Husband texting female colleague - would this bother you?

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Don't know if I'm being unreasonable here, and would like others opinions.

Husband was showing me something on his phone today, in the middle of a long conversation he has going with a female colleague. The thread went back for ages, and I commented that he seems to be texting her a lot.

He let me see the conversation, and they have exchanged hundreds of messages going back to January. They both work the same shift pattern (antisocial hours), and most of the messages are work related, but there are a few that aren't, like sending photo's of their dinner (at work). To be fair, it was a buffet put on at work.

The most texts they exchanged were 51 in one day. They used to work on the same team, and in one message she says that they (her and her colleagues) miss him, and he texted back "I miss you too". She also sent a selfie of herself and a colleague yesterday with the caption "we love you". Other than that, the chat is solely work based and there isn't any flirting. No kisses and no emojis etc.

I don't know if I am being unreasonable by being irritated by this, because the messages are 99% work related. I think it irked me because he hadn't been intimate with me for 3 months, prior to yesterday when we ended that dry spell.

What do you think?

OK, pictures in the middle of the night tips the scale to suspicious. I'm assuming he's flattered by the attention of a younger female, whatever it is its not acceptable.

I could easily message one particular person at work that much, we are both just quite chatty, but there's no harm in it - that's why we are actually able to do it - no ulterior motives!

If your instincts tell you otherwise though, I'd speak to him about it. I agree with a poster upthread that he might have created this situation of 'showing you ' even if subconsciously, just to make it okay in his head when he knows it isn't ... not really...

The sex thing though ... what's going on there? That would hugely bother me. Is he impotent? Or is he unhealthy?

I do most of the household chores, because I am WFH.

Sounds like he's not hiding it from you and has shown you what's been discussed.

It does seem excessive, but I use teams and text a specific work colleague stuff during the day. I've just counted mine and we're over 25 messages between us already. Although I have just come back from holiday so she was filling me in with what's happened during the week.

I guess the difference is that my work colleague is female (as am I)

They were both on shift in the middle of the night. Very much everyone is wide awake and working. He did not text from home at night time.

I absolutely don't think anything is going on. Which is why I am doubting whether I should even be miffed about the volume of messages.

The sex thing - it's a mixture of shift patterns that mean we sometimes aren't in bed at the same time, we both drink a bit too much and we are both body conscious just now, as we are overweight. It's something I hope we can remedy. We both very much want to do better with this.

Are these texts taking place during their unsociable work hours? So simply keeping each other entertained during a boring work schedule when most others (you) are fast asleep?

That is less offensive to me than if they were texting outside of work hours to this extent.

It's alot of messages but what you me read seems fine to me. Noting personal there really

It's not necessarily him that loves texting. I mean, different people have different communication styles and some (maybe especially younger???) folk tend to send a gazillion very short texts rather than what I'd call a proper complete message. If he's in touch with her and that's her style of communicating, he's kind of stuck with it.

How many messages does he send you?

I think he's getting a real ego boost from being friends with such a young woman. God knows what she's getting from it. It's not fair as it's inevitable that he will compare her to you. I would put money on the fact that she doesn't know that you do all the housework. I think you need to knock that on the head for a start.

He does message me from work. Not to this extent, but then it's work they are talking about mainly. I dunno. I'm so tired, I can't think straight.

I’d not care. I have male friends and we chat a lot, DH has a couple of female friends who message too. No big deal.

Would it bother you if the age gap was the other way round?

Is it emergency services?

The only reason I ask is I've done that job and it is a different environment to most workplaces
We could text loads on a shift, male or female

i’m one of those people that sends lots of broken up texts for 1 message (loads of people my age ie younger people do it) and 51 seems like a crazy amount at first, but actually that’s maybe 5-10 back and forths? it does indicate they get along really well but not as insane as it seems

i actually think it’s quite odd to count the number of messages tbh

Can you imagine texting anyone that much? I can’t. Not even my DH. Not even when we first got together… Not sure that helps. It just seems A LOT. TOO MUCH. But does that make it dodgy? I’m not sure…

i mean your multi sentence style of writing fits with the style of texting OP says the woman has actually 😅 your post alone would be 9 messages at the least, prob more

God they always manage to make friends with young women don't they? Yeah, wouldn't be happy with this, that's before I got to the 51 texts in one day. Don't know what you can do about it though. It won't stop and will escalate. They will take it too far without a doubt.

51 texts in one day is a red herring if one of them uses that annoying broken-up one clause per message style. That's about 5 normal messages. Also the OP KNOWS this, so she was certainly gaming the likely responses a bit.

Also not true that men "only" make friends with young female colleagues. They're just the only ones you perceive as a threat. Your husband messaging a male work friend like this wouldn't even be on your radar as a thing, or even an older female work friend.

I send pictures of good dinners to all and sundry so I can't imagine why I'd be bothered by a messaging history that consisted entirely of that and work chat.

Obviously there are other issues on the OP's marriage so it's probably better to work on those separately.

There’s a book that I found very helpful when my H was exchanging multiple messages via different media with a young woman over thirty years my junior. It’s called ‘Not Just Friends’ and the main author is Shirley Glass. I used the information I gained from reading it to confront my husband about what was going on, and we almost divorced when he refused to end his ‘friendship’.

I went to a solicitor and got divorce papers drawn up, at which point he suddenly decided he no longer ‘needed’ to follow a young girl on social media, exchange photos, text, call her etc. At the time I felt devastated because, like your H, he’d turned away from me and towards a young, impressionable woman who was complimenting him and making the stupid old goat feel young again, allegedly and acting coldly towards me. A year or so down the line I’ve realised that my love for him has now died and I no longer respect him. He’s got no idea how I feel and I’m currently weighing up my options. House is being valued next time he’s away with work …

No, it wouldn't.

Yes, it is.