DH slept in same bed as another woman - would you be annoyed?

[onesiebore]

DH was away with work this week for a night and since he's been home he's been a bit odd - a little jumpy and quieter than normal. I asked if something was wrong and he said there was something that he felt I should know but he didn't think I'd be very happy about it although he hadn't done anything.

He'd already told me that his colleague Beth had had to leave early as her Dad had died suddenly while they were away and last night he said that he'd ended up staying in her room to make sure she was ok. Apparently she'd found out when they'd been drinking, had gone to bed upset (had been drinking and couldn't drive), he went to check on her and she'd asked him to stay. He swears nothing happened other than giving her a hug and sleeping next to her.

I believe him that nothing else happened but still feel uneasy about it

Caratacus, I think the OP (who has gone but it's still a valid point for someone in a similar situation!) needs to open her eyes to the fact that her DH, even if he did not sleep with this woman, is at the very least teetering on the edge of emotional affair territory. Spending the night in bed with this woman? Going to lunch just the two of them? The office grapevine must be working overtime.

On Mnet everything's either pitch black or snow white with nothing much in between. Men are either wonderful partners, really good, kind guys. Or else they are rats, twats, twunts... LTB material.
What about men who are good and faithful 90% of the time but who do the odd thing they shouldn't have done, make a mistake once in a while, who commit indiscretions, but only rarely? Men who are good partners most of the time by far, but who are definitely not perfect or flawless? Where do they come in?

Hmmm. While I don't agree with all of what you say Helen, I take some of your points.

It often strikes me that MNetters are a bit naive about infidelity and assume that anyone who does it is a player or a temptress and that their behaviour is obvious to the naked eye. Or that it only happens in relationships that are visibly on the skids where there is torment and great unhappiness.

Whereas in reality - and in my experience - the players and the temptresses are in the minority. Mostly it involves normal everyday folk who cross lines and don't feel the fire till they've stepped in and it's started burning them. I'm not saying these things just happen- because they don't. Nor do I buy these excuses about a poor kindly man being wrong-footed by an OW with an agenda. No professional colleague of mine (male or female) would have got themselves into this situation without realising that it was dangerous territory- and best avoided at all costs. If they'd gone ahead anyway it would have been because they wanted something to happen, even if they weren't able to articulate that thought at the time.

The banal reality is that infidelity is so often carried out by ordinary bods who are a bit selfish and who have a tendency to think they're impervious to feeling bolstered by flattery, an upsurge of new lust and the thrill of the illicit and forbidden. The regular family guys and gals who don't want to lose their relationships and families.

Extraordinary they aren't.

Francesca: yes.

Infidelity is a slippery slope, that slides across boundaries so gradually that when they do end up in bed they will say 'it just happened'.

No, it didn't. It started a long time before that, the chats in the office, the coffee to discuss the project, the lunch to talk about the project, the drives to the client together, the starting to talk about personal stuff.

Dave Carder describes it best of all. By the time they admit they have feelings for eachother and 'agree to back off'? That is when the attraction is in the open and sex/intimacy will very soon follow.

This is not a tenth commandment/in the vows for nothing. It is ordinary people lying to themselves about what is really happening, and what they are really doing, and going on for the temptation of more feel-good feelings.

This is why I urge OP to be very firm about this NOW. To break the slide.

I'm not sure what your point is though helen.In my limited experience, most affairs happen because of minor crossed boundaries bit by bit, over weeks or months. H's affair was an 'accidental' affair at work. no, he isn't a bastard, and as far as I know OW wasn't a conniving temptress. That is what IMO makes it all so bloody dangerous. I looked at my H and throughout all our relationship ups and downs I thought I could say 100% that he would NEVER cheat. I never felt jealous or insecure. But he did cheat and for a while my world had no foundation. But how does that help the OP? It makes it harder IMO. Because all it means is that he might have or might in the future cheat. Because he is a nice man who doesn't understand boundaries. He isn't a wicked Lohario with twirly moustaches and an evil twinkle in his eye. It doesn't help.

Great post Francesca. I find a lot of peoples views on how cheating happens very naive too.

Just because some people wouldn't dream of having sex just after hearing of a parent's death, doesn't mean that everyone is the same.

In fact, it is a remarkably common (but undiscussed taboo) for people to have sex immediately after the shock of hearing a death message. If you doubt me, ask a bereavement counsellor. Two people of my acquaintance had ill-advised sex with people they shouldn't have, in very similar circumstances to the 'Beth' in this thread. In one case, the woman was very vulnerable and the man was a predatory sort who took the sympathetic cuddle too far. This woman told me she was horrified afterwards (he was married) and disgusted with herself that she'd felt such a primal urge to have sex at that time. A bereavement counsellor told her that this was in fact familiar behaviour in bereaved, shocked people. Something about needing to do something that reinforced feelings of being alive and kicking and feeling something through the numbness and shock.

Not everyone reacts the same to news of a death.

^^This. I wouldn't be happy in OP's shoes AT ALL. I'd certainly be asking more, and insisting no bloody cosy lunches alone anymore!