Would you be ok with your DH staying at female colleagues house?

[lidlidl]

DH is going on a big annual work event & night out in a couple of weeks and has just said that he’s intending to stay with his female colleague who has a spare room. It’s at least an hour away from us with no late night transport home so it makes sense and seemed fine until I asked about her husband and he said he’d be working away so not there (works away Mon-Thur)

I trust him and have no reason to think there is anything going on between them and he’d be stupid to tell me this was what he was doing if there was but still feeling a bit weird about it. Am I being silly? I don't know her but I've heard of her before and they are friends at work.

I get what you're saying Lying but presumably you were close enough to home to feasibly arrange transport back that night. If you lived further away would your workplace have been off with you for wanting to catch the last train home if they weren't providing accommodation or had booked the event without affordable b&bs within easy reach?

Bakeoff I disagree, I am excellent at resisting temptation, have never cheated with anyone, ever, in any relationship, but I wouldn't put myself in a situation like this because despite my track record, I think it's silly to push at those boundaries; that's how I've been great at being faithful all these years given I do find other people attractive, by being utterly transparent, not getting in ambiguous situations and if they arise (not by my doing) getting out of them immediately! No mixing nightwear and colleagues seems a fairly basic principle to me (unless you are an underwear model!)

Snoozy... I don't drink so I drove us both there and home again. It's about an hour away.

Picking up another poster's comment, I think he could get a taxi home - or arrange a hotel for himself with thanks to the colleague who made the offer, could have just said, "I snore like a trumpet and can't relax unless I know I'm not keeping people up so I'll say at x-place, see you at work in the morning".

That's what I would have done - and I don't snore.

... or if it is a works do that he must attend, get the taxi and claim it back on expenses, he could also drop colleague off home on the way back.

U2TheEdge Sun 17-May-15 22:43:26
No, not for sure.

But in my situation with my husband who is disabled and doesn't work who has severe social anxiety and finds it hard to leave the house I am pretty darn confident that he hasn't met a random woman walking down the road and dragged her home for sex while I was either doing the school run or all our children were at home.

I hope you're getting all the help you deserve.

Why would you need to mix nightwear and colleagues?

I would get undressed/dressed in the privacy of my bedroom, which I presume I wouldn't be sharing with the male colleague.

Go to the loo? Use the bathroom in the morning? What if you get downstairs in the morning and they are in their boxers? Or she's in her dressing gown?

I would never say never, to help out an old friend/colleague perhaps, but it just doesn't seem very professional.

Agree completely with Maryz

Is it the fact that it is a work colleague, specifically that worries you, or just the fact he will be in the spare room of a house alone with any woman, or the fact he's not coming home, or what?

My dh stays in all sorts of places with all sorts of colleagues, friends, people who have the same hobby as him. Simply not an issue. We have this thing called trust.

Well, maybe if we all wore burkas we wouldn't be tempted

No, I wouldn't be happy about it at all.

These threads are depressing. What on earth would people have made of the fact that a male colleague/friend and I shared a flat because we both commuted such long distances to academic jobs that we stayed over three nights a week? That was long ago, no one moved on anyone, both marriages continue happily, both he and his wife remain close friends of mine, and he is one of our son's godparents.

No I wouldn't be happy with that.

Going by this thread many would think you put yourself in a very perilous position Egged.

I hope you wore a chasity belt and abstained from alcohol, just to make sure you didn't succumb?

Excuse typos.

If there is a hotel option and he has chosen to go and stay with his friend instead, then yes my alarm bells would be ringing.

Whoever said married doesn't equal dead is spot on. I find other men attractive, I chose not to put myself a situation where I might find out they are attracted to me too.

If it was a friend, who I knew I would be able to say yay or nay.Depending on the friend
But a colleague, who I didn't know it wouldn't sit well with me. Like someone upthread said it is not professional

This forum is FULL of 'I trusted him 100%, I can't believe he cheated!' threads. I've never counted, but several a week for years! And I worked with men whose wives were blissfully unaware of their extracurricular activities. I suppose I'm a bit jaded (actually I think I need to start my own thread soon on that subject!)

I would be most concerned that he told you he 'intends' to stay there. He didn't even think to run it past you before accepting?

What I would do first, truthfully and in the knowledge I may get flamed, is look for her online! If she is a matronly 50 something you've probably got nothing to worry about.

I wouldn't mind. I trust him. Unless i had a reason to not be okay (as in they were flirty or he was acting strange). I'd be more bothered about him wasting £ on taxis or hotels!I'd say 'can't you crash at someone's house'?!

It's one of those ambiguous scenarios where someone could be absolutely fine with the situation but equally it wouldn't be at all unreasonable for someone to feel uncomfortable about it. What would bother me here is that the DH already made the arrangement rather than running it by OP first.

It's not about the DH having to get 'permission' off the OP like she's some kind of controlling arse as presumably if they already had the kind of relationship where these situations arise (as in previous posters' personal examples) then the OP wouldn't be feeling uncomfortable about this one. But the DH unilaterally choosing to stay alone overnight with someone of the opposite sex in a completely avoidable situation shows a total lack of consideration for the OP. It's not an issue of trust but an issue of respect.

