Husband lying about 2 female colleagues

[Changernamerjoker]

Found out my husband has had two younger (20s) female team members for three years, but he hid it from me and then lied about how long they’d been there.

I recently learned my husband has two younger women on his team. He never mentioned them, and when I asked, he apologized but said he didn’t tell me because I’m “weird about women.”
For context: we’ve been together 15 years, we both work full-time, but he’s in corporate finance and is basically unavailable on weekdays. I handle the kids and the house completely. I never call him, never check up on him, never question late nights (often 10pm–midnight). I’ve always trusted him 100%.

What really upset me was the lie — and then finding out he lied again. He first said they’d only been around a year, but I checked and they’ve been on his team for three years. He eventually admitted it.

I’m 38 and scheduled for a hysterectomy in Jan ‘26. It’s necessary surgery, but I feel like I need full trust in my marriage before going through something major. Right now, I don’t trust him despite his apologies. What do you think? What would you do? We’ve talked twice since Friday and barely any interaction since.

The man you married is wealthy. The personal qualities that lend themselves to money making do not necessarily translate into qualities that make a good husband or father.

There is no such thing as a free lunch, OP.

How much do you know about the men he works with? How much do you expect to know about his colleagues? I don’t think my dh could tell you much about my colleagues!

I wouldn’t dream of informing my partner of age/ sex/ relationship status of new colleagues unless it came up in conversation. Nor would he tell me.
either you trust him or you don’t.
On another note he also sounds like a shit husband/ father if he’s uncontactable Monday/ Friday and treating your home like a hotel is seems. Does he at least fund home help/ childcare ? Does he act like a father/ husband at weekends?

He isn’t actually. We BOTH work full time. Graduated into the recession and he hasn’t had a bonus in years. I make half what he does - but I earn extremely well.

I work full time and I’m home for the kids (as I work for myself and have a small remote team) my contribution to our life is huge.

With out my income we wouldn’t have our house or the school my daughter needs. Believe me; he may have a good salary on paper but we are NOT wealthy and have a huge mortgage.

i think it would be strange if my husband came home and told me who started at his work - i dont really care? Im interviewing people at my work all time and i dont think ive ever mentioned to husband about any of them! it just wouldn't come up

I know loads about the men he works where. Names, ages, their kids names, their wives names, where they grew up etc. a lot.

Why does the age and sex of his colleagues matter? Would you have been making his life difficult if you’d have known he worked with younger women? Either you trust him to keep his dick in his pants or you don’t.

See, I find that odd.

not chat about ‘we saw this guy, he was good…’ ‘I’m weighing it U.K. between these two candidates’

Do none of you discuss your work at all with your partners? This is eye opening to me. We spend most our lives at work; and you don’t discuss it or the people you spend most of your waking hours with, with your partner?

I think most of you are missing the point. He works with 5 colleagues, 3 of them who are men who are the only 3 he talks about. He has never mentioned the 2 that are women. I think that is weird and I don't understand why you all can't see that! I don't specifically spell out the gender of colleagues I work with to my OH but I don't only talk about women, I talk about them all - that is the point!!! Op I totally understand why you feel uneasy but I suspect he is being a bit stupid about it rather than anything else but only you can tell that!!

my marriage isn’t always perfect, and my husband is a difficult man to be married to. I told him, before I make this decision I need to feel fully secure in our future, as it would hurt me deeply if our marriage ended, and he gave our children other siblings, and this was something I could not give another partner and my existing kids.

This sounds like strange logic to be honest. Also, unfortunately OP, if you split up there is always a chance he will have a second family, long after that is a reasonable possibility for you, regardless of this operation. Lots of men to go to have kids with the 2nd (younger) wife when they are late 40's / 50.

I really appreciate this, obviously because you’re seeing my point and everyone else seems to think I’m crazy. I do appreciate that someone in the world thinks my point is valid. Than you.

I would think it was odd not to talk about work colleagues whether male or female. We both have chatted about the people we spend most time with during the week - pre/kids we’d socialise with each others’ colleagues as well.
He is def being sneaky lying about these women, for whatever reason.

People take the path of least resistance for a quiet life
as much as you say if he would of initially told you when they were hired you wouldn’t mind I’m not convinced

Yes I would be wondering why, if he talks about his other colleagues, he hasn't mentioned these women. Particularly if , as you say, it's a male dominated industry, so I would certainly expect it to come up in normal day to day conversation that he had hired women.

He has deliberately hidden their existence from you. Coupled with his life style of socialising to excess in the pub, would definitely make me think he is, at the very least, enjoying the female company.

I can't stand lies. And this is definitely lying by omission. I would not trust him. If there was nothing to hide there would be no reason for the secrecy.

