Business English: I've been cuckolded by my CEO. Should I leave my job?

A male director (50) wrote: My wife, who works at the same company as me, has for some months been conducting an affair with our chief executive. She has decided to leave me and resign her position in order to move in with him. The affair, which has been made very public within the company, seems to have done no damage to him but has devastated me... von Lucy Kellaway, London

...I find myself having to work directly for the man who has cuckolded me - which is intolerable to my pride. However, I don't see why I should resign from a job in which I had been excelling, when I am the only person to have behaved professionally throughout. What should I do?

Read what Lucy Kellaway, "agony-aunt" of the Financial Times (London), answered:

What you should do depends on the intensity of your feeling. If the very sight of your chief executive fills you with rage and misery, you must leave - taking with you as much money as you can. The first thing to do is get a good lawyer. Even if the affair did not break your company's policy on relationships, and even if you have not been discriminated against, a skilful lawyer may be able to argue that your employer has breached its legal duty of trust and confidence.

Lucy Kellaway answers the questions of FT-readers

Although the most you would get from a UK industrial tribunal would be £ 70,000, your company would almost certainly agree a much larger private settlement in order to avoid the damage to its reputation of having the squalid details of who did what to whom spread all over the papers.

If, however, the main harm done has been to your pride, it might be wiser to stick around. Simply by staying, you extract a revenge of sorts: for so long as you are still in the company, your CEO is not going to be able to forget the embarrassing incident. You will also be someone it becomes rather difficult to pass over for promotion.

Hold your head high

If you manage to hold your head high, your colleagues may quickly stop pitying you - pity being the most horrid thing to be at the receiving end of at work - and in time respect and like you more for it.

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The chief executive's standing with your colleagues will almost certainly be damaged by this, and you may benefit from the fallout.

Wait for the next scandal

Either way, the rumpus will die down in time. The appetite for scandal in the average office is prodigious, but the scandal needs to be fresh to merit continued discussion. You will only be talked about as the-man-cuckolded-by-the-CEO until the next big scandal breaks - which will probably be quite soon.

And if you stay you may well have the satisfaction of seeing this new relationship fall apart. As the late Sir James Goldsmith said: "When a man marries his mistress, he creates a job opportunity."

Aus der Financial Times, London. www.ft.com