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?

@BobbityBib, my heart goes out to your Wife. She has been unhappy and unsettled for the better part of a year as you have invested in this EA and systematically dismissed her valid distress. The damage you have done to your marriage is monumental.

Your W has witnessed your attraction and emotional attachment to this OW via your tone and body language during your mentionitis and cozy calls. She has felt uncomfortable and sidelined by the frequent messaging/calls and the work nights out where she assumes you and OW pair off within the group to connect and banter.

Even the language you use to describe the two women denotes a discrepancy in your enthusiasm. Whereas your W is ‘a lovely person and your best friend’, you ‘have a good time with Colleague and can talk to her about most things’. She is ‘dear to you and a part of your life now too’. You sound enchanted. Building such an intimate connection and acknowledging the deep significance of a new coworker while trampling my boundaries would be an absolute dealbreaker for me.

I echo the suggestion that you read Not Just Friends by Dr. Shirley Glass. You have opened a window to OW and are blurring boundaries — investing your energy, time and attention into her at the expense of your W. You’re lapping up her attention and the gratification of this new adventure.

@BobbityBib, you have inflicted great pain on your W and sabotaged her peace of mind, yet you’re still balking about distancing from OW. You’re going to lose your marriage if you don’t shut this down immediately.

Personally I think it’s strange to form new friendships with the opposite gender once you’re in a relationship. My husbands best friend is a woman, but they have been friends for longer than I’ve known him. We have two young children and so does she, and I’ve never been bothered by their friendship as I knew about it going into the relationship. However why would you need this new friendship now? And the fact you won’t end it even though you are aware of your wife’s feelings towards it does suggest it’s more than platonic.

I agree with the previous poster. I think it is a bit strange to form a new friendship with someone of the opposite sex when you are married. You say she is someone who is now very dear to you and part of your life. Your wife feels uncomfortable about this, so I suspect there is a good reason why she feels this way. I wonder if you're kidding yourself about your true feelings for this woman?

My DP has a very good female friend, it has never bothered me as they have been friends for years and years. She has known him longer than me. It's the newness of this friendship that is the issue, as if there is something missing in your marriage that you are seeking elsewhere.

How you would feel if your wife had a new male friend who she felt was very dear to her and part of her life now? Would you be ok about it?

I think you need to talk all of this over with your wife.

I have had many male friends over the years. Both while in relationships and single. With men who were both married and single and without any issues at all from anyone.

I'm very close to a male colleague now. But I would not talk about him or any of my other male friends the way you talk about this woman.

And I've never spent hours talking to any of them on the phone.

You say she is no different to your male friends. Do you really spend all day with your male friends and then phone them in the evenings too?

Nah. Just ditch the woman you fancy, or ruin your marriage. Sorted.

You want to have your cake and eat it too.

A new female friend (that you are in regular contact and socialise with also - what form does that take?) and a wife to look after you.

Everyone starts a new relationship as friends and then it turns into something else. Your wife knows that and will also be recognising how you are behaving now with how you behaved when you first met her. It will be very obvious.

The fact that your wife is very clear that she is unhappy about this new woman in your life hasn't touched you at all. You want to CONVINCE her that it is OK and so she should feel REASSURED and TRUST you all the while you prioritise another woman and come up with all the excuses, all the justifications etc

Meeting her won't help. It's a humiliating experience.

Yes this happened to me. I divorced my Ex husband and am now happily remarried and my husband's priority. My ex is no longer in contact with his best buddy (whose husband divorced her) and they are both single.

I wonder how different reactions would be if this was a woman posting about her husband being jealous of her friendship with a male colleague?
I have many long-term friendships with both men and women who started out as colleagues. My best friend is a man who I met at work and we regularly socialise together - either just the two of us or with our partners and this is definitely not an emotional affair!
OP - does your friend have a partner? Could you suggest all 4 of you get together for a night out? This may help alleviate your wife's worries.

My opinion wouldn’t be any different if this was a woman posting about her new male friend who is so dear and part of her life now, causing her husband who has never shown any jealously before to become unnerved. Wouldn’t be any different at all .

Goodness, someone REVERSED THE SEXES HOW ORIGINAL

As said upthread when this was done already because it always is, she would likely get the same treatment. MN loathes cheating and relationships that are heading in that direction. If she were the OW then she would actually get slaughtered worse than the married man who was actually doing the cheating.

Ironically, it's only because MN is mostly women that people get annoyed with it for centring women rather than being a perfectly virtuous pillar of blind justice in all things. You wouldn't be at all perturbed to find that a forum comprised mostly of men wasn't a sanctuary of flawless feminism.

