Suspicions about DH - am I being paranoid?

[winterrabbit]

DH and I have been together for 12 years, married for 7 and have 1 child together and 2 older kids each from previous marriages. We've had ups and downs but overall we have a fairly passionate relationship (sex a few times a week) and I think love each other. DH has a very flexible teaching (at university) job, however, nearly every Friday morning he claims he has a meeting and disappears from around 9.30 to 2pm when he resurfaces. It could be completely innocent but he never checks his phone during that time (I can see from whatsapp) and goes every week even out of term time when there are no lectures. He's always quite vague when I ask him where he is doing and says it's a meeting to do with his research group (which I know exists) but I am still suspicious as it's always Friday mornings and he is always completely offline. By way of background, DH's had a long affair with another woman during his last marriage who was a student (a mature student) at his uni which is raising my suspicions. I did try to pin him down about the meetings once but he got angry that I was suspicious and said I had no reason to be. What do I do? Let is go?

Men are considerably more stupid at hiding anything.

I remember a thread on here when a man, who was having an affair, bought condoms at Tesco and was using the family Clubcard with the purchase. This was how the wife found out

Your partner should obviously start tagging you electronically and stalking you at your workplace given that highly suspicious behaviour.

If your female friend found out her male partner had secretly put an air tag in her belongings to track her movements, would you tell her that was acceptable or unacceptable?

Would you tell her had every right to do that if he had suspicions?

If it was pre pandemic I'd say he's having a research meeting - as most of work life was face to face meetings. I have a 2.5 hour leadership team meeting every week. And I would never read or respond to personal messages on my phone during a meeting - it's rude and professional.

Post pandemic I'm not so sure. Does he go into the office for all his other work meetings or is he online? Often now work is much more hybrid - teaching mostly face to face but not all other meetings. Most likely explanation is work though.

Also is this a relatively new occurrence? If I was conducting an affair I'd not feel especially romantic on a Friday morning!

Get an air tag is the new cancel the cheque.
If you are sewing a tracker into your DH's blazer (or whatever academics wear these days!), then relationship is already over.

I am surprised how normal it seems to be for people to be checking their phones while working/in meetings - how does anyone get any work done?

I am also surprised that so many people are surprised that unis have meetings outside of term times. Of course they do, academics, PhDs, post grads, etc work full time.

I think as others have suggested, taking a gentle interest in his research group might be the way forward, the more you know, the more you can see if it stacks up or not.

Can see the AirTag thing is still going on.

@winterrabbit

Do not AirTag your partner. You could be done for stalking and face criminal charges/prison time. It is an idiotic idea.

Have an honest conversation with your partner regarding your insecurities if you want to keep the relationship. Consider therapy.

You don't understand how research works in a university, then.

@Lolski28

I work in a college and nothing would be scheduled outside of term time

But he doesn't work in a college, he works in a university. And plenty of research at universities takes place all year round.

This thread is fucking batshit. Stalking, tagging, demanding notes of his meetings. Insane behaviour.

Not to mention the number of people who can't grasp that a) university academics aren't the same as school teachers and b) long, weekly, f2f meetings might be A Thing.

And for the record, if I was going to lie on MN, it would be about something a bit more exciting than the fact I work in a university and have regular dull, overlong meetings.

@NoraZ

If your DH is an academic, he doesn't have an EA of his own.

Even if he's a Dean!

The office of the Dean will have an EA, which effectively means that they work for that role, say if it was your DH, but they aren't assigned individually.

I'm not saying you do know the EA who looks after your DH department, and works chiefly for your DH, but they don't get assigned to individual academics.

My point - more broadly - was that regardless of OP being able to contact the EA or SEA, they'll only have the info her DH has chosen to share. Which is not going to help her much as that's the information she has already.

I am not an academic, but I know enough about how universities operate to be able to recognise that regular meetings, as OP describes are quite possible

My point is that anyone on the Internet can claim things and no one can prove it one way or another. It happens on threads all the time that posters claim some occupation or another. And everyone laps it up. People lie. Not just men.

This is absolutely correct, only the most senior members of staff have an EA/PA/administrator - but the other academics are unlikely to have anyone who knows their movements

I suppose it depends on where people work. It isn’t banned in all HE institutions to have an affair with a student. In some HEIs lecturers have to declare personal interest - especially when it comes to student assessment. Otherwise it is not “illegal”.

