Male friend or emotional crutch?!

[Penny98]

I have a guy I work with and we’ve since become friends, as we our new jobs together. We’re both happily married with kids but we chat every day via email about kids, spouses, interests and support one another too. He’s currently on paternity leave and we exchanged numbers (which I initiated) just so he could reach out if he needed anything. When his child was born, he sent a pic to me via my personal number, but his messages were cold, short and to the point. Almost like he didn’t want to talk. Today I sent a jokey text about a meeting he dodged, and checked-in with him about his wife and baby. Again, it seemed like he wanted to get to the point and said “catch up soon”. This tone is very different to his tone at work and I’m not expecting lots of texts or messaging all day, because I get it, he’s at home and it’s not necessary. But he classes me as a friend so why is he acting strangely?? Or am I overthinking because I miss his friendship and possibly using him as an emotional crutch? I just hate the feeling like I’m someone he talks to out of boredom at work and it’s not a genuine friendship.

There’s no flirting or any hidden agenda here. If I wanted to cheat, I wouldn’t choose a married colleague at work!

Do you have a partner? Be careful of plugging loneliness with someone else’s. I’m not being horrible, I’ve been there but realised before it became anything more.

Sorry just saw your post saying you have a h.

@OverTheRubicon

Would you be sending messages to a female colleague who'd just had a baby about a meeting she'd dodged?

Honestly it reads you like have a secret crush on him (or like that he has a crush on you) but are denying it to yourself.

Yes definitely this! Your making way to much out of it. Accept that work is work and your interactions are best kept within that framework. Was it nesscessary to exchange numbers.

I think it’s clear he is/was an emotional crutch to you and you’re missing that fiercely. That alone tells you it’s an inappropriate attachment.

Seems like you’re taking everyone’s thoughts on board though - which is a strong response.

Would you have asked the same question about a female colleague? If the answer is no, then it's time to start being honest with yourself.

In the kindest way possible op you sound abit too emotionally dependent on your friendship with this person. Maybe its abit of a wake up call to take a step back entirely. If I was his wife I wouldnt be happy about a woman hitting him up when we've had a newborn because she is lonely, whether it was innocent or not. Does your husband not have enough time on his hands to talk to you everyday and make sure you arent feeling isolated?

This might be harsh... but.... you are not at the top of his list of priorities. You're a work friend. That's all.

Leave him be to enjoy his new baby!

Lonely...miss communicating with him. I have friends and a husband but everyone is so busy! It felt nice having someone to chat to. No excuse and I know I should be more considerate of his circumstances.

But OP, why are you NOT busy if everyone else is? Do you not have any hobbies, projects, other interests to keep you occupied? You must realise you can't fill gaps in your life with another person - it is too much of a burden on him. And he's probably realised that if you need this much time and attention when he's just had a baby, you are over invested. And this is not what he wants.

Give him space, and focus on making your life busy and happy.

Respectfully, OP, I think you’ve had a few other threads recently about this Colleague (C) who was about to go on paternity leave, and if so, they are relevant here. Together they show a building of emotional investment.

If you are that poster, you’ve stated that you are lonely and need a friend. You’ve been traumatized by your H’s infidelity, and your job has been a lifeline. You also have a nice friendship with a female team member.

You’ve enjoyed chatting with C by email, at work, and the 2 times you’ve been to lunch with him. You described it as a lighthearted and easygoing friendship, with absolutely no flirting. However, your friends were concerned about your lunch conversation topics and also thought that C had overstepped by being too curious about your H and by asking questions about what he (H) would want in various scenarios.

Example: C mentioned that his Wife has weight issues. When you jokingly said you’d like to lose a bit, C asked, “Does your H have a problem with your weight? Also Odd: When you suggested ways that C could support his W during her pregnancy, he asked, “But what about men and how they’re feeling?”

When posters warned about developing inappropriate reliance or ego validation, you were adamant that your boundaries are strong and said that C had commented that you have a big personality and it was nice to chat without anything untoward going on.

