DP’s ‘work wife’ will end my relationship

I think the phrase 'work wife' is designed to cause trouble, I would suspect anyone using it of being a real stirrer. How embarrassing would it be for some idiot to call you that just because you work closely with a man (who you may not even like but get on with for the sake of the job). And saying it to someone's partner is just nasty.

This! 10,000 times!

The way to build trust isn't just to lie by omission and pretend.

You have to be MORE transparent, not less.

In fairness he was inbetween a rock and a hard place. OP told him about her past so any work relationship he had with a female put him in the position of being damned if he mentioned it and damned if he didn’t.

Whether it was male or female, it was shit stirring behaviour

I see where you’re coming from. You let yourself trust him and now you know he kept something from you you’ve put your walls right up to protect yourself from further hurt.

He’s done the classic thing of not telling you to save your feelings rather than coming home one day and telling you straight that he’s working closely with a new colleague and dealing with your reaction to that.

He’s just done a human thing really. It’s not a break up worthy offence on his part.

At the same time it’s up to you if you don’t want to put yourself through a triggering scenario. If you’re going to be worried every time he’s at work it will eat away at your relationship.

I could never stay with someone who insisted they were 'protecting me' by not telling me something.

He's not protecting you. He's protecting himself. He should have discussed this with you as he knew the term is triggering to you, however meaningless the connection with the colleague may actually be.

A quick conversation is all it would have taken - "hey, can you believe that X has just started calling this woman I work with my work wife! It's really stupid and I'm going to ignore it/ confront it/ other course of action - what do you think?
I want you to be comfortable and secure in our relationship and I know what happened in the past, so I want to deal with this however is best for you."

That would have been a more mature way of dealing with this than hiding something he knew would trigger and upset you.

It's completely disingenuous of him to say that he hates the term himself but then accept people using it about him and a colleague and hiding it from you, even if there's nothing there.

I would lose all respect for him at this point, whatever the actual connection is between him and this colleague.

OP hasn't said whether the person who said it was male or female? Unless I am misunderstanding her post?

Yes I thought a work wife was someone (secretary?) who quietly sorted things for the man like a 1950s wife might have done eg arranging flowers for his real wife's birthday, sorting his dentist appointments

I was teamed with someone (widowed) for years and I think we were very much seen as a pair at work, had lunch together, I made him a Christmas cake and nagged him about Doctors appointments, helped him chose gifts, lots really. He was brilliant at his job but a bit hapless at times, I was happy to do it though.

However, he was also friends from an early stage with my DH and we all spent time together (often with them watching football or cricket) Zero relationship or attraction other than friendship and to my knowledge noone every insinuated there was despite our obvious closeness.

I think you are understandably seeing things through the lens of what happened with your ex and I'd start by having an honest conversation with your DP about how this is making you feel.

"DP admitted it was true but it means nothing."

Does this means he actually thinks of her/refers to her as his work wife?

Work wife doesn't just mean a man and woman who work together! It means they are known to be exceptionally close.

Did he have a good relationship with work colleague prior to meeting OP, is what I would like to know.

If this is within work boundaries that pre-dates OP, then what was he supposed to do? Scupper a perfectly good relationship with a colleague? He didn't know how long him and OP were going to stay together.

I get that it's very triggering for OP - my first husband left me for a work colleague so I was very wary myself afterwards. But you can't control every aspect of someone's life and if there is no trust then the relationship is doomed anyway.

You either trust him or you don't.

No they won’t YOU will.
there is nothing to say there is anything wrong or indeed they treat each other like that

The working relationship the two of them have isn’t the issue at all

what is is your insecurity around this and the fact that he lied to you.

You can’t police who he talks to or interacts with at work but the fact he lied is a big deal

Why not, older women and younger men get together aswell 😂😂

She was definitely trying her best to cause a bit of shit stirring, then asking her if she had met this particular woman ( who could have been a very attractive older woman) when she probably knew the OP probably hadn’t,

I'd find his lie hurtful and that he not only hid his work friend from you but is still close enough for a colleague to call her that silly name is not great either. Neither means he will have an affair with her or that he wants to, but lying and hiding relationships isn't good and it makes a lie of the line of not wanting to hurt you, it's usually the lying that hurts the most.

Before making a choice I'd want to have a good think about what I wanted from this and a discussion with him about boundaries and lying and take it from there myself. However you can leave anyone for any reason at any time so if none of this is great for you, regardless of anything we say, you do what feels right for you.

Living with trust issues is awful but you can learn to trust again, if you can, seek help, it will stop it from happening again.

I think we should all be able to agree it means something more than just being the opposite sex to someone you work with and being as casually friendly with as you are with everyone else. Otherwise every opposite sex colleague would be known as our work spouse.

Where does it say the colleague who made the comment was a female?

100% - it’s not at all difficult to have some professionalism.

The fact he was so sheepish after the colleague said it so naturally indicates this was not the first time he’s heard it. The further fact he gave OP no prior warning, ie: “My colleagues keep joking about this person - I have told them to stop but they still say it.” Also proves he was in no hurry to be forthcoming to OP.

To me, he likes the work wife dynamic. He doesn’t seem to be making eager attempts to reassure OP considering they haven’t spoke. He doesn’t know what to say, he feels too guilty.

Work wife is a shitty term.
Your partner knows how you feel & I don't understand why people find it hard to define boundaries at work.
Yes, when your young and in a young team work is all fun. But then you grow up.
No to work wife, No to flirting, No to innuendos.

Don’t be ridiculous ?!? of course the woman who said this was trying to shit stir, why would another woman say something like this to his wife, you are very naive

She didn’t know the history but she didn’t need to, it was still shit stirring behaviour

What reasonable woman says something like this to a male work colleagues wife?!?

I've never heard it used about colleagues who attend meetings together. Only ever about opposite sex colleagues who are seen as a unit - close friends who are always found next to each other at socials, fetch each others lunches, help each other with aspects of their jobs and so on.

What would annoy me is the "He’s always said that he finds ‘work wife/husband’ to be an insulting term to real life partners and would not put himself in that position " and the

DP admitted when his colleague had left that this was true but it means nothing and he was protecting me by not telling me. I"
I don't think he's cheating or intends t cheat but he made the comment about not putting himself in that position and then found himself in that position and didn't mention it to you and that's the bit that would really irritate me.