How to reassure my wife about my friendship.

[BobbityBib]

Being very honest here so please don’t shoot me down. I don’t know what to do for the best. Recently things between me and my wife have been very difficult. I love and care for her very much. She’s a lovely person, my best friend and we have been happy until over the last year. Our kids have moved out and have their own lives now.
But - my wife has become very jealous of a new friend (who is a woman). Jealousy hasn’t been a thing in our relationship before and I don’t recognise her sometimes. She’s quiet and moody and gets irrationally upset when I see my friend socially or she hears me chatting to her on the phone.
Me and my friend have a good time together and I can talk to her about most things but it stays in the friendship zone. I’m not unfaithful and I wouldn’t be. I don’t know what to do as we work together everyday so there’s no possibility of this situation changing. It took me a long time to get this job and we aren’t very financially secure so I’m not able to change jobs, nor should I.
Of course I want my wife to be happy again but if I’m being truthful, my friend is very dear to me and she is part of my life now too. Has anyone found a solution to this? How do I reassure my wife?

Thanks!

What? Original thought?

most of the posters here think the OP is in the wrong. Did the other posters who agreed not just have an 'original thought' seeing as that's been posted and addressed many times?

or is it because it's a point of view you don't agree with. I think I know which one it is.

Right. It's incredibly dreary, someone always trots this reverse shite out, and women are regularly lambasted for their behaviour on this site to a fairly unpleasant degree, so it's actually irrelevant and untrue anyway.

It's a pretty desperate derailing gambit, I honestly cannot imagine why anybody bothers. I guess they are really, really triggered by a man being told he's being a wanker, or really, really bored and trolling.

I don't believe it is just normal.

Of course you meet people of the opposite sex at work, but why would the wife hear about one particular lady, or even man?

Oh Ted said this, oh Sarah did that..... he's doing it on purpose because he loves mentioning her name.

Getting on with work and saying 'I'm on a work call' or 'this message is about work, look' is not 'hiding'.

Unrelated, but I love your username and the song it references

You should be getting from your marriage what you are getting from this friendship. No wonder your wife feels threatened.

This new 'friendship' means so much to you that you are willingly risking your marriage to maintain it. While trying to maintain a false naivety and plausible deniability.

'Just' a friend.

Pull the other one dear, it has bells on.

I agree with this.
Both DH and I have very long standing friends of the opposite sex. We had these when we met. Neither of us has ever had a friendship cross over into being a sexual relationship. Perhaps because we each have opposite sex siblings, it feels normal to have easy friendships with both sexes. Sometimes DH will go to see a film with a female friend, I have been out shopping or for dinner with male friends. To me there is no distinction between the sex of my friends, and if I felt distrustful of DH that would be an issue in itself, separate from whoever our friends are.
I think it’s a good thing in a man to be able to have female friends and to see women as interesting people in their own right, not just as sexual partners.
I love my brother very much and I like having male friends as well as female ones. My dd also has a lot of male friends.
Does your wife have male friends OP ? Are you as close as ever to your wife ? Has she said why she feels jealous this time ?

I would absolutely hate it whether I was the friend or wife. The only one having a good time would be deliberately naive OP

I agree.

It's already too late, op you have disrespected your wife, dragged her into a conversation that no wife should ever have to have.
Once ultimations have entered the conversation you have already been disloyal, you have lessened your wife's importance.

Can you not see how this is humiliating for her, maybe not to others yet but between the two of you, you have drawn her into a painful triangle and expecting her to play the pick me dance.
Once a pick me dance has started it's over, even if your 'friend' dissapeared tommorow, your wife will not forget this, it has scarred your marriage.

The usual taking things away from you will ensue, she will stop caring and looking after you, sex maybe pulled, she will withdraw and no longer trust you to have her back, you are becoming a stranger to her.
Your post, if real shows how utterly deluded you are and also how cruel you are.

Stop lying to her, and yourself.
She's in pain and you are sadistic for watching it.
You are refusing to admit you are causing her pain and that's unforgivable.

It's already too late now, you are only trying to explain your mistake.
Nothing will be the same again.

Another sleazy dirty old chauvinist pig joins Mumsnet!

Shudder!

He just won't accept it. It's quite maddening really. He feels sad that men and women aren't allowed to be friends. Boo hoo. Already playing the hard done by victim.

Of course they are but not at the expense of a decades long marriage.

I think the other female might well thoroughly enjoy it tbh. But yep, the wife would be fucking miserable, what's in it for her to sit and play nice with a woman her husband fancies, sit there being polite to a woman who has caused her a lot of concern and angst. Fuck. That.

And for his wife to know that this woman KNOWS she is there to make nice with the wife so wifey will stop complaining and just shut up and let them get on with it - how utterly humiliating for his wife.

Putting his "friend" on the same level as his wife too. Horrible suggestion.

But I can see why he leapt on it, as it's about the only one in the thread beyond "Sort yourself out and stop pretending your wife is crazy"

We had these when we met

I think this is the key difference here. I also have longstanding male friends, my DP has longstanding female friends including exes so I'm sure that it can be possible and healthy. However, a new colleague that he suddenly got attached to and felt was very dear, putting that relationship above my misgivings would give me cause for concern.

