Dh has new female friend

[Saladdays01]

DH (married 20 years) has recently become good friends with female colleague. She is separated with a young DD. Met her at a social event last month, she seems nice and has asked to meet up just with me too. However she messages my Dh nearly every other day now. Sometimes work stuff but usually sharing links to stuff they are interested in etc. I think it’s just friendly and she’s done the same with me (to a much, much lesser extent as we don’t really know each other yet). They do share a lift occasionally too. AIBU to be worried about all this? Dh says she’s just a person and I have absolutely nothing to worry about. They are talking about going for a drink at some point but I feel a bit uneasy about this. Should I invite myself along too or is that weird?!

As pp have said , this is just a ruse to make it all seem innocent

Well exactly
Well put
After my divorce there was a flurry of married men keen to be my friend- maybe it is your dh whose doing all the instigating ?
But unlike this woman I sent them all packing ...... news flash , there's plenty of single blokes out there.

Too easy.
When a man and woman spend A lot of time chatting , texting etc every day, they are developing intimacy ... it's a slippery slope that most don't see coming ... shouldn't be happening outside the marriage.

Ditto

It's fine to have friends of the opposite sex however there's lots of red flags in what you described that id be annoyed about:
-Messaging someone that much is really quite intimate (I don't msg my close friends to that degree!!)
-Inviting him 1:1 to evening drinks. If she is messaging you too and wants to make more friends - then why haven't you also received an invite to the drinks?!? It all sounds manipulative. Why don't they just catch up at work at lunchtime as a group of colleagues like most people do?! They've basically organised a date.

Sorry but no

If you’re really friends with these men then you would respect that their marriage comes first and part of being a good friend is not wanting to cause upset and disruption in your friends’ marriages. They need to be a husband first before they are a male friend to you. It reads to very much to me that you secretly get pleasure out of causing insecurities in your friends wives. Also why aren’t you inviting these wives along. I can take one guess?

Oh please that’s not even remotely the same thing and you know it. In a heterosexual relationship you aren’t at risk of developing feelings and falling into a an emotional or physical affair/cheating with another female like you would be with another male.

so again why do you keep insisting that your friendship with your friend trumps his marriage? You are being an awful awful friend by upon finding out through supposed “reading between the lines” that your friendship makes his wife uncomfortable yet instead of choosing to dial it back a thousand notches so your friend doesn’t have conflict in his marriage you continue to disrespect his wife and their sacred relationship which should be above ALL by not saying you know what I would hate to make your wife feel uncomfortable or uneasy about us your relationship with your wife always comes first. Or better yet including her in the friendship. You seem to get your jollies off by being a source of tension in their marriage almost like you enjoy the attention you are seeking from another woman’s husband.

i think you need to reframe the wording in your mind from viewing it as your friend that you have sole possession of to some other woman’s husband that you are spending time with and you will maybe understand it a bit better.

for arguments sake (she’s not) but lets she say was being unreasonable in her husband’s expectation of your friendship what’s the risk cost here? Meaning clearly he can’t have both. He continues on as usual with you he risks upsetting his wife and causing problems at home but he cools the friendship down with you he risks upsetting you. At the end of the day who is his primary family who is he spending his life with? What’s more at stake to lose he? A friendship with some other woman or his wife? Hopefully he would chose his wife over you. He made vows to stand by and support his wife not his friend Jane.

Your friend of 10 years is someone else’s husband and that always trumps all what don’t you get about that!

Stop wording it as your friend first and foremost and reframe it in your mind as you spending time with another woman’s husband.

And why not? You are half the cause of the issues in their marriage. You claim to care about this friend so much that you are willing to stick around despite the fact you damn well know it’s causing him problems in his marriage at home. Wouldn’t a good friend want to support the most important relationship in his life? A good friend would not want to smugly carry on usual knowing he catches hell at home about it. A good friend immediately upon finding out his wife is uncomfortable with it would say, “John you know what I really care about you as a friend but your wife comes first and I would be an awful awful friend to be half the cause of that I’ll always be here for you as a friend but I think it’s best if you focus on making things right with your wife as she needs to be the priority over me.” Make this easier for your friend in his marriage not tougher.

not to mention you are breaking girl code by not respecting this other woman’s feelings. You don’t do another woman like that.

