DH and female friends at work

[Hmmthatsinteresting]

I’m not sure how to explain this or why I’m posting but I wondered if this sounds strange at all to anyone. Sorry if this is longwinded.

My DH works in an area where he has quite a lot of female colleagues his age. I’ll start by saying I genuinely don’t think DH has been unfaithful to me, I really don’t think these women are interested in him in that way. He’s not a flirty or particularly confident person, I just can’t see it. However, every time he’s moved to a new team or project (which is frequent in his area) there is usually a female friend he seems to latch on to and become quite good friends with? Unless I’m just noticing the women and less so when he talks about other guys, but I could list off the top of my head the various close female work friends he’s had in the last 7 years we’ve been together. They’ll often be texting outside working hours (‘about work issues’) but I’ll caveat by saying he is in WhatsApp work colleague groups and there is generally a lot of messaging amongst his colleagues.

I’ll hear quite a lot about the latest female friend, often he’ll want us to meet up with her (sometimes they’ve got a partner, sometimes not) but if we have happened to meet it’s never been awkward, I genuinely don’t feel suspicious when I see them together but something just makes me think this repetitive female friendship is slightly unusual?

Almost as soon as the friendship has begun, there’ll be a change in work or something and he’ll spend less time with current friend and then I’ll never hear her name again. DH isn’t the best at keeping in touch with people, so maybe this is just him. It’s like a sudden intense friendship that then fizzles out but always seems to be women.

I’m not sure what I’m getting at here but is it normal for a man in his late 30s to have a sequence of close female work friends? I have always got on well with men at work but I think it’s rare I’d be messaging any of them outside work (unless there was a specific reason) and talking about them so much to my DH. It’s like he develops an intense interest for a while and suddenly drops them. I suspect he is ASD (undiagnosed, that’s a whole other story!) so not sure if that is a factor.

I’m not sure if this is relevant but DH was very geeky and unpopular with girls at school/university and was a real late bloomer - part of me wonders if he just enjoys the attention of female friends in the workplace? Unsurprisingly every single one of them has been attractive!

Anyone else have a DH like this? Is my DH just better at being friends with women? Or is this odd?

Your only mistake is thinking your dh will be faithful because he's not the flirty type.

My distinctly not handsome, shy, zero sex appeal and no emotional intelligence husband found a woman to cheat on me with and has a new girlfriend five minutes after we were divorced.

I work in a call centre and tell my boyfriend all about the men I sat next to. If they were off sick or had moved seats, I spoke all about the next person I sat next to 🤣 . Maybe your husband is similar to this, that would maybe explain how these women come and go 🤔 it was just a work thing for me, I never messaged or met them outside of work.

Yes. Something for OP to think about!

I have a close male friend at work. However, the difference is we never communicate outside of work as that would feel like crossing a boundary. It can be all too easy to slip into texting good morning/good evening, sharing in jokes and becoming the sole focus of each other's world which is basically an emotional affair.

I always say listen to your gut instinct. We don't know your husband, you do what is your gut telling you about these friendships? If you're suspicious check his phone. I know people say it's wrong but sometimes you need hard evidence.

My ex had almost exclusively female friends at work. (Tech so not a hugely female dominated field)

He was just a really nice guy that was also a big advocate for women, single mum's son raised around women, so bonded with them more easily. Also, he wasn't really interested in the dick measuring/ beer drinking/ cars-girls-football contests that male bonding is usually about, so coffee and cake chats about intellectual topics just suited him better.

Meanwhile my friends are mostly men.

Some people think having many opposite sex friendships is weird but horses for courses, if you get on better with women, why force yourself into social situations you don't feel comfortable in.

Your husband simply doesn't understand workplace boundaries and he gets off on the attention. Men like that only learn when they have been accused falsely by a work colleague about favouritism or harassment, so when addressing it again come from that perspective about him having a balance in his communication skills at work with females because we live in a me too era where it takes one woman to say you harassed her and so many will follow suit even if it's a lie.
Buy him this hardcopy books such as 1. Social Skills: 7 Easy Steps to Master Emotional Intelligence, Making Friends, Relationship Building & Interpersonal Skills (Communication Skills) By Lawrence Finnegan , 2. Boundaries and Balance: How to Say No and Still Be Likable By Brandy Jackson and lastly Find Your Voice: The Secret to Talking with Confidence in Any Situation By Caroline Goyder.

Let him read them at his pace and afterwards, leave it alone. If you are not comfortable going on the work dates say so, they are his work friends and colleagues not yours. If you are comfortable and happy to go, then by all means attend. Kill the topic after coming from this perspective, at least he can't say he wasn't made aware of the potential future risks of not setting work place boundaries with female colleagues.

Yes, it’s perfectly normal. Maybe he just prefers female company.

Im not surprised he doesn’t like it when you mention it; the problem here is you. Would you prefer he didn’t tell you about his work friends and then find out later they’ve been female?

Most of my work friends have always been male because of the field I work in. We also have WhatsApp groups and text outside of work. Perfectly normal either jobs that are more involved than just 7 and hours and done, or where you’re genuine friends and want to just chat.