Just because I feel it's possible to have platonic friends of the opposite sex doesn't mean I'm daft enough not to be able to smell a rat when it's under my nose.

I have been the wife in a similar situation. My husband works in a very female orientated industry and I'm used to him having friendships with female coworkers, however a few years ago he developed a friendship with a new coworker that eventually felt different. It started with the odd text outside of work then the odd meme and then they were talking most days. It did make me feel uncomfortable and whenever I mentioned I was told she was just a friend and they had lots of things in common, which they did.
All that aside, I think its really important to speak to your wife about why she has issues with this specific relationship and work together on how you can help her feel more comfortable with it and that might be cutting back on some contact. For me I saw my husband and his colleagues relationship very similar to the way our relationship was in the beginning with her becoming the default person that he would share his hobby stuff with, maybe your wife sees something similar happening.

It's not enough of a point of view to agree or disagree with. If you've read the whole thread you'll have seen the 'what if this was a woman not a man' line raised and responded to, so it's baffling that your mind is still blown. Sometimes - rarely - it can add an interesting angle on a debate, but generally it's a very basic take trotted out so often that it adds nothing. It could be added at the top of every thread as a disclaimer - Before posting, consider what if this was about a man not a woman (swap around as applicable)? - and we could brush over it and never have to see posted again.

Leave the new woman friend clearly and only in the work zone and refrain from any personal communication.
Contact her only via work emails etc (as you would your male manager.)
Why would you ever contact her out of hours?
It takes energy and devotion to get to know your spouse; you don't need to understand another woman and she doesn't need to know you.
When the kids fly the coop is a time of intense change. Couples do need to reconnect and spend extra time building a new relationship and reassuring each other that they are still the most loved and chosen one.
Your children, too, as young adults still need your time communicating more as equals.

I’ve been the wife in this situation.

My husband didn’t think anything of it either, wasn’t cheating or really that emotionally invested, he’s just a very sociable guy.

I got jealous because I noticed how they spoke, and I felt like he’d not speak to me about certain things they would speak about. She wasn’t particularly attractive, it was more the investment of time and headspace I guess? They gossiped about colleagues a lot who I didn’t know and had insider jokes and such. I felt threatened that if we would have a down period and he’d go running to her.

Eventually it turned out that she actually liked him, and she admitted eventually that she liked meddling in our relationship. This might not be the case for you, but your wife is in the dark about the nature of your friendship. You need to communicate! And be honest about why this person might be treathening to your wife - women are not always wrong or jealous for no reason. It’s not always black and white, just because you don’t cheat, doesn’t mean it might be the right way to behave.

I was immature at the time, and am not bothered by female friendships anymore (unless weird shit is going on) and trust him fully. But it took time and effort from both of us to decide what is acceptable and what isn’t.

I have a group of male and female friends who I met through work, we no longer work together but meet up in various combinations a few times a year, they are all very dear to me. But I don't have regular evening and weekend text chats with any of the male friends in this group because that would be weird. It's about the level of intensity, and it sounds like things are too intense with you and this woman.

If your wife tells you she doesn't like this friendship, listen to her, ask her to tell you more about how she feels, make the effort to understand exactly what about it is bothering her, and then change that part.

Hi op your wife is jealous because this is how most affairs start why is your friendship more important than your wife’s feelings. Men and women are friends but not at the extent that they chat on weekends when it’s family time you say this year has not been great do you know why? Can you fix it? Why can’t you keep your chats to work only time. If your such great friends your colleague should want to meet your wife. You might not realise it now but your friend might fancy you is she married? There is another post on here and a woman and man colleagues lives have blown apart because of an emotional affair and they were convinced it was all platonic. Some women don’t care about colleagues but your wife obviously does and the more moody and jealous she gets the more you will need your female friend.

You’ve asked for women’s opinions and we’ve given them. I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t like it if your wife was sat there at night messaging another man. Just FFS stop and listen to what you’re being told and stop trying to make it okay. It ISN’T okay if your wife is feeling uneasy and threatened.

You are disrespecting your wife and your marriage. Drop the friend.
Unless you want to get divorced which is where this is heading.

"Women understand that the majority of men would take that as a come on. If she’s contacting you, she’s interested."

Yes, thinking from a woman's point of view, I can't imagine "innocently" having regular one to one conversations with a married male colleague outside of work. I'd be very worried about what their wife might think and whether their wife was OK with it.

Another here who thinks your wife’s feelings are perfectly reasonable and you are being disingenuous.

There is something romantic in the way you talk about your colleague and that is what your wife is sensing. I have some good male friends at work, born out of working together for many years, but our connection stays at work and any contact outside work is negligible and work-related.

The poster sympathising with you upthread was indulging a romantic interest. That sounds like what you’re doing and what your wife is responding to. And as a previous poster said, there was another thread on here where an allegedly platonic friendship appears to have blown up 2 marriages. Might be worth a look.

I work in a mainly male environment and have lots of male friends. My DH thankfully doesn’t have an issue as he has female friends. However, not one of my friends is as important as my husband and if he had a problem I would address it properly. And if they meant ending the friendship I would. Let her meet your wife and listen to what her gut is telling her