DH dogwalks with another woman

[DMOB3]

AIBU to not want my DH to disappear on a sunday moring with a female colleague, who is also married. This happens intermittently. He never says in advance that he's going but always admits where he's been. Plus his phone always tells me where he is. Am I being paranoid? Last week he said he wanted to give me a lie in. Late evening (11.30 pm) she WhatsApp him to thank him for the walk.

At the end of a shared walk with someone,you say bye and thanks for walk,it was enjoyable.end of that.texting at midnight to say thanks for walk is weird and most likely indicates an issue.

My friend is the dad of one of dcs friends, not a colleague. We often have a walk together while they’re busy doing their sport and we have time to kill. My dh does the sport too, so is busy with that.

If my friend comes with his wife, we will have a chat together and then they walk together and I walk on my own. If his wife goes on her own she sits in the car.

It’s sad that (obviously) people read more into this than just a friendship and that you should feel guilty somehow for enjoying someone’s company who is the opposite sex. We click and could chat for hours, probably because we are a similar age and have shared interests, it doesn’t mean I want to have a relationship.

Sadly some others seem to take offence to this, if those on here are anything to go by, presumably because they think it’s not appropriate to interact with a man if you’re married as it must mean that one of you fancies the other which will lead to an affair…. I think that’s quite a sad way to live and must make you a very paranoid, unhappy person.

Is dog walking the new "dogging"? Are they basically fucking in the bushes? How very uncomfortable.

Maybe get rid of the dog. Then he'll have to stay faithful.

But would you text at midnight to say thanks for the conversation etc.?

@Chuechebache

But would you text at midnight to say thanks for the conversation etc.?

Yes, quite easily if it was something that helped me or made me feel better. I'd want the other person to know I appreciated what they had done - even if that was just listen to me while I moaned about the daily grind or gave me an excuse to get out of the house for an hour or gave me advice about an issue I'd been having at work - especially if they have used their own free time to support me.

If I had a male dog walking partner and he sent that, I would feel that he was coming on to me.

The 'give you a lie in' and he's actually been with the woman dog walking is also suspicious to me, regardless of admitting it later. If it was a regular dog walk wouldn't you just say 'I'm off to give the dog a walk.'

@Chuechebache

But would you text at midnight to say thanks for the conversation etc.?

Yes. As the other poster said, I quite often text friends to say thanks for the walk, dinner, chat whatever. Particularly if they've given me advice.

Either you trust your partner or you don't. I'd find it slightly suffocating if my husband scrutinised all my communications or time spent with my male friends. In the same way, he's free to go out with his female friends.

"Sadly some others seem to take offence to this, if those on here are anything to go by, presumably because they think it’s not appropriate to interact with a man if you’re married as it must mean that one of you fancies the other which will lead to an affair…. I think that’s quite a sad way to live and must make you a very paranoid, unhappy person."

It's also a big problem for women at work if men and women aren't allowed to interact so women aren't invited to working lunches for example.
fortune.com/2017/04/05/mike-pence-wife-dinner/

I wouldn’t worry about it. My DH used to have a work ‘girlfriend’ and they’d go to lunch/gym together. Now he and I along with her and her husband are really good mates and hang out a lot.

I wouldn't text to thank anyone for a walk - however I have a few friends (make and female) who routinely thank me afterwards for the dinner, the coffee, the walk etc. I think they were just brought up to be more courteous than I was! I don't think it's unusual. I've never read it as a come-on before.

And yes, if I'd got some important advice on something on the walk I'd definitely thank the other person.

I wouldn't like the "thanks for the walk." Because if it was simply a walk that they both do at a time that suits their animals and they meet up during it, there wouldn't be any need for thanks. It suggest prearranged, suggests that she needed something else from it or she wanted it..... it suggests to me that they're talking about personal things during these times, which is either friendly and they're more friends than colleagues, or it's more than that. But you wouldn't need to thank anyone for anything like that unless they'd gone out of their way to accommodate you. It would be like thanking another passenger for accompanying you for the bus ride

And I wouldn't let him know I was going with him. If I could see him on a find My Friends or similar, I'd be about five minutes behind him and then catch him up saying you thought it would be nice to walk together. If she's there and they act caught or like you're a third wheel, you'll know

@gannett

I sent off a round of Whatsapp messages at 11pm last night, hadn't got round to replying for a few days and just wanted to clear the backlog. Didn't know that would be deemed inappropriate by the territorial pissers of MN.