Your H contacts escorts when you leave town (but claims to never meet them), but at the time of your first thread, you said you would never share your marriage issues with C.

By your 2nd thread, however, you had over-shared with C. On a day when you felt upset at work, he guided you to a private space where you told him about H’s infidelity. When he opined that men usually seek escorts to fulfill a need, you ranted that H can’t use that excuse, as you are the adventurous one. While C was surprised about it, he was a very sympathetic listener and he reassured you. You later greatly regretted confiding such personal information and hoped that the friendship was not ruined. When you messaged C to thank him and apologize for over-sharing, he replied that it was ok as long as it had helped you.

You are hurt that C is distant now. Perhaps his W saw the above message and felt uncomfortable. Perhaps C feels uncomfortable with the recent deeper dynamic and is stepping back. Perhaps he wants to pursue an illicit emotional connection, but private messaging while he is home is off-limits. Or maybe he is just totally focused on caring for his precious new baby and supporting his wonderful Wife.

If you are the above poster, I do think an emotional reliance has developed on your part. There’s been an escalation of investment, and that is a slippery slope. Step back now. Focus on making a decision about your marriage. The stress is eating you up.

@MsDogLady

I am the same poster and you’re right about everything you mentioned. I didn’t fully notice that I was relying on him emotionally until I read his distant texts. He did respond jokingly yesterday and said he doesn’t miss the meetings and that he’s tired with his son being up all night and that he would catch up soon with me. Also my first message was a simple one ending with “enjoy your week and take care”, so that he wouldn’t feel burdened to strike a long drawn out conversation. Nonetheless, deeply, I must be expecting more if this is my response :/

I don’t plan to text him or call and I understand how tough this period must be. Also, since opening up to him, we never talked about my husband again and he stopped asking questions. Instead we’ve had conversations about our interests and found lots of common ground. I maintain that there’s no sexual intent from my end at all and he respectfully keeps his boundary. I enjoy talking to him and maybe I’m just displacing how I feel about my life onto my interactions with him.

OP I know what you mean about feeling lonely. Sometimes hobbies will do, but sometimes there’s a deep loneliness that needs attending to. For me it has come from spending a long time in a lonely marriage, and wishing I had that special connection with someone at the end of the day. I have had it before, I know it exists. It’s very human to want it. Just wanted to say I do understand.

I also think ‘emotional crutch’ is an interesting phrase. You need to work out which part of your emotional leg is broken (as it were)

Following the summary from @MsDogLady I find your opening post a little disingenuous @Penny98. It concerns me that you are minimising the potential impact on your colleague's wife, OP. Try putting yourself in her shoes.
Having said that, I do also have a great deal of sympathy for you regarding the situation with your H. Would it help if you started a new thread about that, then you might see that you don't need to use your male colleague as an emotional crutch?

Everyone's being quite harsh (as usual) @Penny98. It's true that he's busy and that's the logical explanation for his behaviour, but it's also true that you sound a little lonely and like you could do with a close friend - the kind you do stay in touch with every day. That's hard to engineer,but you might want to think about where else to get that and ideally a woman so that these kind of assumptions arent made (I know that's annoying but as you can see the hysterics brigade will be on your case otherwise)

@StartingAgain33

Everyone's being quite harsh (as usual) *@Penny98*. It's true that he's busy and that's the logical explanation for his behaviour, but it's also true that you sound a little lonely and like you could do with a close friend - the kind you do stay in touch with every day. That's hard to engineer,but you might want to think about where else to get that and ideally a woman so that these kind of assumptions arent made (I know that's annoying but as you can see the hysterics brigade will be on your case otherwise)

I do t think anyone’s being ‘harsh’, but are pointing out that the OP is having a difficult time, her marriage is in trouble, and she’s possibly overly emotionally-dependent on a fairly new work friendship with a man whose preoccupation with his newborn she’s now resenting because his messages make it clear he’s busy.