One hundred percent this and it is such an utterly dreary, pointless thing to wonder about. Women on here are universally abused by other women, regularly and often, for absolutely everything.

If anything, if it was a woman she'd be on the receiving end of some real abuse instead of just being told "you're fooling nobody Bobby boy, stop flirting and treat your wife with some respect".

There’s a difference between the friendships and acquaintance-ships that you describe and the subject of this thread. Reversing the sexes doesn’t matter and is entirely irrelevant here. The point of this problem is that the OP’s wife has come to suspect that he is falling in love with someone else. There’s the difference. He is denying her a voice and coming here to ask for ways in which he can surreptitiously continue to see the woman he is falling in love with and convince his wife that there’s nothing to worry about. This is not about a couple of colleagues who have the odd laugh at work or long standing friends with whom you all have a friendship with. It’s not even about a bad marriage. It has always been close and loving and his wife has never had reason to feel upset before now. This is about a husband whose actions are causing her pain and he wants to deny it and gaslight her. Since his opening post he has tried to downplay and back peddle away from everything he first said. The truth is, he is falling or has already fallen in love with another woman. This is what needs to be addressed. He needs to think carefully and not lie to himself because that doesn’t help.

Exactly this. Often, women are treated far more harshly on here (by other women) than men are.

This sounds well dodgy. She's a work colleague pal. Why are you chatting to her over the phone outside of work hours? Why does a work colleague mean so much to you?

If this was written by a woman, I would say the same.

You are emotionally cheating on your wife it may not be a physical affair ( yet) but she's a colleague you see her at work why do you need to be spending time with outside of that and talking on the phone ? Would you be so blasé if your wife suddenly had a male friend she's always meeting up with and on the phone to all the time ?

I wish there was a laugh response on MN. What you say is so certainly true- she saw me as a safe father figure, I saw her as someone I should have met but didn't. I'm surprised that MN is so anti-romance. The ache is like in the film "Lost in Translation". Everyone knows it is hopeless on every level, and there is no consummation as it isn't possible, but the ache remains.

Anti-romance?

FFS. Personally, I'm just deeply cynical towards middle aged men going all spoony for a much younger woman while allowing their unrespected spouse to continue providing domestic robot services.

Give your head a wobble. Heathcliff you ain't.

Not anti romance at all. Anti ‘clichéd middle aged married man mooning after a far younger woman behind his wife’s back’.

I agree with you, but she was 30, just 10 years younger than my wife and 15 years younger than me. For some reason that age difference all round sparked a maelstrom.

Surely it was the ’mooning after another woman behind your wife’s back’ that sparked the maelstrom?

I can't tell if you're disingenuous or you really are this blind and deluded. Either way , I don't know why you're still married to a woman for whom you have such utter contempt. I can only assume you find her useful. God knows what's in it for her.

I think the issue as others have pointed out is that the Ops wife is not usually a jealous sort, is concerned about THIS woman. Her spidey senses are working over time.

DH is someone who has mostly stayed really good friends with his exes. One of his closest friends who he goes out with often without me is a woman he was with for 2 years and very nearly married. Does not bother me a jot. Because I know that they are friends, its fine. There is another ex of his that I am a bit antsy about, because their dynamics are slightly different. I know that this is a me issue, not a him issue, because although they are friendly, I also know he does not think about her in any way and has no interest. I suspect she might still have an interest.

The OP's wife is picking up on an interest her husband has. God, it's blindingly clear to us and we are sitting here listening to his side of the story which he is trying to make out in his own favour as much as possible. God knows what it's like for his wife- though we all can guess.

ETA- sorry not disagreeing with you , just you happened to be the person i pressed 'quote' on!

My view. Your wife is not so concerned about now but about where this is going. Along with the rest of women kind. Read the room

My intention was not to make you laugh but to give other people the opportunity to laugh at you.

Your use of the word 'tantrum' to describe your wife's reaction when she found out you'd been making a tit of yourself over a younger woman was deplorable and the measure of you.

I hope she reads your post and makes you pay for it in a thousand tiny ways.

Ache on you idiot.

I wasn’t that concerned when my now ex husbands “new” friends name used to pop up every now and again. Then when the lies started and him hiding little “work lunch dates” I wasn’t happy! But I was being paranoid apparently! She was just a friend! Blah blah blah! Fast forward a few years later and we’re getting divorced! Any guesses why?? 🤦🏻‍♀️