I think while it might be irrelevant to many of us, who our partners’ colleagues are, and what sex they may be, in OP’s case, it sounds like her DH is literally married to his job. It’s all consuming, takes up a huge chunk of his life & their family life & she has worked with him to accept the high number of hours & make it work for their family. It sounds like her DH has freely shared info about his working reality & given that he spends so much time there, OP has an understanding as to what his working life is like. It’s about trust. Because he has asked her to accept some of the boundaries that spouses or partners might ordinarily object to, being crossed, such as his needing to be out all hours as part of the corporate networking/hospitality side of his role. Which OP has. I’d feel similarly betrayed if this reality presented by my partner that has been an established one, that has a huge bearing on the time her DH has to spend with his family out of work, & impacts how the family’s & the OP’s life is organised around, turned out to be fundamentally different. The omission implies something her DH feels he needs to conceal & feels duplicitous. Him gaslighting you OP for being the reason why he’s omitted to share that also manages shock horror two women!! is really unreasonable & text book male default blame shifting. I don’t think you are particularly jealous that he has female staff members or colleagues. Had he informed you about them as part & parcel of his high pressure precious job, that gives him carte blanche to be absent during the whole week & be no doubt the more important partner in the relationship whose needs & stress levels most probably dominate your relationship - I doubt you’d have had any issue with it. Why would you? It just implies he’s abusing your trust in some way to make you believe his working life is like x & the reality is different. Perhaps he doesn’t really have to work or socialise to the extent he does & likes the freedom & lifestyle of being out all hours, answerable to no one. Having his cake & making out it’s the demands of the job making him do that, not him. His omission pours doubt over that notion. And would equally make me start doubting what else he’s told you. Off course it could be completely innocent. But why would he think or make out, you’d have such a problem with him working with women?? To have to lie to you about it for 3 whole years? I mean how ridiculous does that sound?! Like you are so insecure you don’t allow him to operate with half of the population! So what has he got to hide? Just makes me think he’s living a bit of a bachelor kind of lifestyle in the week, that he’s got you supporting & understanding. Bit manipulative & gives him the best of both worlds. Even if that means he’s not necessarily being unfaithful OP, more just available, free & able to enjoy the company & nightlife in a way somebody married & with kids, would not usually do? Who knows? But his lying is causing you to doubt him, not your own insecurities. I’d be suggesting honesty & transparency. It would also set me off on a trail of mistrust & wanting to know if what I’m being told adds up. No doubt his expenses & life at work won’t be easy to correlate or uncover any obvious inconsistencies /lies.

Because he told me about the men (all about them) but chose to not tell me about the women. I think that’s weird.

Honestly, no. My DH manages a few people, and works with several others. I couldn’t tell you how many, their names, ages or genders. I know quite a bit about a few of them (the ones that annoy him, are a nightmare to work with or that he especially likes), but that’s it. He’s similarly informed re my colleagues.

If he was upset that he didn’t know the age or gender of some colleagues and how long they’d worked for me, I’d genuinely think he’d lost his mind. You are, in this example, being extremely ‘weird about women’. Sorry.

I think it’s unfair to put the decision to have a hysterectomy on your husband promising to be with you forever. No-one knows what the future brings, and whilst no-one gets married assuming they’ll get divorced, you’d have to be pretty naive to blindly assume you’ll be together til you are both old! If you need it medically, you need it. If you are having it because you’ve decided your family is complete, I would ask myself if I was truly done having children - if you were to separate do you think you might want a child with a new partner? If so, I certainly wouldn’t be having a major operation at your age (I believe it throws you straight into menopause too and all the crap that comes with it). I would hope you are having it because it’s medically necessary as it’s a huge thing for a woman to do otherwise.

I definitely understand you being angry about him lying when you found out about the wine . But I don’t understand you being angry about him not telling you about them in the first place. Unless you have genuine reasons to suspect something is going on between him and one/both of them, I can’t imagine getting het up over this. Why does he think you get weird about women - ask yourself honestly if there’s some truth to it. Have you ever been jealous/possessive? There must be some reason he decided it wasn’t worth mentioning these 2 women to you.

I do think you have issues to resolve though - the hours he works are unfair on you, especially with a child. Telling you he’s in his way home at 8pm but then rolling in drunk at midnight is disrespectful. When do you get a night off parent duty? Does he pull his weight at the weekend? Has he ever done his fair share of parenting? Counselling is worth considering if you don’t want the anger and resentment to build and you want to save your marriage.

Having women on his team is a non-issue of course, who actually cares? Not telling you about them then blaming you for him keeping quiet is the issue. Either you have an issue with other women or he does not know you very well.

I think the coming home late all week, sometimes drunk is bad and I think he needs to start putting his family first more. Perhaps then you guys will communicate more if in the same room for more than weekends!

I think a lot of the replies here haven’t fully read all of your posts (or else have really bizarre home lives!).

If your husband runs a small team with minimal staff changes over the years then it’s perfectly normal to bring up colleagues as part of a conversation about how his day/week went. These are people he spends all day (the majority of his time!) with. It would be extremely abnormal for him not to have some anecdotes, good or bad, that he’d share in a casual way in a normal relationship.

After three years, I’d expect to have passively absorbed quite a bit of information about two new colleagues, just as a consequence of having a normal relationship where my partner talks about his day.

OP it’s not normal that he’s not mentioned that he hired these two women (hiring is a big decision on a small team especially), and it’s really odd that he hasn’t mentioned them at any point in the 3 years since.

Unfortunately all of what you’ve said points to deeper problems with your marriage and the way your husband operates in it. I don’t think many people on here would be happy for their husbands to leave them with all childcare all week, and regularly text they’re coming home at 8 and then roll in steaming drunk at midnight. He’s crossing lots of boundaries of basic decency already, and it sounds like it’s not working for you.

If you’re set on the marriage then you need to tell him you want to get some kind of outside help or counselling. You can’t keep being his mother, and he can’t keep living a selfish life where you’re doing the legwork. Not mentioning his colleagues sounds like the symptom of a larger problem.

You have summed this up so eloquently I could cry!

(forgive all my typos, my phone is a bit broken)

This is absolutely how I feel, and I am so greatful to you for being able to write this down in a way I haven’t been able to.

so, I guess my return question is, does thinking it’s right to know who your husbands close team members are make me a controlling and possessive wife?

Yes.

Is it possible he doesn't view the women as real colleagues because they are young and female and thus easily overlooked???

Ok noted. Know nothing about husbands works. Got it.

He sounds shifty. I wouldn't be happy about all those late nights.