@StartingAgain33 for once ( and I've read alot of mean mns thread) I can honestly say no one on here is being harsh. Everyone is approaching this gently and no one is pointing fingers or blaming the op. We can all recognise the op is going through a tough time and are being delicate about the situation. So dont start.

I think its odd to say his Wife wouldn't havr an issue if she saw your messages with him, since you mostly seem to be talking about her and her son. I would be beyond creeped out if my husband was messaging his work colleague about me behind my back and that seemed to be the main topic of discussion.
Also rereading the other poster's summary of your previous posts, I remember you.
I felt then that you were trying to slide into something illicit with this married man because you know your husband has been meeting up with escorts and other women behind your back once you leave town and despite the claim that you believe him when he sait it was just messages, you probably know better indeed. Maybe you thought that would be a way to balance out the scales, now you feel rebuffed.
You really need to work on your own marriage OP

[quote Penny98]@MsDogLady

I am the same poster and you’re right about everything you mentioned. I didn’t fully notice that I was relying on him emotionally until I read his distant texts. He did respond jokingly yesterday and said he doesn’t miss the meetings and that he’s tired with his son being up all night and that he would catch up soon with me. Also my first message was a simple one ending with “enjoy your week and take care”, so that he wouldn’t feel burdened to strike a long drawn out conversation. Nonetheless, deeply, I must be expecting more if this is my response :/

I don’t plan to text him or call and I understand how tough this period must be. Also, since opening up to him, we never talked about my husband again and he stopped asking questions. Instead we’ve had conversations about our interests and found lots of common ground. I maintain that there’s no sexual intent from my end at all and he respectfully keeps his boundary. I enjoy talking to him and maybe I’m just displacing how I feel about my life onto my interactions with him.[/quote]
You are still not getting it are you ?

I think @Feelingparanoid makes a very good point re the colleagues wife, OP, and I think that’s another point you need to seriously think about. The emotional closeness between your colleague and yourself has obviously crossed a boundary or you’d not be taking his absence so hard, nor would you be referring to him as your ‘emotional crutch’. There may be no sexual intent from you, not consciously anyway, but there’s certainly some level of inappropriate emotional investment… particularly given the overall summary of your previous threads, it makes for a damning read.

It's not about you.

Your colleague's wife has literally just had his baby.
I doubt he's thinking about you at all.

I just hate the feeling like I’m someone he talks to out of boredom at work and it’s not a genuine friendship.
What do you mean by "genuine"?
Most work friendships are pretty casual, & rightly so.
Do you see each other outside of the office?
Have you met each other's partners?
If one of you left the company, would you stay in touch?

I'm guessing "no" to all three, & suspect you are over-invested.

It's not wise to put this amount of emotional eggs in a colleague's basket. Concentrate on cultivating non-work friendships instead - nobody needs to be agonising over personal relationships with people who are meant to be professional allies. Too much opportunity for eroded boundaries.

You're expecting/communicating too much and he is putting boundaries in place.

I have a very close working relationship with my male colleague.

He talked about his family, I talked about mine, we shared when our exes were being a bit unreasonable re the children. We occasionally kept in touch outside work.

He went on paternity leave. He sent a photo when the bay was born and I congratulated th both.

I offered them a bag of baby clothes my child had grown out of.

We didn't speak otherwise until he was back at work.

Paternity leave is only 2 weeks long generally. How can you need to be in touch with him so much?

OP how are things going with the husband issue? He really does sound like a bloody awful person and I think you'll be surprised how much less lonely you are (being with someone horrible is much more lonely than being single IME) and how much your mental health improves if you leave him.

Sadly I've learnt the hard way. You think people at work are your friends and they aren't. Someone has blocked me on WhatsApp this week and it's really upset me. Don't get involved or invested.
Focus on people that are important.

Your a work friend, you have thought to much into this. Leave him to enjoy his new family and stop texting him