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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

Husband had dinner with female single colleague

69 replies

pave70 · 21/04/2019 23:27

First post here so please go easy.

I have just found out by 'accident' when using my husband's computer that when he was recently on a business trip with a young and very attractive single colleague, he took her to dinner which cost £400 and the second night they went to the football together and then another dinner at a cost of £200. I saw photos on his computer of both evenings (her at the football and her with a celebrity chef) which he thought he had deleted. He said he took them as her phone had died.
My husband is pretty wealthy but I have never been for such an expensive meal in my life. My son is a huge fan of the football team that he went to see (but has never been despite wishing to go) and he did not mention it to him.
Our marriage has not been great over the last few years. There is no doubt we have grown apart.
He said he was just trying to be nice.
I feel it is the final straw - he has told me that nothing else happened. I just feel now that I cannot trust him at all.

OP posts:
Itsallpointless · 22/04/2019 06:14

I’d be highly suspicious, he’s a bloody liar, you can bet your bottom dollar about that! Also, you Day he’s ‘pretty wealthy’ but he’s never taken your DS to the footballConfused sounds like a complete knob of a father to me!

He’s either shagging her, or desperate (expensive gestures) to shag her. She, on the other hand, may think he’s just an old man trying his luck, she’d be right ehHmm

EmeraldRubyShark · 22/04/2019 07:01

That’s utterly awful. I am so so sorry.

Wouldn’t bother me in the slightest if OH or I went out for dinner with a colleague on a trip, but £600 on meals out in a couple of days isn’t that, he’s romancing her. He’s trying to woo and impress her and acting like a single man. If a male coworker did that to me (not that I’d accept it) I would know in my gut he was trying it on with me and so would nearly every other woman imo.

dudsville · 22/04/2019 07:09

For me it's not about the money spent. If he's wealthy then I'd expect clangers lounge that. For me outs what you said about them having seen your child's favourite dream and not mentioning it, in addition to not having told you about the time spent with her.

MonaChopsis · 22/04/2019 07:15

I was coming on to say 'totally normal!' expecting it to be a £30 meal at the hotel they were staying at, paid for by expenses.

This wasn't okay. A meal that you pay for is a date.

Shoxfordian · 22/04/2019 07:33

He's basically been on two dates with her

Middersweekly · 22/04/2019 07:38

I agree with what others have said. These were pre-planned meals and outings. You can’t just turn up and expect a table at an obscenely expensive restaurant! The football tickets would have been booked in advance also! £600 on 2 meals is excessive by anyone’s standards! He was looking to impress IMO!

LynetteScavo · 22/04/2019 07:45

He's obviously trying to impress her, even if nothing's happened yet.

You have two options here. Tell him to fuck off now, before things get really messing and you can have some sort of amicable separation, or decide to ignore it and put up with him behaving badly behind your back for the rest of your marriage.

mookinsx · 22/04/2019 07:48

If you trust him don't let MN make you think differently.

Sometimes men don't think.

Ask him?

And if nothing happened that's great, you've now got a stupid amount of money to be made up to you. £200! Shoes, handbag? A massage?
DH happily spent it on someone else so I'd expect the same spent on me

ilikebeckerinmyoldage · 22/04/2019 08:09

Men think plenty. Don't make excuses for them, they understand boundaries and wrong behaviour just as well as women.

category12 · 22/04/2019 08:16

Literally wining and dining another woman.

Divorce.

Whisky2014 · 22/04/2019 08:19

Definitely divorce

jonsnowlowblow · 22/04/2019 08:32

This line in your OP stuck with me:
My husband is pretty wealthy but I have never been for such an expensive meal in my life.

It sounds like you see his earnings as his and you don't live the same lifestyle as him. It doesn't sound like much of a marriage/family unit.

Do you have DC? Your own income? I think this is the time that mn usually call for people to 'get their ducks in a row'. Make sure you know your get out plan if that's what you intend to do.

