There was a colleague who really detested me. And the feeling was completely mutual. There was no specific reason for this dislike. She never did anything to me, nor I to her. We just couldn’t stand each other. In the 11 years we worked together, we barely exchanged half a dozen full sentences. I could see her roll her eyes whenever I passed her by in the hallways. This was a decade of strong shared dislike based on the vague feeling that we were completely different people.
During COVID we ended up having to talk. We were the only two faculty members who showed up every day, so we were forced to work together. It was very uncomfortable at first. But then we both realized that each of us was the other’s dream work partner. We complemented each other perfectly. We finished each other’s sentences. We communicated with a look, a half smile, and together we achieved an enormous lot. We started hanging out socially, and it turned out that we could have a lot of fun together.
Our initial feelings about each other were wrong. Feelings can be wrong. Instincts, hunches, and perceptions can be completely ass-backwards wrong. I have no idea when this noxious belief that feelings are sacred and should never be questioned arose but it’s dumb. Anything can and should be questioned.
My colleague is now retired and we are great friends still. I miss her at work every day and realize how stupid it was to have wasted a decade where we could have been doing things together over a dumb feeling.
Clarissa's Blog 
I have no idea when this noxious belief that feelings are sacred and should never be questioned arose.
It’s one of the many and multifarious evils spawned by the Romantic Age (ca.1760-1830).
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Totally, it’s the Romantic sensibility. A great achievement at the time that turned into something ugly when taken to its ultimate conclusions.
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I have a colleague like this. I used to joke (still sometimes do) that she’s my nemesis, even though she’s never really done anything to me, nor have I to her. Over the past twenty years that we’ve worked together, I’ve gotten to know her and respect her, but I think the original feelings were not misplaced. We do have many similarities that a) make us competition for the “best woman among all the men” job we inadvertently vie for and b) we’re too similar to complement each other, yet not similar enough to seamlessly get along and not grate on each other. Still, there are many aspects of our work where the two of us can form a natural alliance because we do have similar work ethic, attitude toward students, attention to detail, etc. It would be nice if we could be friends, but as many times as I’ve tried, she is simply not willing or able to lower her guard down around me even a little bit. She’s very invested in having the upper hand and maintaining her image of perfection, and even though I can definitely see (again, we’ve been working together and low-key grating on each other for twenty years) that she’s still human like the rest of us and thus occasionally fallible, she cannot stomach the idea of ever coming across as anything but flawless. So I’ve settled into a peaceful professional coexistence with her, where I highly respect her and I am happy to help and be her ally more often than not, but we will sadly never be friends. This makes me a little wistful given we’re close in age and there are no other women around similar to us age-wise, but in terms of how we conduct ourselves in our personal lives and how we live and what we value, we’re really quite different (e.g., she is of the ascetic vegan highly self-controlled stock; I’m of the self-indulgent messy chaotic goblin stock). This is a long-winded way of saying that my initial gut feelings (I don’t know about hers, but I know about mine) were not really wrong; while the colleague is not evil or dangerous, she is not a kindred spirit and remains someone around whom I need to be careful.
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