DP having overnight work trip with woman he used to sleep with

[Fishoutwater]

I’m losing my mind about this, and my partner is just telling me I’m being ridiculous and can’t see why I’ve reacted how I have.

When we met 3 years ago, we talked quite openly about past relationships etc. He told me he was seeing a married woman who is quite a bit older than him over the course of about a year having met at work. They’d book hotels and used to travel to work together for overnights at another office. He said this was really exciting at the time and drunkenly told me once that before me, it was the best sex he’d ever had in his life.

They’ve remained working at the same (big) company but in different roles so their paths haven’t crossed much since. However, a few months ago he told me there was a project which required them both to attend calls about.

Last week, he told me that there was a big project meeting at the company’s northern site and he’d need to stay overnight (it’s today). The company provide a hire car but where colleagues are travelling from the same base location, they need to share rather than have a car each. So he told me that he’d have to travel up with this woman and another colleague.

Yesterday, he told me that the other colleague is no longer going so it’s just him and the woman. It’s a 2 hour journey and they are staying at the same hotel, and travelling back together tomorrow.

I obviously told him how uncomfortable I feel about this and he was adamant he had no other option and that I needed to accept it was just for work and he’s forgotten about her these days.

YABU - it’s just work, doesn’t mean anything so get over it.
YANBU - you are right to feel how you do

This isn’t about proving fidelity or controlling anyone. It’s about whether you care about your partner’s emotional safety. Loving couples don’t ask, ‘What’s the minimum I can do without cheating?’ They ask, ‘What can I reasonably do to make my partner feel secure?’

Life is full of fears – illness, accidents, loss. We don’t dismiss those as ‘unhinged’ simply because they ‘should’ be unlikely. We adjust because we care. If your partner is genuinely distressed and your response is inconvenience-based eye-rolling, that’s not integrity or independence, that’s indifference.
You don’t have to jump through hoops. You do have to show respect. And if you can’t be bothered to make reasonable adjustments when the context is THIS loaded, then yes – the relationship already has a problem, and it’s not insecurity.

Again, OP should not be creating these ‘hoops’ – and in fact she didn’t. HE should be doing it anyway once he knows she is uncomfortable with it. She should dump him because he’s shit at giving a toss about her emotional security, not because he’s a potential cheater.

What can he do when he comes home tomorrow to convince you nothing has happened?

If you have already made you mind up this then you might as well just dump him now.

From his perspective i would say, what were you hoping he would say to work? "sorry i used to shag her so we cant go to the site together" not exactly professional for him to do that.

You need to either trust him or not trust him.

This.

No one knows anyone 100%. It’s a complete impossibility to know anyone 100% except yourself.

You hedge your bets on a life partner because the way they behave and the way they make you feel gives you the emotional security of feeling like you can know them well enough to commit to.

Shacking up with an old affair partner overnight in a hotel isn’t it. Especially when your only response to your partner is to say ‘your feelings are irrational. You deal with them’.

At this point it’s not about whether he shagged her or not. It’s about how he treated the situation. That’s now what makes him inherently untrustworthy now – not OP’s insecurities.

How did he treat badly? He was open about everything that was happening.

Swap the genders on this and no one would say a mans insecurities should be pandered to.

I disagree.

Someone else's insecurity is not something I can control. I've known insecure men who just wanted their girlfriends to do a couple of small things, don't go to that club or don't wear that dress, to allay their insecurities. Spoiler alert, it didn't end there.

If the trust isn't there, then OP's partner pulling out of this work trip isn't going to magically make her secure in the relationship. This is not the only opportunity he will have to cheat. Either you think your partner will take those opportunities or you don't.

More to the point specifically, some things are relatively small in terms of what you can ask your partner to do. As I've said I think even small things are red flags for control issues, but whatever - "don't go to that party" is small. "Don't go on this work trip and lie to get out of it" is not small, it is not a mere inconvenience, it is actually a deranged thing to ask of your partner.

I didn’t realise it was only 2 hours , he could have come home ffs .

All this rubbish on here about OP being controlling 🙄.
There isn’t one of us here that would be happy for our husband/ partner ( eventhough I’m actually single , but when I was with my Ex ) , that would be happy for them to go on an overnight stay with someone they use to have amazing sex with !.
Some of the replies here are hard to read cause they’re bullshit .

Yeah my partner doesn't get to trump my career with "being uncomfortable". If he's that uncomfortable then he is free to remove himself from the situation.

He wouldn't have much choice about the travel and accommodation arrangements, not if he's serious about keeping his job.

If he had any real intention of revisiting their affair for a clandestine shag he simply wouldn't have told you she was going. Why would he?

