Friendship with married man making me uneasy

[Beautifulbouquet]

I've had various friends who were married men...might go for drinks, phonecalls occasionally, texts. Straightforward.

I've recently had a married man befriend me but he never ever mentions his wife or kids. I'm pretty sure he hasn't told his wife about me.

He's now asked me for lunch, his treat, and he'll pick me up.

On the surface this shouldn't be a problem. He doesn't flirt or act inappropriately.

I tried asking questions that would involve him talking about his wife but he never refers to her at all.

He lives several hundred miles away from me but detours to see me when travelling for business.

He's great to talk to, fun to spend time with and has been a good friend so I don't want to back off the friendship for no good reason.

But I find this a bit odd. Am I overthinking?

Does his wife have parkinsons?

I would nip this relationship in the bud. It doesn’t sound fair to the wife

@EnchantingDecorations I absolutely agree with you and you don’t have to explain yourself to anyone. I don’t know why @FrodoBigginsis hanging on to your comments like a dog with a bone.

No, this sounds all wrong.
He is putting in a lot of effort for a "friend" and not answering direct questions about his wife and children are 🚩

Turn it around, would you be okay with your partner/dh diverting to see a woman with absolutely no mention of you or your kids to her?

Why is he denying her existence?

The thing is, you know him and we don’t. You could argue that we’re dispassionate observers so see the problem clearly.

If you want to continue the friendship, don’t let him pick you up. Meet him wherever. You can simply point out that it’s unwise for a woman to find herself away from home without her car.

Over lunch, question the friendship a bit deeper. You don’t have to accuse him of fancying you- you can be. Ich more discrete than that!
Bill, you never talk about your wife. Tell me about her!
Bill, I can’t let you pay for lunch, that would feel too much like a date.
Bill, how come you get time to detour on work trips? Most people are in a rush to get home asap!

Ok so may have been a little bit of ignorance on my side , people meeting on line & it’s not through dating sites , however I’ll still stand by what I say & it’s weird a lot of it !! , maybe here & there different situations but only seldom instances ..
Example, if I stared chatting to a guy here who is married & he suggested meeting me , a complete stranger for lunch, & he has a wife , that’s WEIRD !!, I don’t care what way people look at it ..
And yes , it is 110 % different if a group of women or 2 women start chatting on Mumsnet & decide to meet for coffee , than & woman & a married man meeting up . I don’t care if I get slated for that it’s true , I’m sure there isn’t one married woman on this site that it would sit well with ..
OP you can’t be that naive, stay away from this fella who lives a gazillion miles away from you ..

Well, from his wife’s point of view I’d definitely be pissed off if my dh drove 100s of miles to meet a random woman he’d ‘met’ online. It in no way falls into the territory of meeting an old friend.

How, and why, do you keep “befriending” so many married men OP?

Please do not answer this question online - it’s absolutely not fair on the wife to divulge her medical information.
I am guessing the Parkinson’s example was just that, an example.

If it helps for those wondering how you meet someone online, my ex met his OW online on a gaming forum. I have two good friends I met on here. One of these has friends she met on a knitting forum.
It’s not hard. How it works is you chat a lot online, then the discussion moves from a thread to private messages to email or WhatsApp to meeting up over time.
I could quite see how - given a hobby in common - it could make sense to meet up to discuss something in person but the issue here is the lack of mention of the wife and whether the wife knows. And it’s a detour by a married man to meet a single woman in these circumstances a long way from
home.

I’d also worry about your safety op. IMO it’s such an odd thing to do that he must in some way be a ‘wrong-un’, whether just weird or actually sinister.

I totally agrrr with you. It’s different if an old friend you’ve known for years is married and you meet up and keep in touch.
But chatting to random married men online and then agreeing to meet up 1-1 is not normal imo.

And regardless of anything else, a lot of men will take this as the woman being interested in something more as this one seems to. I’ve only surprised given the OP’s penchant for making friends with and meeting up with random married men, it’s not happened before.

If my DH was chatting to and meeting up with a single woman he’d met online, I wouldn’t be impressed.

Exactly my thoughts.

I am going to suggest that all of the married men who have slid into your DMs and started messaging, phoning and inviting you for drinks had ulterior motives. This one is just being a bit more brazen. I’m sorry but I really don’t think these men have your best interests at heart and potentially think you are vulnerable. Do you have friends irl too?

I’d cancel the lunch and pull right back on this friendship. You are right to feel uncomfortable.

i would not want to be friends with someone who treats their marriage in this way.

This.

I agree with this. I have plenty of male friends but the fact that OP literally says she keeps "befriending" married men online is extremely odd.

Yes exactly, it is not normal, married men meeting women on line & meeting up !..
Reason he isn’t mentioning wife & kids ever is cause he is keeping them separate from his new friend he is after striking up an acquaintance with ..It is different like you say old friends that are married now who meet up ..

Agree. I have plenty of male friends most of whom I’ve known for years, met through social group or mutual friends.
Having married men as friends organically is totally normal, continually befriending married men online and meeting up with them is a patten of odd behaviour imo.
It does seem there’s some element of deliberate faux naivety here.

Of course you’re not overthinking and you shouldn’t be continuing with this ‘friendship’.

@Beautifulbouquet Some men are often a little crap in that in their minds, if you know that they are married and you agree to meet with them for a date - especially if an online relationship migrating to IRL - they think that you are potentially up for an affair.

The hundreds of miles between you and his family are not a happy accident - that's what makes it feasible for him!

Your sixth sense is well tuned. Exit.

I’m just a bit baffled by all these married men friends. It seems to be a common pattern for you and yet in real life I can’t say I’m regularly seeing married men seeking friendships with single women. The online context matters I think, this wouldn’t happen frequently in real life and I’d question the motives of these men. This one especially.

How stupid are you @Beautifulbouquet ? Stay away from married men FFS! And yes this comes from someone whose ex-best friend ended up falling in love with my husband (totally unreciprocated!). She was a danger and so are you. Stay away and wise up!

Trust your gut.

Another one here who finds all these married online men friends a bit strange. I have male friends- some I've known since uni, some I got to know through their wives, some from work. All platonic, all fine.

However, constantly meeting up alone with men who are married that you only know through a website is frankly, weird and in some cases, could be flat out dangerous. You dont really know these men at all, of course you will say you do but people online can say anything they want and lie about anything they like. It doesnt matter if you have known them for years online - the fact is, if they live miles away from you they could easily be lying about many aspects of their lives and you would never know because you never see them in their own environment and thats the difference between male friends you genuinely know well, and male friends you met online.

I would also wonder why is it you are only befriending married men- why no women?
Have you ever considered why that might be and what their motivation might be.

Yeah this way lies trouble. Tell him
no thank you.

I can see how you might form a friendship online with someone over a shared interest. I’m Facebook friends with a married man I met online through a series of charity events we were both involved with. We would chat all the time on WhatsApp but his wife knew about me and there was never any kind of flirting or whatever.

We’ve never actually got round to meeting in person (he now lives in another country) but if we did, I’d arrange for it to be somewhere public (not my house) and obviously his wife would need to know and be happy with it.

I think you’re getting a bit of unfair criticism here OP, especially when you flagged up that you’re unsure of this man’s intentions. Not sure if you’ve met him in person before but I’d definitely suggest you meet in public at a neutral venue and, regardless of whether he’s a private person or not, you do need to confirm whether his wife knows he’s meeting you. If there’s any kind of secrecy with his wife then you should run far away from this as his motives are clearly not good ones.

Look after yourself.