I worked closely with a colleague on a year long project. He is about 20 years older than me and married, I’m also married. I viewed this as purely platonic, we really got along just as I would any friend. I found him easy to chat to, he was warm and friendly and he had a good reputation with other colleagues for generally being a nice guy (not a sleaze or anything).
After it ended we naturally stayed in touch via email for about 6 months. I don’t know who instigated, we both just stayed in regular contact. The emails were quite long, warm and engaging and he ramped up the frequency to every other day just before Christmas so we were in touch a lot. I enjoyed the contact and looked forward to hearing from him. We mostly just discussed current affairs, work, books we were reading, politics etc. Nothing I’d hide from my DH and in fact I didn’t hide it, he knew I was in touch with him and didn’t feel remotely threatened.
I mentioned it to a friend a few months ago and she thought it was hilarious. In her mind, he 100% had a crush on me and she thought I was being ridiculously naive if I didn’t realise this. She said straight men don’t spend so much time engaging with women if they’re not attracted to them. I thought that was a little bit too overly simplistic and I’d never once picked up on flirtatious energy from him… She advised I start mentioning my DH more in the emails and see what happens.
Anyway he last emailed me at the start of the year and I took my friend’s advice and mentioned my DH more in my response. It was natural, didn’t look like I was forcing him into the conversation to set boundaries or whatever. Well, he never replied! To my friend this is evidence she was right and I was just horribly naive to think he was a genuinely nice guy, is she right?