Nothing about this smells off to me, and I spent a lot of time travelling in a career with colleagues who were having their cake/muff and eating it. Ultimately, if you don't trust him you don't trust him, and you need to end your relationship before your insecurities consume both of you.

See this is not ok for me. So what if he was single. She was married. And how he has reacted to you now… well sounds like him doesn’t it?

You’re arguing against a slippery-slope that isn’t actually present here. This isn’t ‘don’t wear that dress’ or ‘don’t go to that club’. Those are about policing autonomy in normal situations. This is a specific, exceptional context: a former sexual partner, overnight travel, shared transport, shared hotel.
Treating those two things as equivalent is intellectually lazy.

And if your partner had that automatic respect for you in reading the room, you shouldn’t even have to ask.

Of course you can’t control someone else’s insecurity. But you can choose whether you care when your partner is genuinely distressed for understandable reasons.
Trust isn’t binary. It’s built and maintained through behaviour, especially in situations with obvious emotional landmines.

Neither me or the previous poster supported or suggested her partner not go on the work trip or lie about it. We suggested alternatives to the arrangements that HE should have made.

If someone looks at their partner and thinks, ‘Your feelings are unfortunate but not my problem’, that’s their right – but let’s not pretend that’s what a loving, mutually protective relationship looks like.

You’re defending a principle – autonomy – while ignoring the reality that long-term, healthy couples routinely make situational sacrifices without it turning into control.

Your argument only works if all discomfort = insecurity / all accommodation = coercion / all context = irrelevant.

This isn’t reality and it’s not how relationships are built or maintained.

Stop trying to speak for everyone. Some of us trust our partners.

Yes , but there is alcohol, overnight stay alone together , & temptation all mixed together in this story , plus she is someone he use to meet up to have amazing sex with !

OP texting him and making a fuss about this is ridiculous - hes at work!

You either need to be fine with this and if you cant be then split up cus you obviously dont trust the guy!!

a former sexual partner, overnight travel, shared transport, shared hotel.

I genuinely don't think any of those things are big deals. I have done that on multiple occasions and it's never led to anything. I wouldn't expect a partner of mine to object to it, and especially not if it was in the context of a trip I had to take for work.

Personal autonomy has always been a very, very high priority for me, especially in my personal life. In 13 years, DP has never once requested that I alter my behaviour because of his uncomfortable feelings (and nor have I requested that of him), and that's why it's been 13 years. If I'm not comfortable with who he is or the things he wants to do, the way of fixing that is to leave the relationship, not change those things.

You’re arguing against a slippery-slope that isn’t actually present here

I also don't believe this for a second. There's no way the OP is magically content if her partner doesn't go on the work trip, especially as the woman will still be his colleague.

It’s nothing to do with control, it’s to do with consideration.
If you want to do as you please and not have to consider anyone else’s feelings then don’t form a partnership where there are two of you to consider.
I wouldn’t want to put my husband in this position because of course he’d feel uncomfortable and I love him and care about his feelings.
He would feel the same because we matter to each other.

Neither of us control the other, we both choose to have respect for each other.

I refuse to consider other people's feelings of distrust and jealousy. I know I'm not going to cheat; other people can choose to trust me or not, but I categorically refuse to alter my behaviour to pander to those feelings.

Happily I have a partner who is neither jealous nor controlling, and who trusts me.

Well the Trip was last night so what happened OP?…

How are you today, OP?

That message he sent yesterday was awful.

i once had a cheating partner & when confronted, he got defensive, gaslighted me & tried to turn it round on me. We split up.

my current partner went away for a week’s holiday with an old female friend, of 20 years duration. Was I jealous or insecure? Absolutely not, because he is trustworthy. We talked about it, how we both felt & were open & honest. I know he would not cheat on me, nor I on him.

i’m really sorry that you’re in this situation - he sounds awful.

what is your living situation? Can you leave easily? Or ask him to leave?

You’re out of line asking him to not go on a work trip because of your insecurities.

If you don’t trust him then you need to end the relationship.

I heard this in a Dalek voice. You sound like an automaton, with no human feeling or sense of nuance.

Stop blaming the OP for having yet another shitty man who can’t and won’t care about her emotional safety.

In 13 years, DP has never once requested that I alter my behaviour because of his uncomfortable feelings (and nor have I requested that of him), and that's why it's been 13 years.

Likely because he does these things automatically. Because he is an emotionally safe partner. Same as my DH, also with 13 years, who is also an emotionally safe partner.

Don’t indirectly call the OP ‘unhinged’ for having a fear on a very specific situation – one that her partner has already acted shitty about and continues to now.