How likely that he has innocent intentions?

[Catacendre]

A man is in a very long-term relationship of more than 15 years, though both live hours apart. Engaged for over 7 years, at her request, no immediate plans for marriage from him for the foreseeable, although his fiancee is very keen to move the relationship on. He is mid-40s, his fiancee much older, the woman below is a fair bit younger, which may make a difference, although out of the three, his fiancee is the most conventionally attractive.

He has worked with a woman for a few years, both get on very well and when she gets a new job they start meeting up every few months, essentially when their busy lives allow for it. They live reasonably close, but not close enough for a chance meeting, so some effort does go into meeting up. She soon confesses that she is in love with him and offers to leave him to it.

After a few months, for work reasons, they get back in touch, initiated by her. He is in a vulnerable place due to work and shares with her just how generally down he feels. She initiates the next meeting and he agrees to see her.

My question is this:
Is there ever an innocent reason to meet up as friends between the two? The question of how she now feels about him has never been spoken about again, so his assumption must be that she still feels the same.

Neither come across as predatory. But I wonder whether mid-life and a vulnerable position in his work, and therefore a large part of his life, make him more prone to take risks, especially as he does not seem to want to commit in his existing relationship.

I also wonder why he has agreed to meet up for (non-alcoholic) drinks with a woman who has crossed a boundary like that.

You are asking a question no one can answer but him. 100 people could say that he's definitely wanting more. 100 could say yes not. It's all meaningless we don't know them. We don't have a clue

Nonetheless, she wants some male insights, but clearly took a wrong turn on the internet, hence asking the question on site overwhelmingly populated by women…

I wouldn't be so quick to write her off as unattractive because she's overweight. If she has a nice personality and confidence then this can be very attractive to a man. The fiancée may be more conventionally attractive at the moment, but she's 60+ and aging, so her looks may fade soon.

The lack of commitment for 15 years, the failed living together experiment during Covid, and him now wanting to take more holidays alone doesn't bode well for the future of the relationship. Also his wanting to wait until his DPs die (could be another 20 years) before buying together is a stalling tactic. As he and the fiancée both own properties, he could do it now if he really wanted that.

I don't think the meet up with the colleague is innocent. He knows she's very attracted to him and if he cared enough about his fiancée he wouldn't entertain her.

Reading your endless ramblings posted tired me out, you're not describing the romantic hero in a novel, he's a time waster who has wasted 15 yrs of your life, this is likely just the first woman you've been aware of.
He's no intention of marrying you, dump him before he dumps you.
Living hours apart isn't much of an entangled life, you've romanticised him and your 'relationship' take off the rose tinted specs.

Whether you are woman A or Woman B, he is wasting your time. Won't leave woman A because she is comfy and familiar, and won't leave woman B because she is fun. You both lose whichever you are, and he is a loser and you'll soon be a loser alongside him if you continue this merry go round of head fucks.
He isn't a nice guy. Just pretending to be nice with the people around him, so they will never believe it, when the news breaks that he is a cunt.

@HerMammy No need to be rude. There are plenty of other threads where you don't have to endure my endless ramblings.

And no, nothing is romanticised here. No one is all evil and this man comes with many good sides and while I knew about some of his flaws, it is this specific situation that has made me rethink a lot of what I have seen from him over the years.

I just don't understand the motivation; he's had plenty of opportunity to tell her to go away; she even told him this. In many ways I hoped that he's just being a bit naive and hopes that she has got over it all, but he is intelligent enough that he should at least be questioning her motives. That he seems quite happy to meet her one on one makes me mistrust him.

And perhaps I should see this separately from what is going on in his relationship, or perhaps, like I read so often on here, a man doesn't leave his comfortable spot in one relationship unless he has something else lined up - whether or not that person ends up being suitable (and the other woman is definitely not, in the long term). Given what I know about his inner inertia, it shouldn't surprise me, and I guess he is at the right age to be questioning a lot of his life choices.

I guess I am just disappointed; up until now I really thought of him as a decent one, despite his flaws.

Nope, there is no innocent reason for that. She’s given him ALL her power, and it sounds like he likes being in control and in power. He calls the shots - with both women. One is younger (power imbalance ingrained there), and has also told him she’s in love with him- she has zero power here.
the other, well, she’s not in a partnership. He hasn’t partnered with her or allowed her to have a say in her own future. He’s stalling as he pleases, even though he knows that’s not what she wants her life to look like. It’s the ultimate disrespect, to know what someone wants, give a placeholder for it and pretend to be in agreement (proposal), then tread water and refuse to move forward, thereby basically holding the future hostage.

oh hell no- none of this paints the picture of an honorable man or a good partner.

I'm not so sure it's about power with him. He quite happily took the power imbalance of being the much younger partner in his 30s, after all, and even at work he doesn't seek it out. As I said before, he avoids confrontation, to a frustrating level, and he would rather agree to keep the peace than stand up for himself. It makes it very difficult, sometimes, to gauge what is actually going on in his head.

But yes, we can agree that he is unlikely to actually want the same future as his fiancee, especially as some major throwbacks in life are yet to occur. It's actions he should be judged on, and those are not exactly forthcoming.

As for the other woman, again, his actions matter. I believe a lot will hinge on how he behaves with her, and I cannot currently tell whether he will be more reserved or less, or whether he will just try to sweep everything under the carpet in the hope it goes away. I'm not even sure what the best outcome would be.

Mumsnet has helped me see, though, that there is a lot more to unpack than I thought.