Why is it odd? He clearly simply prefers female company. If he was ‘geeky’ at school as you describe him, maybe he feels more comfortable around them. Maybe the men in his workplace are stronger masculine types and he’s not comfortable with them.

I message with men I work with outside work. We talk about the crap that’s gone down that day, and discuss things we wouldn’t want to be recorded forevermore on the business slack client.

So many women terrified of their men having friendships with women.

This. Perfectly normal.

Doesn’t understand workplace boundaries? Because he’s friends with women? What?

All of this. I genuinely don’t get women who think cross gender friendships can’t be genuine and platonic. If it was a man telling us we can’t be friends with someone because they’re male, they’d be being controlling. But if a man is friends with a woman, they’re suspicious. They literally can’t win.

For my part, I’m 21 years into a committed relationship. I know all about my male friends’ families, kids, what they did at the weekend, because we’re friends. They know about mine. I have absolutely 0 interest in them as anything other than people I’ve got to know pretty well given that we spend 8 hours a day every day together.

I would think it’s pretty worrying if my partner worked with someone day in, day out and DIDNT mention them. Who wants to think their partner has no friends at work?

Every time an OP starts a thread because she is concerned about her DH/ DP/ BF messaging work colleagues or women friends because she feels the dynamic is not right someone posts a comment like yours.
Good on you if you have non sexual and non inappropriate text exchanges with your male friends that do not upset or worry their partners. Great. But that is your situation. It does not necessarily apply to the OP's situation.
In most of the threads about message exchanges with women colleagues and women friends the OP makes it clear that they have nothing against their partner having women friends but it is the particular dynamic that feels off to them. That something is not right in a particular situation.
So with respect, what you do with your male colleagues and friends is immaterial to the OP's situation. She is talking about what is going on in her and her partner 's life, not what is normal in yours.

This.

Of course people can have platonic friendships with the opposite sex.
But you only have to read MN to realise that a "platonic friendship" can be a mask for an inappropriate emotional or physical relationship. Or can develop into something inappropriate. To believe otherwise is naive.
The trick is to distinguish between a partner's platonic friendship with someone of the opposite sex and something more worrying . That isn't easy and often relies on instinct. Seems that when an OP has an instinct something is inappropriate it often is.

I'm male, and generally I just get on better with women. My best friend is female, in 6th form and uni most of my friends were women, and that's carried on to my working life.

I don't have any issue with being friends with men, I've just been best man for my second oldest friend, I'm off down the pub tonight with a male ex-colleague.

Part of it is down to an auditory processing issue. There's nothing wrong with my hearing, but I struggle to follow conversation in loud environments. It's a brain thing rather than a hearing thing apparently. Higher voices cut through more easily, so in a noisy office or in a group in a pub with competing conversations I'll generally end up following the conversation I can follow more easily, which means I end up talking to the women in the group.

Try this:
Is it normal for some people to have intense friendships with people they work with that fizzle out when they stop working? Yes
Is it normal that sometimes people can have lots of friendships with people of the opposite sex? Yes
Is it normal some people with ASD are more likely to have friendships that may seem different to neurotypical people? Yes

So this is not abnormal behaviour, he wants you to meet them and shows no signs of cheating?

Have you considered that in a work environment he may lack a perspective that these women have and therefore they bring perspectives/skills that he feels he lacks? That may intensify the friendship for him, as it forms a real team for him that he lacks with others.

You have fixated on the “Mentionitis” which sounds like a factor of the neuro-divergence rather than something worth worrying about. You seem on track to make him try and not tell you about work, which then puts a barrier in your relationship. This perspective seems odd and rather self destructive.

Did the OP say the messages were sexual and inappropriate?

I obviously missed that.

This sounds like a neuro-diverse guy who just over shares about work, and happens to work closely with women (possibly because they have skills/perspectives he lacks).

Well I didn't say the messages were sexual and inappropriate either!
I was talking about the " dynamic" of the situation.

However you did say:
"Good on you if you have non sexual and non inappropriate text exchanges with your male friends that do not upset or worry their partners. Great. But that is your situation. It does not necessarily apply to the OP's situation."

Suggesting others were wrong to suggest the OP shouldn't worry about the messages. If OP hasn't said the messages are sexual and inappropriate then I think it is safe to assume as far as she know they are not.

Responses really need to be based upon the information the OP has, not catastrophising some tests with people from work in to sexting. This sound like those you were criticising were not the ones applying their situation to the OP.

If he's not cheated and you don't believe he will then I don't see an issue.
People have friends of both sexes if they're fairly balanced. It's odd to only have friends of the same sex, though obviously a lot of it depends on character.
Either he's a cheat or trying to cheat, or it just happens that he tries to make new friends then doesn't continue as they're only work mates.

I did base my reply on the information OP provided.

OP can totally ignore my contribution to the thread if she wants to. That is her right: to take from the replies what she finds useful and to ignore the ones that she doesn't find useful.

To me the difference is: is that a group chat on Whatsapp or whatever, or are you texting a male colleague outside of working hours, repeatedly, and he is married/in a relationship? Because let's be real...if you are, why are you? If you were texting my husband like that, regularly, I'd not like it. I'm being honest here.