"No contact" advice assumes you can leave a room.
Yours doesn't work that way.
She sits two desks away.
You book her meetings.
You run projects with her every week.
The rule everyone recommends was never built for a six-foot gap you can't close.
That doesn't mean no contact is useless.
It means you've been using the wrong definition of it.
The Advice Was Built For Distance You Don't Have
Most no contact advice comes from people who can actually disappear.
That version usually means zero messages and zero accidental run-ins.
That works because the brain gets a real break.
Every day without seeing her, the emotional charge fades a little.
You don't get that.
You tried six weeks of zero contact outside work.
Then one morning at the office reset everything.
That's not a failure of willpower.
A ten-second glance across a tiny office can undo weeks of distance.
That's because your brain treats seeing her as new information every time.
That's not proof no contact doesn't work for you.
It's proof you were applying a rule built for a different situation.
What Actually Counts As Contact
No contact was never about total silence.
It's about who initiates emotional exchange, not who says good morning.
A meeting about a shared project isn't contact in the sense that matters.
It's a work obligation, the same as talking to a client you don't like.
What counts is anything that carries emotional weight beyond the task.
A comment about her weekend.
A joke that isn't about work.
Lingering after the meeting ends to talk about nothing in particular.
Those are the moments that reopen the wound, not the meeting itself.
So the rule for you isn't "never speak to her."
It's "never let a work exchange turn into a personal one."
That single line does more work than trying to avoid her entirely.
The person who keeps things cold and businesslike calls this strictly business.
That instinct holds up, even when it feels like performance instead of healing.
Why Seeing Her Feels Like Being Evaluated
You said if you didn't see her daily, you'd feel free to work on yourself.
That's because right now, every interaction feels graded.
A cold hello reads as proof she's over it.
A warm one reads as a maybe.
Neither is actually a verdict.
It's just a person saying hello at work.
The evaluation you feel isn't coming from her.
It's coming from you, watching for a sign that tells you how to feel next.
That habit is exhausting because it never resolves.
There's always another meeting, another glance, another data point to reinterpret.
The fix isn't to stop noticing her.
It's to stop treating every noticed thing as information about the relationship.
If her hot and cold behavior feels confusing, it usually isn't personal.
It's just two people forced into contact without a script.
The Boundary That Actually Holds Under Proximity
A boundary that survives daily proximity has to be narrow enough to follow every time.
"Be cordial but distant" is too vague to hold up under pressure.
Try this instead.
Speak only about the task in front of you.
Keep meetings on schedule, starting and ending on time.
Don't ask how her weekend was.
Don't answer if she asks yours, beyond one line.
Skip the small talk that has nothing to do with work.
Stop tracking her calendar, her coffee breaks, her arrival time.
That kind of tracking keeps her in your head long after the meeting ends.
Give yourself ten minutes after any shared meeting to feel whatever you feel.
Then close it and move to the next task.
That's the whole practice.
It's boring on purpose.
Boring is what makes it repeatable.
The Job You Moved For Isn't The Problem
You didn't relocate your career to fix a breakup.
Quitting wouldn't undo what happened between you two.
Someone who left a similar job to escape an ex found that out the hard way.
Nine months later, they still weren't over it, and had no job to show for it.
Removing the trigger doesn't remove the attachment.
It just removes the paycheck.
The desk across from you isn't the thing keeping you stuck.
The habit of scanning it for meaning is.
Fix that, and the office stops being a courtroom.
It becomes what it actually is, a place you work.
That's the version of no contact that can survive a six-foot gap.
Not silence.
Discipline about what you let mean something.