Male colleague stopped emailing after I mentioned my husband more

[Whathappenedici]

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?

Doubt he’s cut her off
Just got bored of daily long emails. It happens.

Starting multiple threads about is speaks volumes to me. This OP was very much hoping this would develop in to more

I think if you were honest with yourself OP, at the very least you were enjoying this attention otherwise you’d have mentioned your home/DH earlier as you would with a female friendship naturally. Was he at an equal grade to you at work? Although you’ve enjoyed this relationship it’s for the best that it’s stopped - it’s not a genuine friendship.

Of course your friend was right, I used to have a friend like you and I found the naivety bewildering.

To be emailing every other day is very intense to say the least. Just because he didn’t get obviously “flirty” doesn’t mean he wasn’t interested in taking things further. Not all men go in for that sort of stuff, especially with a married ex-colleague. To stop contact just because you dropped your DH into the convo in a natural way shows he was seeing the emails as a means to an end.

There's two more "innocent" explanations, while one not completely so.

If I was completely not interested and genuinely communicating a lot, and there was any increase in mentioning a partner, I would probably do a 180. I'm not interested in drama if I like someone more, imagine how much I would calm the situation down a lot if there was a hint of it if I wasn't interested like that.

Or maybe it was a bit flirty from him. He might have had no interest in going further at all, just a slight confidence boost that a younger woman was interested in talking to him and having a connection. That increase could have been a wakeup back to reality, made him feel silly, so he stopped. A little silly from him maybe, but not the worst thing in the world.

Or something has happened and he is busy or can't contact much.

Or maybe he did think more was happening, and was genuinely interested.

You won't know until you have more contact, or know for certain unless you have the conversation about it.

I don’t think this is clear cut. The majority of my friends are male. I go out inc staying overnight with one or the other probably once a month )inc abroad) for a shared interest. Nothing untoward has ever happened. Not even hinted at! We chat online a lot.

So completely possible that platonic friendship was what was on offer. You mentioning your DH suddenly where Pressumably you hadn’t inc in messages before is a massive change and might have made him think you saw the relationship as different to him. So yes I suspect it was an issue but maybe not in the way your friend thinks

I think if you see him as a friend and he has suddenly dropped off the planet you might ask if he was Ok? For goodness sake. I have lots of male friends. I think because your friends suggestion you are making 2and 2 make 5. Just ask him if he is OK because you have heard and you are worried. There’s nothing weird about that.

It’s been two months. I didn’t notice at first because I was super busy at work after Xmas but it dawned on me last week how long it had been without contact because we were communicating so frequently for months prior to this.

Thanks again for the mixture of responses. I want to reiterate that I didn’t force my DH into the conversation in a way that would signal “back off”. It was a perfectly normal conversation. He mentioned his DC which was usual (he has mentioned them a handful of times but almost never mentions his wife), he asked how my Xmas had been. I very naturally and normally said yeah fine, spent it with DH and ILs. I don’t think that’s a weird thing to do and don’t personally see how that would ever signal back off, I’m married and don’t want you to contact me again!

Anyway, I don’t know what his deal is. I think I may send a light follow up since it’s been so long to check in with him.

It will be interesting to see what response you get, if any. One always thinks oh, maybe they've dropped dead, the budgerigar escaped or some other natural disaster, but 99% of the time that isn't the reason.

You started a thread on not having a response from him end of Jan

two months later and you are still stewing on it

I didn’t think it was possible for that to be misinterpreted really. I don’t know why I added the detail in. I said I don’t watch TV much but since DH is working away I’ve been watching x series and it’s great.

Anyway, I will send a quick follow up to check he’s ok and I guess if I don’t hear back then I can assume either something cataclysmic has happened, or me dropping DH in was too much for whatever reason.

Also, I think the conversation read really naturally. Nothing about it was over sharing in any way. I have other friends- male and female- who I would say that sort of thing to and I’d expect something similar in return so it would be “oh yes I spent with ILs too”.

No the thread in Jan (which I would have gone back to but didn’t think I’d get a response since people would open and think of it as a zombie, so sorry!) was actually about whether his behaviour read as him not having purely platonic intentions. He hadn’t left me hanging at that stage.

My friend had mentioned he might have ulterior motives and she recommended I mention DH in my next response to see what happened. She said if he was invested in me, he’d likely reply really coldly. Instead he just didn’t reply at all.

Listen to yourself OP

this weird email exchange meant way way too much to you

OP- you fancy him dont you?

Noone is this focused and obsessed with a platonic male colleague to this extent. You've made two threads about him in two months. Just be honest about it and stop kidding yourself. You say you forgot when he didnt reply in Jan but you made another thread about him that same month?

Oh yes the thread back in Jan was on about you thinking you might be in an emotional affair with him https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/relationships/5472491-am-i-embroiled-in-an-emotional-affair-without-realising-it

seriously, this is very weird. Leave him alone, don’t send an email to him asking him how he is

No, he replied to an email I had sent before the Xmas break in early Jan and I replied to that a few days later, where I mentioned DH a bit more than before- does that make sense? I then got really busy and didn’t think about it for a few weeks until it dawned on me how long it had actually been without contact.

I don’t fancy him but I did enjoy the exchange a lot and feel a bit ghosted I guess. As I say, I’ll send a light message to check all is ok and see what I get back.

Fgs no
leave him alone!

why have you made two posts about him then? He's just someone you used to work with, he's not your life long oldest friend.

You seem really fixated on him. It's very obvious.

Over Christmas, his wife saw all the texts between you two and told him to pack it in or get out.

At least two threads

yeah sorry thats what I meant! two separate threads

I always thought my male friends were just that friends and no issues. DH and I had a rough patch after our DD died, guess what two of them made a play for me. It was truly bloody awful. I had known one for a decade and the other one for at least 3 years and he was much younger than me.

Do not msg again and ask yourself why you like the attention.

Its over, I beleive you both had an emotional affair, otherwise you wouldnt still be thinking of him, time to move on

You are very naive. No man ever in the history of the planet earth wants to be a woman's "friend". They are always looking for an opportunity to tap it. Whether it takes months or years, they will pounce the moment there is an opening. They play the friend role to get your guard down, get into your head, ferret out your unmet needs, find out your strengths and weaknesses, figure out how you analyze things and finally, what kind of street smarts you have when it comes to men and their b.s. You cannot be "friends" with another woman's husband. You cannot be "friends" with a single man when you are in a relationship or married. It never works. There is always ALWAYS a game being played.