Husband and female friend/colleague - would you be ok with this?

[baldyboll]

Husband has a female colleague he's known for a few years, when I was using his phone the other day a message from her popped up and I couldn’t resist having a look, it was just about a shop she’d been to and she was saying he should go, I was nosy and had a quick look through older message, there were lots, back and forth 5 or 6 messages every other day or so including weekends and some evenings and also quite a few when we were on holiday last week! There are also lots of calls in his call history on his work phone made during the day.

He does have to work with her but not in a way that requires this much interaction and I can’t really decide how I feel about it. They are not flirty or inappropriate, there is nothing in them to suggest that anything is going on between them, I know they don't see each other outside of work and they could easily be messages from a man but I’m still a bit uneasy about them having this much contact and how they seem very familiar with the way they talk to each other.

I don’t think there is anything going on, I asked him about her, he didn't seem at all flustered, didn’t seem bothered that i’d seen her messages and said they just got on well and were friends. If I asked him to reduce contact I think he would but don’t know if that would be unfair if this is just me being a bit possessive? I wouldn’t ask him to stop texting a male colleague in this way, would you feel the same way or am I being silly?

You're being silly. They're friends.

Sounds fine. Like you say, nothing dodgy in the texts and you wouldn't mind if she was a male colleague instead of female.

Why not arrange to meet her too? I have a male friend whose girlfriend suspects our friendship. It's ridiculous. I wish we could become friend too.

You don't think there's anything going on, there is nothing inappropriate about the message but you don't like it anyway? So why? Just because she is female? You are being very silly.

And you shouldn't have checked his messages. Why are you so paranoid?

5 or 6 messages every other day including on holiday is waaaay excessive. I have a female bf who I have a very traditional bf relationship with - we text/speak about everything. It's nothing like as much as this. Sometimes we will get into a v long fb chat but then go days without communicating. It's the consistency that would bother me.

It sounds like he is totally on the level - how much of this contact did he initiate? I'd be asking my dh to start taking longer to respond/fizzling out a lot of these "conversations". I know he would.

There's nothing 'fine' about this. The communication is too frequent for it to be innocent.

Five or six texts a day would be seen as nothing if both are the same sex so I would think anything of it. It's nice to have friends of both sexes, makes for a more varied friends circle.

It wouldn't bother me as all sounds very innocent and I'm not a controlling person as wouldn't like to be told myself who I can and can't be friends with.

I don't know. I am on the fence to be honest.

On the one hand, if the content of the messages was fine, he was non plussed about you seeing them, etc, then it sounds like everything is above board.

But at the same time 5-6 messages a day seems bizarrely excessive.

I guess the question I would be asking is: Does he behave the same way with his other friends? Is he generally a bit of a texter? Does he have any male friends that he texts just as frequently?

If he tends to text all his friends on the same frequency, then I wouldn't worry.

If he doesn't tend to do so, and it's just him texting this woman all the time, then I would consider asking him to tone it down.

Do you know her too? might be an idea to suggest you all get together? My DP has quite a few close female friends and I always felt insecure about the relationships until I met them and it was clear they were just friends, as he would be with a male.

Some of this female friends have become my friends too and we are in more contact than they are. In other situations I have told the female friends that I was a bit insecure about their relationship which they have been totally respectful of and either toned it down a bit or tried really hard to include me. I have also met female friends of his that I have been really uncomfortable with and in those situations I have asked DP to limit contact which he always has.

My point is that until you know her and understand the dynamics of their relationship it's really hard to decide what the best thing to do is.

I am on the fence too. I have been there with this one. And I was trying to rationalise it. You are not paranoid. Nothing wrong with female friends. Level of communication is on the high side in any friendship. It is spill ing into your relationship if she is texting in your family holiday.

Why does MN always suggest meeting partners work colleagues in this situation?

I'm a man with a female best friend. We exchange a couple of emails each day during work and a couple of texts each day at the weekend. Sometimes might be a whole string depending what we're messaging about. No one would think anything of it if we were two women or two men. It's very sad that there are so many people who have to see things where they don't exist or seem to feel it is impossible or not right for opposite sex friendships to be as close as same sex friendships. Says more about those people than those who have the friends.

Noddyholder - because they are clearly friends and not just work colleagues

But why meet? What will that achieve ?

Peagle, just out of interest, why do you think you have the right to say who your DH can spend time with? If you don't like his friend, fine, then you don't socialise with that friend. But why should your DH have to reduce contact? If those friends had been male and you found them uncomfortable, would you still have asked him to reduce contact? I'd be very surprised if you could honestly hand on heart say yes. If you had a female friend that your DH didn't like and wanted you to see less of, would you do it?

