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.

@SpongeBobJudgeyPants

“Some married men came out of the woodwork to offer 'services'”

Oh no! Did they really? Eww 😂
Did you know them beforehand and how on earth did that conversation come about?

@SpongeBobJudgeyPants

I wasn't that brave unfortunately *@Stookeen*. But I thought it very hard indeed, and my face went like this I do say it quite a lot though, when I talk about it the perils of being single although there are many joys indeed

I can easily see how a normal person would have been stunned into silence, @SpongeBobJudgeyPants.

Can I ask what these jewels of humankind actually say when they offer their sexual services? Are we talking fake expressions of concern at your manless state and ‘if you ever need someone to come over at night to fix your plumbing’, they’d be only too happy stuff? Eww.

Slightly more subtle than offering to fix my plumbing, but not much. A great amount of unnecessary hovering was involved, and calling at the house under extremely flimsy pretexts

OMG. Same @SpongeBobJudgeyPants .
Knocking on the door at 9pm. "I've looking for my daughters cat". Bringing around champagne on NYE - Didn't want you to be alone. Offering help with the garden etc etc. Was bizarre.

Yes! @marpelier. Not overly 'you must be missing the conjugals, howz about it', so they couldn't be accused of making a pass, but making it obvious semi subtly, so should you be that stupid way inclined, you could respond. I think it was quite calculating, so that various Boris type excuses could be made in the event of you going back to the wife in question

I feel that I might have derailed this a bit. Hopefully this isn't relevant at all to your situation @DMOB3. How are you? FWIW, I wouldn't be too happy with this situation either. In full disclosure, I not a cool wife, as my previous history has indicated that I was far too cool indeed, until the scales fell away from my eyes.

When my husband and I lived in New York we were at a dog park and we saw two of his coworkers on a late-night dog walk. I thought it was suspicious but my husband said there’s no way anything was going on, the man was newly married and they just had a baby. Well what do you know 3 months later it turned out the coworkers had fallen for each other and the man left his wife and new baby in a devastating turn of events.
Obviously the woman was homewrecker but the husband is also 100% to blame for going on these walks, especially as a new dad, which is one of the hardest times in any relationship and when a wife would need him the most.
My point is, if you’re not invited on the walks and he doesn’t even tell you before he goes - it’s 100% a problem. If you feel suspicious, you have to go with your gut. A woman always knows! Ladies, you know that’s true! Our intuition is very strong, we always see what’s going on.
I would just be upfront and set your boundary with him, maybe get a couple’s therapist and talk there so your husband can’t gaslight you in private and you could both get advice on how to move forward. Maybe you caught it in the early stages and a therapist can help turn the ship around, but remember if he wants to go cheat don’t even bother trying to hold on, best to go find someone who deserves and actually respects you.
Sorry you are going through this!

I wouldn't really mind but the fact that he doesn't tell you until he gets back and there's late texts say to me that she's waiting until her husband is out of the way before she contacts him.
Put your alarm on, get up out of bed and get ready then go with him. That's what I'd do

It's bothering you. No matter how much people tell you people can have opposite gender friends it doesn't feel right. This happened to me. I was uneasy and as it turned out it WAS an affair. I don't know what to tell you though. I chose to turn a blind eye but I lost my marriage anyway. No answers, just best wishes.

Usually if I don't tell my husband that I am planning to meet someone, it is because I am not. Then if I do meet someone on that occasion, I tell him after the event.

This is because I don't actually have 100% accurate second sight and sometimes do not know in advance about every chance encounter.

I feel increasingly sorry for this husband, who has more than once (shock, horror) happened to meet a woman he knows (gasp, faint) while he is out walking a dog, and instead of turning on his heel and rapidly walking the other way has joined her for a dogwalk, and only afterwards told his wife about it.

As for "late texts", he has received a single WhatsApp message from her late at night that we have been told about. I find the multiplication of one into many extraordinary, though it does explain the way gossip starts from the milk not being taken in off a doorstep and ends up with the whole country deciding that a grisly murder has obviously been committed in the flat with the rancid milk outside it. (It's a short story by Dorothy L Sayers called "The Milk Bottles", in In the Teeth of the Evidence, and if anyone wants t know what was actually going on they have only to ask. Or read it.)

There's not much to go on here but is DH usually so considerate? Letting you have a lie in - does he normally take the dog grudgingly?

My hubby was livid with me when I told him I didnt feel comfortable with his 1:1 friendship with a female colleague outside of work.
But both my brothers' wives have left their marriages for their male friends they coffee with. So I know this stuff happens. It's all innocent to begin, but the longer it goes on, the more they vent to eachother and the lines can get blurred.
So I'd be tactful if I were you and try to somehow invite yourself along. Or start waking up early on the weekends and take the dog out for walks youself first or plan your walks/weekends with him in advance so he's always having to tell her he's busy. That should nip it in the bud early. If he's like my husband, he was probably all quiet about it cause he didnt want you overreacting.

