels off:
- Do they treat you as an extension of your partner or as an obstacle? 🚧
- Does their behavior change dramatically when your partner isn’t present?
- Do they create situations requiring urgent one-on-one time?
- Do they share information that creates artificial intimacy?
- Do they frame themselves as uniquely understanding your partner?
- Do they subtly undermine other relationships in your partner’s life?
When Alexis and her husband looked at these patterns objectively, the “harmless” narrative crumbled. This wasn’t about jealousy or insecurity—it was about recognizing an invisible structure designed to create dependency and isolation.
💡 Core Insight
The most revealing moment came when Alexis’s husband realized this woman was systematically sabotaging a new colleague—spreading rumors, providing incorrect training—simply because his presence threatened her exclusive access. The protective instinct that failed to activate for himself immediately fired up when he saw someone else being manipulated.
Sometimes we can only recognize our own vulnerabilities by witnessing them in others.
What stays with me about Alexis wasn’t just the boundary violations she described, but the self-doubt that plagued her for noticing them. We’re taught to question our perceptions, to give others the benefit of the doubt, to avoid appearing jealous or controlling. Yet this laudable openness creates perfect breeding grounds for manipulation.
The most insidious emotional invasions aren’t the obvious ones—they’re the ones that make us question our right to feel uncomfortable in the first place.
Trust the knowing in your body before the doubting in your mind. 🧠💫
— Lola Adams, observing that the boundaries we hesitate to defend are precisely the ones predatory people are counting on us to second-guess
Setting Healthy Boundaries at Work – Workplace Strategies for Mental Health
Setting Boundaries at Work – Culture Amp
Workplace Boundaries Research – INFORMS
Setting Boundaries at Work – Cort
How to Set Boundaries at Work with Examples – Halo Psychology
Workplace Relationships – American Psychological Association
Setting Boundaries at Work: A Key to Well-Being – Vanderbilt University