But they illustrate something that many women in business will immediately recognize.

There is often an unspoken balancing act.

How do you maintain a valuable business relationship without encouraging attention you do not welcome?

How do you decline personal advances without wondering whether doing so will jeopardize the business relationship you’ve spent months—or years—building?

How do you remain friendly without being misunderstood?

Those questions shouldn’t exist in a professional relationship.

Yet many women know they do.

I never encouraged romantic attention.

I never suggested there was anything beyond friendship and business.

When inappropriate comments were made—whether about ending up in my hotel room, not being able to control himself around me, attempting to kiss me after too much alcohol, or suggesting that staying overnight would mean sleeping in my bedroom—I did not reciprocate those advances.

Instead, I did what many professional women do.

I redirected the conversation back to business.

I maintained my boundaries.

I continued trying to preserve a professional working relationship because I believed in the business opportunity and the commitments that had been made.

This page is not included to embarrass anyone.

It is included because context matters.

If readers are going to understand the dynamic that existed between Bob and me, they should also understand something that has always been true:

There was never any ambiguity on my part.

It was friendship.

It became business.

It never became anything else.