This isn't the difficult situation. The difficult situation is one where you develop genuine feelings for someone that you work with every day, intensely, day

This isn't the difficult situation. The difficult situation is one where you develop genuine feelings for someone that you work with every day, intensely, day in and day out. When the attempt of both parties to refrain from a relationship itself becomes an issue that you console each other over, ironically sending you into a relationship. Or what if the woman approached the man, aggressively so? This does happen. Maybe not so difficult, but a different dynamic, and maybe a different reason to refrain, that turns this piece on its head. Although well-intended, there's a certain sexism in these kinds of stories, a kind of "knight in shining armor" for the modern age. I realize that in most cases the issue is male -> female attention, but sometimes it is female -> male, or [fe]male <-> [fe]male, and it seems like we tend to assume everything is the same. I'm trying to figure out what concerns me about this piece, because I'm not sure I have a problem with its content. I'm thinking it's not really what's written in the piece, but the subtext, context, and assumed reasons for writing it, and what to generalize. I guess I worry that in trying to deal with the massive problem of sexual harassment, the actual messiness of other situations becomes stereotyped and painted over. And then we get blowback.