You said it yourself there. They don't see each other outside of work. The messages are not flirty. Don't worry about it. If you saw the messages and don't know its from a woman, would you think it's suspicious?

Do people really text their friends 5 or 6 times EVERY day? I find that level of casual intimacy strange - I barely have it with my dh and we are best friends and love each other very much.

I am happy to be proven wrong, but to me it is very excessive. It means you must be thinking of each other a lot every day. I don't think of my very best friend that often, so yes I would find it strange if it were 2 women or 2 men texting that often. And amongst my friendship groups (normal and extensive) none of us are in touch that frequently.

Cedric presumably you SEE your husband every day, and therefore don't need to text him.

My best friend might be out on a Saturday and send me a text saying: "I've just seen a guy balancing on a tightrope outside Waitrose!" And that can easily lead into a string of 5 or 6 messages:

Me: Really?
Her: Yes, and he's juggling with fire, too.
Me: Outside Waitrose?
Her: Yes!
Me: That's just bloody weird.

There you are - 6 messages really easily. And clearly dreadfully flirtatious. (And yes, that is a genuine occurrence, except I have changed the name of the store to protect the innocent).

I started a similar thread yesterday. In my case I came across some texts/emails with a female colleague that DH had become close to. In one email calling her his best friend. He'd never talked to me about her in that way at home, infact she'd barely been mentioned. There was no flirting but they'd obviously built up a bit of an emotional bond. He didn't talk to her in the way he does with other mates and his emails/texts were always signed off with a X. DH now recognises how uncomfortable this has made me and sees how some boundaries have been crossed so has agreed to cease contact with her. It helps that she recently left the company which is bizarrely when the communication ramped up a bit. Appears they didn't realise how much they'd miss each other and we're making plans to see each other again. I was recommended to read Not Just Friends by Shirley Glass. In it she talks about how dangerous close work friendships can be when you drift into emotional attachments without even realising and that's how affairs are unwittingly established by people seemingly in very happy marriages. There's lots of warning signs that boundaries are about to be crossed and I recognised them in my DH. I'm still trying to come to terms with what might have developed had I not found out. Might be worth a read if you think this is unusual behaviour for your DH, if he's a prolific texter with mates anyway then I think you're safe.

Yes, but every day? Like I say, my bf and I could get into a 10 minute fb messenger thread, but it will be about something specific, and then I will see her, maybe chat on the phone etc over the next few weeks - not necessarily keep up a heavy stream of texts.

It is the intimacy and reliance of almost daily texts that worry me. It's like getting some kind of fix. Didn't the op say they see each other through work most days anyway? And as someone else said - in the holidays too? I switch off my phone and engage with my family when I am on holiday...

I may be way off beam though - doesn't sound like anything is amiss yet, but a bit like "mentionitis" the need to be in constant contact would worry me at this stage.

Yes freckles - I agree with the "does it fit his normal pattern" thing. Does he normally text mates every day? Does he have other emotionally intimate and close female friendships? Etc

I'm with Cedric. I send about only 5 texts a day in total to various people and they are mostly making arrangements.

I suppose if he's always been a big texting, phoning type, then it's no big deal. For me or DH it would be excessive, verging on the crazy.

Does he really need to communicate work stuff most evenings and while on holiday?

Another one on the fence.

Yes, men and women can have platonic relationships and the fact that you've seen all these messages, which aren't with a flirty undertone, is all pointing to it being innocent. However, the sheer volume would make me uncomfortable, rightly or wrongly.

You say you wouldn't be bothered if it were another man.....As a bi woman, it can be quite complicated with my relationships, as potentially, I could be attracted to everyone Obviously that's not the case! So the fact that you say you wouldn't be bothered if it were a man he'd been in contact with like this, is interesting. Why do you think that is?

It's unlikely, from what you've said, that he's having a full on affair, but it is somewhat inappropriate in my opinion and it does sound like it could potentially be falling into the emotional affair category. Although it would be unfair to accuse somebody of this, as his intentions could genuinely be of a platonic nature.

What's your relationship like generally? Has anything changed? Do you have good communication? I'm wondering if maybe he's filling gap, for want of a better phrase

I think a lot of it comes down to the change in lifestyles over the last 15years or so. Now, because most of us have mobiles, with monthly contracts giving us 5000 texts a month, rather than waiting until we next meet up to tell a friend that we just bumped into X, or just saw Y, we send a quick text that takes 10 seconds. Or we use FB. Or email.

These things barely existed 15+ years ago so we didn't keep in touch the way we do now. Some people find it odd, younger people don't really know any different.

I think it depends a lot on what kind of job they do actually. In some fields it's important to build good friendships at work eg if what you do is emotionally gruelling.

But personally I think this sounds a bit much, especially the texts while on holiday.