Burlea · 22/04/2019 08:37

Have you checked if they had seperate rooms. How expensive was the hotel. To spend that much on a meal is that the norm for the business.

mummmy2017 · 22/04/2019 08:41

Demand he take you to somewhere just as nice, and a football trip for your son...
His answer will tell you everything you need to know.

BeansandRice · 22/04/2019 08:50

You say that your husband is “quite wealthy” as if that’s nothing to do with you.

But I’m assuming that you do a lot of the support and so on (housework, child-testing domestic admin etc) that enables him to earn a lot of money.

That means you’re both quite wealthy. He’s behaving very badly, whatever his ulterior motives are.

Hope you’re OK, OP - it’s a terrible jolt to find out this sort of stuff.

yorkshirepud44 · 22/04/2019 08:53

Classic affair shit I'm afraid. Don't confront until you have your ducks in a row. Get as many details of your finances as possible and get a good solicitor.

I'm so sorry, many of us have been there and it's horrible but how you deal with this now will really determine how comfortable your future is.

And on the off chance it turns out to be nothing, you'll at least be clued up.

Scarcelyburnt · 22/04/2019 08:57

You say your marriage hasn't been great for a few years. Have the two of you been working on it to make it better? If not, then I'd say this definitely doesn't sound good.

Original poster
pave70 · 22/04/2019 08:57

Thanks so much to everyone who took the time to respond to this. I feel much clearer in my own head about all this and how wrong it was.
Feel like shit but at least I know that everyone agrees with me on this.

OP posts:
EmeraldRubyShark · 22/04/2019 08:59

Men think plenty. Don't make excuses for them, they understand boundaries and wrong behaviour just as well as women

Yep. I despair when I read women trotting out that kind of ‘men just don’t think’ nonsense. Are we really supposed to believe that men have managed to essentially be at the forefront of technological development, strategising wars, running countries, for thousands of years (disproportionate to women sadly due to sexism and misogyny, not lack of equal smarts), able to do challenging jobs such as perform brain surgery or compose operas, yet simultaneously be just a bit daft and unthinking when it comes to conveniently having an excuse for actions everyone else can see are disrespectful a mile off? Please.

He’s dating another women OP. I’d say under your nose but he did attempt to hide it. I’m so sorry.

Albatross26 · 22/04/2019 09:03

Funny how these men never 'try to be nice' by taking male colleagues out to dinner isn't it

Aridane · 22/04/2019 09:09

If it was on expenses in the normal course of things, OK. But not that extravagant amount paid for personally

Inliverpool1 · 22/04/2019 09:13

It took 3 months of lying to my face for my ex who knew he’d been caught from day one to admit anything. I wish I hadn’t bothered I felt no different the day he admitted it to the day I found out. I already knew so who cares what he said. Personally it sounds like if he’s not fucking her he wants to and I’d pull the plug now. Save yourself and your family months of misery

Luluelle · 22/04/2019 09:16

Without a doubt he’s wining and dining her. I’d be very surprised if it hadn’t already moved on to the next level as those dinner dates are extravagant and the cost has come out of his own personal money. This would be the end of the marriage for me.

WhoKnewBeefStew · 22/04/2019 09:16

£700 spent on dinners with another woman and he’s not shagging her?? Year right Mr, pull the other one, it’s got bells on it!

NataliaOsipova · 22/04/2019 09:17

Are you sure they weren’t expensed? When I did a lot of working abroad it would have been considered odd not to go out to dinner with whichever colleague/s I was with. And sometimes that would be somewhere expensive. £200 a head isn’t unheard of in London/New York/Tokyo and I was been “taken” to expensive places by senior colleagues on a “bugger it, we’ve had a great/awful day so let’s have a decent dinner” sort of whim, without there being anything untoward about it. The football, however, is different.....particularly if your son is a fan. At a push, you can see they got tickets because they were there and at a loose end....but then surely he’d buy a souvenir for his son? That does sound odd to me....