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?

What can I say? I have no evidence and n time or inclination to follow him.

^^

ok then

If he was to be having some sort of affair, that would involve regular text messages with who he was having an affair with. If that isn't happening, then it would suggest he has a long meeting on a Friday and can't be bothered to look at his phone.

Who appreciates their spouse asking questions with the intent of trying to catch them out cheating? OP was “quizzing” him intentionally & after previous discussions he’d know that.

Could it be him trying to hide something? Maybe. But then he’s not working very hard to hide this appointment’s existence in other ways. He could also just be a person frustrated & hurt by their spouse’s continued lack of trust despite 12 years of happy marriage because of something he did in a different relationship a decade and a half ago.

@AGoingConcern, yep - but answering her fully would still be more mature, reasonable, and infinitely more likely to resolve this tension in their marriage. So why not just do it?

@2024GarlicCloves sometimes when people are frustrated and hurt they act that way

It's actually illegal to track someone in the U.K. and can result in a prison sentence.

Yeah, I know. Happens all the time.

Person A: "I'm upset / worried / confused about a thing you do."
Person B: "Well, don't be! It pisses me off when you have feelings about a thing I do. Shut up and stop having feelings!"

People. They are weird.

🙄

Being persistently treated with suspicion by your partner over something like going to a work meeting can become hurtful and frustrating. If he feels like he’s done everything he could over the last 12+ years to earn trust and has already told her where he was going and has had multiple conversations about this, I wouldn’t blame him for being a bit fed up. Her behavior may be hurtful to him at this point. He is also a human with feelings deserving of respect.

Maybe he’s cheating, I have no idea. My point was that I don’t think him responding poorly to her trying to catch him out while he was sharing about his schedule is evidence of that.

Ok. I'll follow him. Inbox me details.... Nothing that anyone says here will put your mind at rest....

You believe he's cheating. You have no proof. Get proof (PI) and then your mind will be at rest ....until the next time

Yes, I wondered about labs or practical sessions (am not in STEM) but as you say, you would still have lunch.
To be fair, my ex, also an academic, never answered texts during the work day, he was just focused on work (this was before WhatsApp). So that bit I don’t find unusual. He actually answers more quickly now if I message him about DC so maybe he was just ignoring me until a more convenient time for him 🤷🏻‍♀️
I do find the not discussing what is going on in these meetings or what the research project is a bit odd. But then people are all different.

The problem here is that the OP knows her husband previously had an affair with a student, which to be honest, would have put me off him in the first place.

The EA is a red herring. I have (or rather my role has) an EA who organises my diary. The way to get time for yourself is to block out sections you need for ‘research’, or indeed other tasks, otherwise everything gets filled in (whether it is research)

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.

What's your husband's job?

I didn't say there isn't an EA who has access to his calendar (I said the opposite, twice).

I have an EA and an SEA on my team who report to me. But they are not 'my' EA and SEA, they are part of a wider team that report to me, in a department.

An academic, of any level, won't have an individual EA, working only for them.

That's it exactly, the position, not the individual.

Yes, it's the position that has the personal EA, but it's still for the one person.

So now you are agreeing with what was said many posts ago! 😂

They are still working for the 'Dean' Office'. They'll report to one person (like perhaps your DH, or as my team does, to me) but they are not assigned to one individual.

She has full access to his calendar (though he will put more personal stuff in as something more discreet).

And that was the whole point!

If OP's DH didn't want anyone to know what he was doing at a certain time, he'd do exactly the same.

I'm not saying what his exact role is here but he does have his own EA working for him. Only part-time but still his own. You don't have to believe me but he is clearly senior enough to have his own.

You clearly don't want to believe me so whatever, but I do happen to know that my DH has his own EA that is assigned only to him and works only for him. 🙄You believe what you want, end of engagement on the topic.

@shepherdsangeldelight I know that many have attested that research meetings are normal, but the Op has said she's asked her DH about the meetings and he's got annoyed and told her he's unable/unwilling to prove to her that he's in these meetings. It's not really relevant that they might take years and years or that they are deathly dull to the lay person who wouldn't understand the research. My point was merely that at some point, surely there will be notes/documents etc relating to all these meetings, and if he was interested in putting the Op's mind at ease, he could show her these notes? Or if these meetings are genuine, he'd been more than happy to explain what exactly he is researching and why. It's about providing evidence to reassure the Op, not about whether what is being claimed about whether research meetings happen as described or not.

why not say, I am working on my article this morning, I won’t be contactable.

