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Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

Original poster

think ive been the cause of a break up

58 replies

RCToday · 29/03/2011 14:48

shit I didnt think I was doing anything wrong

I used to text/call him about random stuff

I left work last year, he stopped contact, I had an idea then it might be because of his DP, fair enough

They have now split and Im being blamed

OP posts:
doutzen · 29/03/2011 14:49

What sort of 'random stuff'?
Who's blaming you?

Original poster
RCToday · 29/03/2011 14:52

football, my DS, telly just really random stugg Grin

The EX is saying its my fault, I havent been in contact for a year

OP posts:
Original poster
RCToday · 29/03/2011 14:53

stugg?? stuff

OP posts:
walesblackbird · 29/03/2011 14:56

Who's ex? This man's or yours?

I suppose it depends on how much texting, how much contact, how much flirting went on. And where it was heading.

I speak as the wife of someone who did the same thing - we separated too although we did get back together.

His/her behaviour was inappropriate - can't comment on yours without knowing more really.

Original poster
RCToday · 29/03/2011 14:59

I wasnt flirting, he was a mate

didnt cross my mind it was anything more

OP posts:
walesblackbird · 29/03/2011 15:03

I find it hard to believe that a solid partnership would have split up just because of a few innocent texts between work colleagues?

Clearly whatever went on gave his wife some cause for concern.

Deliainthemaking · 29/03/2011 15:08

its hard to say wothout like an example of a text you sent IYSWIM

Original poster
RCToday · 29/03/2011 15:15

the texts were just like Man U 1, you losers ha ha

Nothing more than that

Problem is im friends with the people who still work there and I dont like being blamed for something i didnt do

OP posts:
SpringchickenGoldBrass · 29/03/2011 15:28

His relationship is and was his problem, not yours. You haven't had any contact with him for over a year. If anyone says anything to you, just shrug and repeat that you have had no contact with him for over a year and don't think his life is any of your business.

SpringchickenGoldBrass · 29/03/2011 15:29

He may well have been having an affair with someone else and covered his tracks better WRT her. It's annoying, but you haven't done anything wrong so put it out of your mind.

Fillybuster · 29/03/2011 15:36

Something like this happened to me: I was reasonably friendly with all the guys in my team, not more with this one than anyone else...he gave me a lift from our manchester office to the station (on his way home) once or twice and apparently his wife 'freaked' Hmm Then I got a weird message from him warning me that his wife might call to ask what lipstick I wear as she had found a tissue with lipstick on in the car - about 4 months after I had last been in it Shock And it definitely wasn't me. He was asking me to say that it was 'to get her off my back'. All very odd indeed. By this time the chap in question was reporting to me....he left soon afer. Thank goodness.

bingethinker · 29/03/2011 21:38

I found out years ago that everyone believed I was having an affair with my boss, some 9 months after I left that city. His wife nearly left him over it. It transpires that "the boys" teased him over it, as we got on well, and the twat had too large an ego to say there wasn't anything going on, and someone told his wife.

And really really, we just got on well, there was laughter and banter of a completely non-sexual nature, that's it, no contact outside work at all.

Original poster
RCToday · 29/03/2011 23:00

thank you for the replies

nice to know im not the only one Grin

I will just distance myself from them all for now

Still pissed off cos ive done nothing wrong but ho hum Smile

OP posts:
macdoodle · 29/03/2011 23:05

Hmmm ,being on the other side, sometimes a flirty/bantering/over friendly relationship can be (a) misconstrued (b) develope into something else.
FWIW, I have male friends, but I know where the line is, are you sure you did?

SpringchickenGoldBrass · 30/03/2011 00:56

Oh FFS Macdoodle. People can be friends without being Enemies of Monogamy. The Op has clearly stated that she had no interest in this man as a date/shag/partner. Maybe his now-XP is a mad jealous twat. But why should the OP be blamed or criticized for anything?

A friend of mine was once stalked and threatened by yobs, hired by the DW of her boss, because the mad twat thought that my friend was having an affair with said boss. My friend didn't even like the boss very much, and said boss later dumped his wife because of her insane jealousy and tendency to violence.

spidookly · 30/03/2011 02:49

Texting/calling a colleague about "random stuff" on a regular basis seems odd.

If I am close enough to someone to be interrupting their day with personal messages and phonecalls, they are a friend. I know my friends' spouses and partners.