Dog owners go walking with other dog owners literally all the time.

2nding what this person said.

@melj1213.But why would you not say this face to face at the end of the walk,why wait until midnight and then text.just weird.After all they talked face to face on the walk.

@newyear1.Maybe I am just older and are capable of saying thanks face to face.utterly pointless text when you can say thanks face to face.just weird people on here.

I have been on dog walks with friends and my partner walks the dog most days and bumps into the same people everyday and walks along with them. Why does the fact that they are opposite sexes mean that they can't be friends or walk the dogs?

Nothing in the OP's three posts says that the husband arranges any meetings with this work colleague he has seen "intermittently" when on a dog-walk.

Nor have I seen anything from her suggesting that he has concealed these dog-walks from her: on the contrary, her words were "He never says in advance that he's going but always admits where he's been." (I found the word "admits" interesting there: it reads as if he has been prejudged and found guilty of something, if what he says is deemed to be an admission rather than a statement.)

When I was looking after my son's dog for him a couple of years ago I took her for two walks a day. Before I set out for the morning one, not only did I not know exactly where I would go with her, I had no idea who (or what!) we would encounter. It might be a friend I'd met before, a woman leading home a horse which had lost a shoe, a very dead muntjak deer, a badly-brambled spaniel.... I could not have told my sleeping husband about any of these in advance.

This husband's only possible sin seems to me to have been being the recipient of a message saying "Thanks for the walk" at what OP feels was a late hour. Condemning him for that is like Henry VII sentencing a child who was possibly in line to the throne to death for being sent a letter from Ireland.

I feel sorry for people who have to rely on colleagues for a dog walk

I feel sorry for people who would reject potentially great friendships just because the person was a colleague. I relocated for work over ten years ago and knew only a handful of people in my new city. Some of the great people I worked with became great friends too - I don’t know what I would have done without them. Would those friendships have somehow been more valuable if I’d met the people through the gym or a yoga class, or a book club, or if they were my neighbours?

[quote Chuechebache]@melj1213.But why would you not say this face to face at the end of the walk,why wait until midnight and then text.just weird.After all they talked face to face on the walk.[/quote]
Because maybe it was forgotten or because it was only later on, after dinner when DD is in bed, the dinner things are washed up, all of the housework is done and I'm sitting in front of the TV that I had time to reflect on how beneficial that hour walk was - whether its just because otherwise I wouldn't have got out for fresh air that day or because I'd mulled over whatever was discussed/worked through during rhe walk and realised that having someone to talk it out with had either helped me make a decision or taken a weight off my mind and I wanted to acknowledge the time and effort the other person had given me. Its not my fault that this usually doesn't happen until later in the evening when I actually have time to myself.

'I feel sorry for people who would reject potentially great friendships just because the person was a colleague'

Well I feel sorry for anyone who messages married people with excuses like thanking them for a dog walk 🙄 because they obviously have so little in their lives. They need to perhaps widen their social circle.

I hadn’t realised there was a law against saying ‘thank you’ to somebody married.

@JaniieJones

'I feel sorry for people who would reject potentially great friendships just because the person was a colleague'

Well I feel sorry for anyone who messages married people with excuses like thanking them for a dog walk 🙄 because they obviously have so little in their lives. They need to perhaps widen their social circle.

How do you widen your social circle if you're not allowed to message anyone who's married or message someone when you're married?

'How do you widen your social circle if you're not allowed to message anyone who's married or message someone when you're married?'

Group chats, dinner parties, pub meet ups with dog walkers and their partners?

Why would anyone message to thank someone at 11.30pm who just happened to be walking their dog at the same time? I must text my married neighbour tonight at midnight to say thanks for chat we had when we queued at the post office. On second thoughts I won't because I'm not a weirdo.

@JaniieJones so once you're in a relationship all friendships can only be formed as part of a group?