No.
Many workplace affairs happen because the opportunity presents itself.
It's a bad idea.

I absolutely agree with Thenapoleonofcrime.

I am excellent at resisting temptation, have never cheated with anyone, ever, in any relationship, but I wouldn't put myself in a situation like this because despite my track record, I think it's silly to push at those boundaries; that's how I've been great at being faithful all these years given I do find other people attractive, by being utterly transparent, not getting in ambiguous situations and if they arise (not by my doing) getting out of them immediately!

This is how I have always approached work travel and work events.

Work events such as the OP describes can be very different from week in week out travel. It is a bit like mufti day at school. People can get giddy and silly and behave in ways they wouldnt normally.

People can and do end up behaving in ways they bitterly regret in the cold light of a hungover morning.

Well, clearly for a significant proportion of MN, the only answer is for the bloke to spend a fortune and come home by taxi (because an hour's journey in a taxi late at night is going to cost far more than a hotel or even a B&B).

Because, well, it's just as likely to happen in a hotel as in her house, if it's going to happen, surely? You know, two drunken colleagues who can't possibly keep their hands off each other? He says "I've got a hotel room...." She says "great..." and off they go for their night of debauchery.

Or perhaps the best thing is for him not to go to the works do at all.

I absolutely disagree with what you've posted AiCee it's got nothing to do with "common sense". It's to do with decency and the ability to walk away.

I think it is a bit .. romantic, for want of a better word, to think you can divide people up into neat categories like "decent and willing to walk away", or not.

For sure git faces exist. For sure paragons of virtue exist. The rest of us walk on the less certain terrain between those 2 extremes.

I'll take common sense any day of the week. It has proven a rather useful vaccination against a popular stance of:

-if you trust each other then you're impervious, anytime, anyplace, anywhere.

• if you trust and lose the bet then your entire relationship was a mirage so you've lost nothing and cleaning up the rubble of a formerly happy relationship is just a case of not delaying the inevitable.

-if as a couple you make any form of temptation insulators part of the package then you don't trust each other, meaning the relationship is fucked up anyway, so might as well give up now.

Given that tiny humans tend to stand alongside their parents in the rubble of what was a previously stable enough, happy enough relationship, I tend to err on the side of caution when it comes to assuming that either my husband or I have "decency and willingness to walk away" written through us in the style of Blackpool rock, no matter what the circumstances, regardless of any inhibition lowering factors. Given the stakes for the voiceless, powerless child in the mix, I don't see any moral high ground in jettisoning "keep common sense on the table at all costs" and claiming a more self congratulatory label for myself.

I'd rather assume that my feet carried a risk of being a bit clay like if push came to shove in a context where I hadn't taken immediate protective and avoidance measures. Because IMO that sort of common sense powered "defensive driving" in the marital car is my child's best bet that I don't sleepwalk into causing him harm.

20 years of marriage and I have never given my husband cause for concern. So far, so ... it's working. I'll take that over being one of the people I have seen sitting in a heap crying that they didn't mean it and it "just" happened.

Because it didn't "just" happen. There are pretty much always clear stages where walk away and avoidance was possible and doable, but they didn't. Some of them had a theory about themselves that didn't pan out as well in practice. There's a very hollow victory to be had in calling them non-decent, considering the ripple effect of pain and loss for so many people.

Or, for everyone so cool with him going back to her house and staying over, why not save money and share a hotel room, even a bed? After all it is only weak willed drunk individuals who will be tempted, everyone else will just roll over and start snoring.

Intimacy has many steps to it, why take a step that might be slightly misinterpreted by either party if you don't know each other extremely well?

It might be he's very much for the friend/sharing arrangement and she has other ideas. People do.

I am not of the opinion people are either cheaters or not, or at least, I would say some are out and out cheaters, but I can also think of three occasions in which friends or their partners have ended up in compromising situations requiring some explanation (and distress) where drink and being away from home and yes, lack of boundaries were involved but were not full on affairs. In each case, the marriage/partnership has continued.

These things are subtle, and hard to read from the outside. Plenty of people do stay faithful in quite tempting situations, plenty of people (at my work at least) seem to seek out situations in which they may be tempted. There's no hard and fast rule but it's slightly odd they are planning this a few weeks in advance, husband is away, no other solution proposed. If this were my husband, he would be asking me 'do you think it's appropriate to stay at X's on the big work night out or do you think I should get a hotel room/taxi back?' to clarify. The Op's husband is not, he's announcing it and it now puts the OP in a difficult situation if indeed she does find it a bit odd or it rings an alarm bell for perhaps more reasons than simply man/woman staying over in same house situation.

Surely it's as much to do with personal boundaries, not just marital ones? It never ceases to amaze me how often I read of "well, we were drunk and one thing lead to another..." because I'm a single guy and I have many single female friends and have gone out, had plenty of drinks, and never once have I slept with any of them. I've never tried it on with any of them when we've both been pissed, they've never tried it on with me and I've crashed over at theirs and vice versa.

I've never got so drunk I didn't know what I was doing. If I did, I would never allow myself to drink to that extent again.