Husband messaging student!

[Radiohead2003]

So my husband (42) works at a university. We have been married for 7 years and have two children (3 and 5)

Husband goes away sometimes on conferences or student trips and he recently came back from one of these student trips.

we both work at home some days and he is usually logged into LinkedIn. I went to check something on his laptop and saw some messages between him and a student. He tends to work with postgraduate students so I’m guessing she’s in her early 30s.

he had messaged her to say well done on a presentation and she messaged back. She mentioned “your advice was so helpful. You might have noticed I came back to you quite a few times ;)” in another messages she also mentions she is single!!

I brought this up straight away with him- I said I didn’t think he should be messaging students like this and that from the messages it sounds like she is flirting with him or it could be misinterpreted. Anyway I’m hoping this chat will help him see sense, there wasn’t anything as such he had said that seemed to be flirty but I worry she might perceive the contact as being something else and it could escalate.

hoping for any thoughts on this, maybe I’m just hormonal and overreacting!!

To me this has less about his responsibility as your partner because, as you say, he isn't flirting but he has a responsibility and duty of care as a University Lecturer. If he notices that a student is using language that can even slightly be interpreted to someone else as flirty, he has a duty to shut this down. If he is unsure how, he should refer to the relevant policies. He is risking his job and professionalism by not doing so which I imagine may have potential consequences for your family.

Thanks again everyone, it’s great to get some different opinions as I’ve been a bit lost inside my own head with this. I keep lurching between- it’s nothing, move on and forget about it to OMG some hot Italian woman is after my husband- the reality is probably somewhere in between.

he was at home this morning and I asked him a bit more about it, I explained it’s still bothering me. He said she’s not his student but he was there supporting another academic with a group of their students. He said he connected with all the students there (20 or so) I asked if he messaged any of the others to say well done on their presentations and he said “I don’t think so” but he said she had approached him for advice beforehand which is why he did message her.

I told him it was naive to reach out directly to her and he could leave himself vulnerable if he kept doing this. He also sent the messages on a nighttime outside business hours! He said it’s fairly common in the university to connect with PG students this way but most of the academics are much older than him and he is closer in age to the PGR students- he’s also very tall and decent looking (lol) so I told him students may get the wrong idea.

You cannot control other people. If he is going to cheat, he will. If he's not, he won't.

If you start trying to control other people, including your husbands interactions, you should call it a day . . .

Why is it that posters such as yourself see having conversations between husbands and wife's as " controlling" each other?

Absolutely ridiculous.

Communication between a couple is essential.

Of course she can't tell him what he can or can't do. But she has every right to ask what is going on. She has every right to remind him of the boundaries of their relationship.
Do you really not understand the difference between " controlling" and honest discussion in a marriage?

"I told him it was naive to reach out directly to her and he could leave himself vulnerable if he kept doing this."

Honestly, OP, you are projecting here. How is he vulnerable in this situation ? The only person that seems to be affected by this it is you. Sorry to report.

Good on you for addressing it but all you're really doing is telling your husband with questionable morals that yes, the hot Italian women clearly fancies him. He already knows that of course. And at best, enjoyed the ego stroke.

Hold him to account instead - 'why didn't you immediately reply you were married? It's completely inappropriate that you didn't shut her down immediately. You have very much broken my trust John. You're going to have to work hard to regain it'.

Don't miss. Say what needs said.

Unless OP has cut out large chunks of the conversation, I think it would have been something of an embarrassing over-reaction for her husband to message this woman telling her he was married and "shutting her down". Yes it's pretty obvious she was being flirtatious, but not in such an overt way that calling her out was necessary. All he needed to do was respond professionally and not rise to the flirting, which it sounds like is what happened. No bad thing to raise it with him and make sure he knows the boundaries, but I don't think he's done a lot wrong here.

She told him she was single. If he's not immediately replying that he is not. And happily married - it's because he's keeping his options open.

I think a lot depends on the context of the message and how she worded it... I can think of several contexts in which it would feel quite odd to immediately reply "well I'm not single". Yes it was fishing, but it sounds like he didn't respond to it.