As someone who's worked as an academic and who now does some freelance writing, this is a no-no. If you say 'I am working on my article this morning' what people hear is 'I'm doing fuck all this morning. Mostly, I'll be sitting at a desk, chewing a pencil and looking bored. Do please drop in and disturb me. Failing that, try calling the landline and the mobile. Try Messenger. Or WhatsApp. Suddenly discover a video calling function you didn't know you had. Try stalking me on Twitter and LinkedIn, it'll be fun'.

And before anybody asks, it's never an emergency. It's always just 'oh, you said you'd be free, I thought you might want a chat'.

And in case anyone is wondering if the people on here claiming to be academics are academics, I'd say the argument over who doesn't or does have an EA is academia at its finest. But then, I could be lying about that, couldn't I?

"And in case anyone is wondering if the people on here claiming to be academics are academics, I'd say the argument over who doesn't or does have an EA is academia at its finest. But then, I could be lying about that, couldn't I?"

@BardRelic

1. The font you used in the above post was incorrect.

1. Why didn't you reference the important work of Jones (2019) in the above comment? The methodology used is completely false. Anyone who doesn't reference Jones is a charlatan and an imposter Jones is my husband.

1. Advise rewriting that post, putting in a section in which you've spent every weekend performing an experiment based on some sample Mumsnetters and resubmitting in six months time (by which time I'll have left and no-one will care and you'll get a new set of random weird comments).

Yes, at some point someone will create notes/documents. However they may not be after every meeting and they might be someone else's hand scribbled notes that DH is not interested in as they don't pertain directly to his work.
If DH produces a bunch of research looking notes, how on earth does that prove that they were created in Friday meeting and not just some stuff he's had lying around for years or created himself during the week anyway? Or even that they relate to a meeting that took place on Tuesday and he's just changed the date?

The only way for DH to prove he was in the meeting is for someone else who was there to produce a signed statement (and even then, I guess they might be lying).

The OP's level of paranoia over this is ridiculous. Sometimes I message my DH during the day and he gets straight back to me. Other times, it can take hours or he just waits to talk to me at home. I've never felt the need for him to provide a blow by blow account of exactly what he was doing that he couldn't reply to me. I've just assumed he was busy or in meetings. If DH wanted me to prove that the reason I was offline on Fridays was not simply because I was working in a meeting room with dodgy Wifi (happens all the time to me), but was genuinely in a meeting or a series of meetings that I must provide documented evidence for, I was think him very controlling and would probably make plans to leave.

I don't know if DH is lying. But I do think OP either needs to decide to trust him and move on, or leave him. Because her own behaviour will drive the relationship apart if she carries on like this.

@BangTody One of my favourite bits of feedback on an article I had submitted was that it didn't print out properly and the reviewer couldn't read all of it. I had put the page settings on A4, the reviewer was American and using Letter. After that, if I ever submitted anything to an American journal, I made sure to use Letter. But what got me was the sheer rudeness of the response and assumption that I was stupid and my article was no good because of a different page layout. (Mercifully the journal editor was sensible and the article was accepted).

Sometimes, I'm really, really glad to be out of it.

Good move IMO, there's such a big movement of folk trying to keep their hand in but also avoid the "interesting" aspects.

(My first conference, witnessing someone - one of the few normal helpful people who'd been headhunted by big teams - getting torn to shreds in the rudest, most sneery, patronising way.

As if he'd gone all mental and started trying to overthrow the theory of evolution or taken a dump on the speaker table.

He'd politely suggested...
....
....
Using a FLOWCHART in a group review article
..

the controversial flowchart suggesting bastard...)

(Sadly, that's not even the worst behaviour I've seen)

Yes. There's something about academics who fit that stereotype of being academically very intelligent, but completely lacking in emotional intelligence. Or perhaps they have emotional intelligence, since they certainly know how to be hurtful, but just lack empathy. It means they find new and creative ways to be thoroughly nasty to each other. And if you don't start like that, you can find yourself edging that way, particularly if academia is all you know.

My mental health has been better since I left.

10-3 teaching is feasible. This term I'm teaching 9-4 with no break on one day. The students get a break because I'm crossing between ug and pg during that time and it's a mixture of lectures and seminars.