AITA for reporting my boss’s suspected affair with a coworker to HR after months of collecting evidence instead of confronting him privately?

I (28F) work as an executive assistant at a mid-sized marketing firm, and for the past year my boss (40M) has been unusually close with a senior account manager (30F). It started with private meetings off-calendar, shared late-night rides, and her increasingly speaking for him in meetings I was meant to handle. A colleague (27F) warned me they were “too close,” but I ignored it until I saw a hotel booking on his tablet under her initials. I started tracking overlaps in their schedules and quietly collecting screenshots from shared systems while HR (42F) dismissed earlier rumors. Today I entered a formal HR meeting with my boss (40M) and the account manager (30F), ready to present what I found when— HR (42F) asked me to explain everything first and I opened my laptop while my boss kept shaking his head and the account manager avoided eye contact and I said I had enough evidence to show a pattern of late-night communication hidden meetings and travel overlaps that could not be explained as normal work coordination and as I clicked the folder to project the screenshots—

The room didn’t explode the way I expected it to.

HR (42F) immediately stopped the presentation and told everyone to pause. She didn’t accuse anyone or make statements—she simply asked me to forward everything through the official reporting channel and said this would be treated as a workplace conduct review, not a live confrontation.

My boss (40M) leaned back in his chair and insisted I was misinterpreting professional coordination, that the hotel booking was “standard client travel overlap,” and that my timing comparisons were misleading without full context. The account manager (30F) backed him up, saying our work often required late-night alignment and that personal assumptions were being unfairly attached to normal project pressure.

HR ended the meeting early and separated us for individual follow-ups over the next few days. I had to sit through two interviews where they asked me to justify every screenshot and every timeline I had built. Nothing was confirmed in that room—not even close.

But things still changed. My boss was removed from leading the project temporarily pending review, and the account manager was reassigned to a different team “to reduce conflict risk.” No one officially said why.

At work, people started whispering. Some thought I overstepped by building a case instead of talking to him first. Others said HR only acted because I documented everything properly.

At home, my boyfriend (30M) said I turned suspicion into a professional crisis that could follow me for years. My closest friend (29F) says I did exactly what any employee should do when power imbalance is involved and private confrontation would have gone nowhere.

My boss now barely speaks to me outside of email and called it “a betrayal disguised as procedure.”

I keep replaying it wondering if I escalated too cleanly, or if there was ever a “private” option that wouldn’t have just buried everything.

So… AITA for reporting it to HR instead of confronting him directly first?