Tortoiseonthehalfshell · 30/03/2011 05:39

You haven't texted him for a year, his relationship has only just ended, and the ex-girlfriend is telling your ex-workmates that it's your fault?

Very odd, and safely ignorable, I'd have thought.

macdoodle · 30/03/2011 07:56

I'm with spidookly and I'm not mad or a lunatic and it may not matter the op was not interested. Her constant chattiness to put it kindly may have intruded I don't text call my female friends about "random stuff" never mind the boys.

foxinsocks · 30/03/2011 08:05

I think you have to be very careful with these sorts of things as you have no idea what's been going on in their relationship. He might have a history of being unfaithful.

Whilst none of that is your fault, it may be that the 'texting about random stuff' was seen as an early warning sign by the partner.

Just fyi, I had someone's wife accuse me of this. The man in question had been harrassing me at work for years. Luckily I had complained to HR. What I didn't know is that he had been saving every single message I sent to him (99% about work during work time, I had no interest in him whatsoever) and deleting everything he had sent to me (saying how he loved me etc.) and he left his phone around and his wife found it and accused him of having an affair with me. On the basis of what was left on his phone, it looked like I had been sending him loads of unprompted messages which I hadn't. She made him send an email to me at work telling me to back off - I was furious that I had been dragged into something that he had caused and I had no part of but HR advised me to send a very neutral email back just stating that I had no interest in anything to do with him and leave it at that.

Do you see how things can be totally misconstrued?

It's very hard to clear your name after the event. People at work would have figured out you were mates. I don't think there's much you can do other than protest your innocence to your work friends and let them make their mind up.

SpringchickenGoldBrass · 30/03/2011 10:30

MacDoodle, the point is that people's boundaries vary. Some couples are not interested in obsessively policing each other and the rest of the world for Threats To Monogamy. Some people text and chat quite a lot with colleagues and friends - there are plenty of people who, for instance, forward every lame FB/text joke to everyone they know. It doesn't mean they are BWAAAAAHHH! MAYBE THINKING ABOUT HAVING AN AFFAIR! with everyone they know.
I just thoroughly dislike the idea that women should not speak to attached men or communicate in frinedly ways with attached men in case the man's partner gets jealous. It is not up to women to police the behaviour of men on behalf of their jealous partners.

RandyRussian · 30/03/2011 11:09

Could be his ex desperate to blame anyone other than herself for the breakup?

StickyProblem · 30/03/2011 11:36

Could his ex be desperate to blame anyone other than him for the breakup?

garlicbutter · 30/03/2011 11:55

I've lost a few male friends because of completely innocent friendships - or, rather, because of paranoid wives & girlfriends. I don't know whether the women had good reason to suspect their men of misdeeds, but they certainly weren't doing them with me!

Threads like this sadden me. Shows how many women are ready to believe any friendly female is trying to wreck their relationship. Sympathies, OP, but you've already sacrificed your friendship to her worries - no sense in fretting that you might have caused the break-up! You didn't.

spidookly · 30/03/2011 12:08

"I've lost a few male friends because of completely innocent friendships - or, rather, because of paranoid wives & girlfriends."

To lose one innocent friendship could be bad luck, to lose a few looks like carelessness.

I've never lost a single male friend because of jealousy (and I have quite a few), but perhaps that is because I like and respect women and don't presume that they are all paranoid and jealous.

"there are plenty of people who, for instance, forward every lame FB/text joke to everyone they know"

Very few people text everyone they know that frequently. And I presume these frequent calls about random things weren't conference calls.

It sounds like the OP and this man were having quite a lot of "random" on on one contact. Which is great if you are becoming friends. But less great if you are not becoming friends because friendship would mean being part of someone's life rather than just a peripheral bit on the side.

Clearly the OP didn't break this relationship up. But clearly she caused trouble within it despite having no intention to do so. Figuring out why that happened might mean not losing "lots" of male friends to "paranoid wives & girlfriends".

I'm saddened at how many women buy into the idea that women are jealous and irrational by nature and that their concerns for their relationships should be sneered at.

garlicbutter · 30/03/2011 12:37

I haven't bought into that idea at all. Becoming and avid Mumsnet reader has led me to believe more women are paranoid than I thought. I said in my post that I wasn't aware whether those women had cause to feel jealous: if they did, perhaps, they'd be more likely to feel suspicious. I wasn't the cause, however.

Maybe you're just more perfect than me - or maybe we move in different circles, which seems likely given your inaccurate statement that very few people forward jokes to everyone they know.