I'm not being rude, I'm being realistic.
I just don't understand the motivation; he's had plenty of opportunity to tell her to go away;
You cannot be this naive or desperate?
His motivation is loving attention from a younger woman, he is not committed to you in this barely there relationship.
Stop wasting time musing and analysing and have the self respect to dump him.

I just don't understand the motivation; he's had plenty of opportunity to tell her to go away; she even told him this. In many ways I hoped that he's just being a bit naive and hopes that she has got over it all
Oh come on, op!
You know fine well why he’s not telling her to go away; the only naive one in this unholy triangle appears to be you.
Wise up, before you waste the next 15 years of your life on him too.

No, I'm not naive.

Flattery is one thing. Taking action to deepen it is another, and I currently cannot see his end game there.

I agree. You need to stop wasting your time analyzing and find your self esteem fast. It's not innocent and you know it. But I think you were hoping people would say it was. Is this truly how you want to live?

Perhaps his end game is to extricate himself from his 'relationship' with his fiancé that has no future (that he wants). He gets short term ego stroking. Plus 'society' is very forgiving of male mid life crisis if he leaves you for her. If it all fizzles out in a couple of months he is rid of both. Sorry.

I just think it's simple- he doesn't want to commit to either of you and enjoys the attention/conversation/sex etc. He's either a life long bachelor or one of those who will settle down the moment he meets someone he's mad about. If doesn't sound besotted with either of you.

He’s meeting up with someone closer to his own age who openly adores him, and you can’t see what the end game could possibly be?
I don’t know if this is naïveté or extreme arrogance on your part, but it’ll end the same way, regardless.
Please retain some dignity and move on first, op.
Your posts are actually painful to read.

Life can be so hard, op. I wish you the very best.

If he's an eligible bachelor in his 40s, doing well financially and with good social skills (plus comfortable dating women his own age or older) I would have thought he'd have numerous opportunities if he and his fiancee break up.

I'd beware of being the "fallback girl" if I was the younger woman - good enough to hang out with if I did all the chasing, but never the main act if someone better came along.

I also wouldn't underestimate the power of money/class/similar financial status and lifestyle.

If someone wants to spend weekends dining out with someone who "fits into their social world well" (things like similar qualifications or professional status and knows how to dress) that may be more valuable than "basic youthfulness" to them.

You deserve so much better OP so much more then this

To go back to the question of “entanglements” OP raised above: there are no more, and of course far less, than an actual committed cohabiting relationship would have had. And people end those alllllllll the time. Look up “sunk cost fallacy” and realize that what you had you had. But that tells you nothing about the future. You spent it, ate it, gave it away—there is no value left.

He doesn’t have to go into it having an “end game”. My husband had an affair with a (less attractive, significantly older) woman he worked with that started with them having coffee during the working day and sharing fears/insecurities and emotions. He thought he was “making a friend”. Then she invited him to her house one night for “a drink” and after a few drinks and some more emotionally revealing conversation she made a physical move and he didn’t say no. A year later they were still having an affair and I found out.

He wasn’t the affair “type”, wasn’t a player, is well liked and respected, everyone who finds out is amazed and disbelieving. Anyone can have an affair. Most who do are “good” people who don’t necessarily go into it with a nefarious plan. The situation with your fiancé and the other woman reminds me so so much of the start my husband’s affair. So I’d say yes you should worry and even if his conscious intent is “innocent” that doesn’t mean something won’t happen.

Also agree with others that this relationship sounds like it’s run its course and he’s, consciously or otherwise, “stringing you along”. Sometimes it takes an outside perspective to see these things.

His "end game" is simply that he knows this daft woman will sleep with him as she's made her feelings so clear.
This situation really doesn't warrant all the deep analysis. He's a bog standard prick not some unique specimen of a man.
There is zero chance that his intentions are honourable.

The man is just not that into his fiancée and has no plans of committing and the other woman is probably one of many.

The problem at this point is that if you confront him with a version of himself that is less than admirable - if you show you've seen through him - that is likely to be it.

He loves to be liked and thought decent (despite some fairly shitty behaviour towards his fiancé over the years) and won't take kindly to having a bright light shone on his intentions.

Yes, he is allowing himself to grow close to another woman

It sounds like you might be the 15 year "fiancée " in this triangle, trying to work out why he'd meet with the younger woman and what's going on inside his head.

I think I have my answer. Every thing else will follow, but it's not an easy split as so many assume, even if there are no actual financial commitments. Years of investment do count.

please look up "sunk cost fallacy" - the cost here refers to the 15 years invested which leads you to believe there is an entanglement and a complexity in splitting.

Believe me, people with much more entanglement than in this situation (children for a start, but also being jointly named in a mortgage / property ownership, emotional ties with a house and lifestyle that one side may be reluctant to relinquish). How you've described this scenario, the 15 years is spent done and dusted, you could walk away in a matter of days with hardly a ripple, your houses are separate so no need to scrabble around finding somewhere to live, your jobs are in different areas and it sounds like your job is particularly well established, no messy divorce, no division of assets, the list gets longer.

the most important advancement is recognising that entanglement is an illusion that you've just decided to latch onto as a concept rather than it being a real thing here and, importantly that you can choose to walk away more quickly and easily than you're allowing yourself to believe.

the man isn't with his forever partner, otherwise there is absolutely no way he'd be meeting the colleague from work, no matter what gloss you try to put on it. Sorry to be so harsh but it's as clear as night follows day.