I don't care if I'm viewed as archaic and needy. If be nipping all of this in the bud straight away in no uncertain terms. Out of respect for me and our marriage though I know my husband wouldn't even entertain this type of relationship and neither would I. We have mutual friends both male and female and of course I don't have a problem with the odd text here and there bit this has red flag written all over it. Far too many text exchanged going on between a married man and a single woman who has only just entered your lives. He's being disrespectful and trying to make you seem a bit neurotic.

Well, you do you, obviously, and I am not much of a messager to anyone, or ‘lonely’ or particularly ‘needy’, but there’s nothing patronising about suggesting a possible correlation between the widespread loneliness posters continually complain about on here, often married posters, and automatically discounting 50% of people as potential friends, because of curious prejudices, like it meaning that having male friends means you’re ’desperate for male attention’? I mean, are you ‘desperate for female attention’ if you have female friends? It’s really not that different, just because you have sex organs that potentially fit together.

Or thinking of men primarily as ‘other women’s husbands’ — that to me is as strange as thinking something else I see on here all the time, that ‘school mums’ are a separate category of people who are given to Mean Girls- style ‘cliques’ and ‘exclusions’. Men are just people, too, not bits of human territory for women to stamp with their names. No wonder Thete are so many posts about ‘awful’ MiLs on here, or ‘apron strings needing cutting’, if so many women see their DHs as territory with only one legitimate female inhabitant.

Some of my male friends’ wives are absolutely also my friends, some not. Do you like all your female friends’ DH’s and want to socialise with them every time you see them? Or are you suggesting they need to accompany them as chaperones?

Also, I hate sweeping generalisations. Some people you feel comfortable with and others you don't. Doesn't mean you never want your husband to talk to another female. It can be a case by case basis. This one screams red flags.

Been exactly there. Ended in heartbreak and divorce. Trust your gut. Nip it in the bud - it's just respect in a marriage. It's very rarely "just friends" when a new woman comes sniffing around like that. Myself and many of my friends have had the same.

This. The lone female chasing married men thinking she has a special friendship. The men will go along with it as some are hapless and think there's nothing wrong with odd women texting them constantly asking what they've had for tea, the wives will tolerate it becaue to object may make it become secret and that is the slippery slope.

Just make friends with couples or single people. To target one person in a committed relationship is odd and weird.

They sound a bit desperate.

Good grief this is ludicrous and deranged. Someone has the capacity to be a husband and a friend. Why does it have to be either or? If I was the husband in this scenario and my wife started trying to police my friendships (which it sounds like existed before the marriage?) I’d leave. Not because I’m in love with the “other woman” but because of the principle that nobody gets to dictate who I’m friends with.

If my partner told me I wasn’t allowed to say hello to the postman I’d leave - not because I’m in love with the postman, but because it’s a hard principle with me that my friendships don’t stop existing or being important because I have a partner. There’s plenty of room in life for both. I honestly don’t know anyone IRL who thinks there isn’t (in fact I was having a good laugh IRL the other day with a colleague who also uses MN at the absolutely bonkers responses threads on this topic usually get).

This post wins the thread 🏆

😆

What a load of crap @Ratisshortforratthew (at 9.21am!)

There is nothing ludicrous or deranged about the post you quoted by @ThisQuickJadeWasp . She just hit a raw nerve, because you can 100% see yourself in her post! 😂 #SomeoneHitARawNerveAgain 😆

100% this. ^

It's weird how these friendships usually spark when the woman becomes single though isn't it? Of course it's fine to have friends of the opposite sex, of course it's good to get along with people at work, but honestly never had as many men making sure I was okay and wanting to chat than when I split my husband.

Exactly this. These men don't seem to target happily married women, to try and make them their BFF in the workplace or the gym, OR men for that matter!

The ‘lone female’? Is that like the Lone Ranger, but with added sexual threat? Or a lone killer? And is the ‘targeting’ like a sniper getting a fix on someone?

And when you encounter someone socially, do you ask them about their marital status before you socialise with them? ‘Sorry, Nigel, I think you’re great, but I can only have a coffee after our evening class in upholstery if you’re single or if you bring your wife as chaperone’?

We need a rolling eyes emjoi on the 'reactions' on here.

This will have to do. 🙄