If he was anything like the OP report, he was not all quiet about it: he told her about when he got home.

And until the OP bothers to come back and tell us otherwise, I can only go by what she said in the first post a week ago. "He never says in advance that he's going but always admits where he's been", "admits" in that sentence being a word meaning "I want to make him sound bad, but actually, he tells me."

I often meet other dog walkers but we stop and chat. I do not have their phone numbers nor do we arrange to meet.

Thats my view from a dog walker.

She had his phone number because they are work colleagues; there is no evidence that he had arranged to meet her.

Op hasn't been back since the 23rd... Think she got bored

She only came back to tell us she couldn't use more than one device to log in (which she must have logged in to do). Perhaps she realised she was being absurd, and didn't want to come and actually say so.

Not everybody thought she was being absurd though

Yes, there are definitely some vicarious paranoids on the board.

Vicarious paranoids?

People being paranoid on somebody else's behalf.

Incidentally, I didn't say that we all thought it was absurd; I said that she might have realised that it was.

ALL responsibility for this situation lands squarely on YOUR shoulders! I see many posters telling you to go with him "once". The reality is, you should be going with him ALWAYS!

YOU are 50% of the equation in your marriage. If you have insecurities, they are yours to own. Also, if he is "stepping out", chances are that is also on you...tracking his phone? WTF??? Who does that??

He is being honest and telling you that he walks with a gal from work and you post online asking strangers if your suspicions are wrong? Do you have any idea what two guys can do on a trail on Sunday mornings when out "walking the dog"?

Sounds like you are trying to drum up support for your narcissistic fantasies! Realistically, sounds like you want something to materialize that might give you a reason to say "I was right...and now I can hold this over your head."

Time to get over yourself, put on your hiking shoes...and walk the dog WITH "them"...every Sunday! If all is legit, then you should find yourself welcomed to the group with no resistance. If you are too lazy to get out of bed and walk the dog every Sunday, then accept everything at face value instead of orchestrating a train wreck!

@Criket86

ALL responsibility for this situation lands squarely on YOUR shoulders! I see many posters telling you to go with him "once". The reality is, you should be going with him ALWAYS!

YOU are 50% of the equation in your marriage. If you have insecurities, they are yours to own. Also, if he is "stepping out", chances are that is also on you...tracking his phone? WTF??? Who does that??

He is being honest and telling you that he walks with a gal from work and you post online asking strangers if your suspicions are wrong? Do you have any idea what two guys can do on a trail on Sunday mornings when out "walking the dog"?

Sounds like you are trying to drum up support for your narcissistic fantasies! Realistically, sounds like you want something to materialize that might give you a reason to say "I was right...and now I can hold this over your head."

Time to get over yourself, put on your hiking shoes...and walk the dog WITH "them"...every Sunday! If all is legit, then you should find yourself welcomed to the group with no resistance. If you are too lazy to get out of bed and walk the dog every Sunday, then accept everything at face value instead of orchestrating a train wreck!

Wow .. if you read what she said, he usually only tells her afterwards … who is the real narcissist here? Given that narcissists usually want the power ,the one who says afterwards what they did is the culprit .. like that narcissist quote “better to ask for forgiveness than permission”

First, I have known many narcissistic people and I have never known any to "ask forgiveness" since, in their delusional existence, they do nothing wrong. Telling her afterward speaks of two things in his favor ...first, it was not a planned encounter and second, he is not doing anything remotely questionable by another rational person.

Obviously he has been in a relationship with this character long enough to know that she flashes an insecure persona when she feels threatened. If he does not tell her, then he is hiding something...if he does tell her, then he is hiding something? This leaves him with only one option...tell the truth ALWAYS and let her craziness sort it out.

And IMHO, that is exactly what he is doing...she simply craves the drama of playing victim to gain the upper hand.

It would not be possible for him to tell her in advance that he will do something if he does not himself know in advance that he will be doing it.

Consider the following very likely scenario:

A husband takes the dog for a walk every Sunday. (I hope he does, or someone does, otherwise poor dog.) Sometimes his wife goes too, sometimes she doesn't. When she does, they are an obvious couple and nobody else walks with them (given her apparently possessive attitude and her tracking his phone I suspect she may give out "don't even look at him!" signals very loud and clear); when she doesn't, he will walk and talk with other people if he happens to meet one he knows. One of these other people, who also takes their dog for a walk, is work colleague of his who happens to be female.

Since he doesn't know on any given Sunday whom he may meet when he is out, he cannot tell his (sleeping) wife in advance whom he is going to meet. She has not said whether he tells her he has ever met anyone else, in fact she has not said anything in answer to any of the very relevant questions she has been asked here.

The wife first complains to a bunch of strangers that this happens intermittently (ie, not as a regular thing, nor frequently) and then after reading the reactions her complaint gets, realises that she might just have made an almighty fool of herself and been very unpleasant about her husband, and says no more on the subject.