No of course not but I am comparing it to the other meetings in his week when I can see he may check his phone once or twice a morning whereas on Friday there is usually a long spell of 3-4 hours when he is offline, sometimes even from the night before. I also have long meetings but I take my phone in and will quickly check my phone once or twice as I have 3 kids and always keep an eye on comms from school (lateness etc which is v common with the eldest). It's rare to have a meeting run for over 2 hours without some sort of break where someone goes to the loo, grabs a coffee, plus everyone is on their laptops anyway as part of the meeting, usually to follow a powerpoint or other presentation.

Just to add, I quizzed him earlier as we were discussing his upcoming timetable for this term and he told me that all of Friday is going to be a very busy teaching day from 10-3. I said, fairly breezily, oh so will you have to move your weekly research meeting on a Friday morning, and he looked puzzled/annoyed and said, I have lots of meetings, that's just one of them, why are you still paranoid about Fridays? What can I say? I have no evidence and n time or inclination to follow him.

Look, if you distrust him to that extent, you need to have a really honest conversation and say so.

You are clearly influenced by his past, understandably.

Of course, he may well react badly.

But I can't see what else you can do.

In a happy relationship, there has to be trust. If you can't fully understand how he spends his time, and that causes you distrust, you need to talk to him

As my husband does have his own personal EA, you are clearly wrong. I do know how it works in his office. She has full access to his calendar (though he will put more personal stuff in as something more discreet). Maybe that's how it works at your university and at your level.

Apparently not but maybe it is at your university and level.

The dean has an EA in our faculty and one other vice dean but it's the position not the person that gets the EA, as @EarringsandLipstick says. It doesn't sound like OP's dh is senior management if she describes him as teaching at a uni. I don't think any of our senior team teach as their admin roles are so large.

Or they only have PhD students who are linked to their research teams and interests. Yes, it's the position that has the personal EA, but it's still for the one person.

We wouldn't class phd supervision as teaching. It doesn't fall under our workload division in that way.

I guess you'd just call it 'supervision'.

But that's just getting a bit off topic from OP's issues and we don't know what level her DH is at.

I am an academic.
I suppose it depends on the discipline but what you describe sounds odd. i think it odd that he does not simply chat about the Friday work/meetings like everything else. Also, in my place, very few people schedule meetings on Fridays as these are research/writing days. It could be possible to be offline for several hours working on a writing project, but why not say, I am working on my article this morning, I won’t be contactable.
Depending on the discipline, I also find the teaching from 10-3 strange. I cannot see anything being more than 1-2 hours, three at most, unless it is different classes back to back. Here too, I would expect an academic to be talking about the x, y, z classes I am teaching and how they are going, not just that they are teaching for five hours, no information.
Against the background of the long affair, I would be kind of concerned this was still on-going.
Sorry I know that is not helpful, but I am an academic and in my experience, academics are not reticent about talking about what they are doing, they usually like talking about it.

Some of the suggestions on here are unhinged! Stick an air tag under his shoe?? Honestly?

he told me that all of Friday is going to be a very busy teaching day from 10-3. I said, fairly breezily, oh so will you have to move your weekly research meeting on a Friday morning, and he looked puzzled/annoyed and said, I have lots of meetings, that's just one of them, why are you still paranoid about Fridays?

Whoa, he REALLY doesn't like being asked, does he? This would piss me off whether I had suspicions or not - it's rather "Do not presume to remark upon my actions, woman. Know thy lowly place!"

I'm guessing his justification would be your (possibly irrational) inquisitiveness about Friday meetings. But it's a lousy justification - the reasonable thing to do would be to answer you properly.

I thought there was only a tiny cause for suspicion here; now I'm more suspicious 🤔

Depending on the discipline, I also find the teaching from 10-3 strange. I cannot see anything being more than 1-2 hours, three at most, unless it is different classes back to back

In STEM a four hour lab isn’t unusual, all day even, but there would be a break for lunch. In my experience, 10-3 without a lunch break for the students wouldn’t happen unless it was back-to-back shorter sessions.

I agree that academics usually love to tell people with what they are doing. Some don’t though.