Colleague’s wife upset about our friendship, am I being naive?

[Bingowashisnameoh1]

I have a fabulous, kind colleague at work, he’s great fun to be with and I feel very lucky that we are friends. We share lots in common and could honestly natter for hours. There are many other lovely people in the department who are good friends too. It’s not exclusive.
Out of the blue his wife called me late one evening, I didn’t answer and there was no message. I assumed from his wife as the caller profile photo was of the two of them. We have never met so it was odd that she would even have my number. I spoke with him about this and he explained she’s been upset about our friendship for a while and had seen some of our messages.
I’m happily married and have no intention of leaving my family. I understand how she must feel and I’m sorry, but it really it is just friendship. There is no physical attraction there. Friends have always been very important to me and I think in life when you find such a friend, it’s a rare thing and their gender shouldn’t matter.
I have confided in a friend and she thinks I am playing with fire. Am I being naive?

You are being deliberately obtuse and clearly love the attention.
He's not happy at home and no doubt you are contributing to it.
Not normal IMO.
If it blows up in your face it will be your own fault.

Sorry if someone has already mentioned it, @Bingowashisnameoh1, but think about how you’d feel if your DH developed a close friendship with a woman at work, messaged them a lot outside work, etc. Would you be comfortable with it?

A lot of partners wouldn’t tbh, his wife isn’t being unreasonable to feel uncomfortable. I’ve had plenty of friendships with male colleagues, but confining them to chatting at work (no after-hours texting) is the best policy unless you start meeting up as couples, I.e., you invite him and his wife over, for example. DH and I have friends whom we met through work and we’ve all got to know each other as couples.

If you want to continue the friendship outside work, get to know them as a couple.

His wife feels uncomfortable about your friendship. Do the decent thing and back off. There’s plenty of single men out there you can be friends with OP.

He may be feeling more for you than you imagine. She is intuiting there’s something not quite right. He’s not putting her first and that’s not ok.
you both need to pull right back.

Your partners maybe both have other people theyre cosying up to too, so welcome you both being busy?

The point is if partners know and don't care fine. If partners are free to see messages fine. It is when it is secretive and 'playful' that is isn't.

But doesn't that indicate that your friendship is meaningfully different in some way? And that your friend's wife isn't dogmatically anti mixed-sex friendships?

Maybe he has feelings for you? Maybe he’s cheated with a colleague before?
My partner works with mostly women and they often all go out for lunches and sometimes text outside of work, i don't care and I am not jealous. However my ex who was a bit of a flirt and a ladies man(that’s what he thought anyway!!) had a “friendship”’with a woman from work, she also had a partner, I was often suspicious but he told me they were just mates, years later I found a box in our house and there were love letters to each other! This was back in 2004/5.
Maybe put her mind at rest by speaking with her or invite them out on a double date or just back off a bit?

Agree and the OP continues to double down on her stance and not reflect on the feedback IRL and on here of the impact of her behaviour. No self awareness to social norms has got her into this situation and total rejection of any self reflection will backfire on her any day now. I expect all the other colleagues are raising eyebrows…

Ring her back and ask her what her problem is?

I can see both sides, if my husband was uncomfortable with a male colleague then I'd listen to him and reassure him but I certainly wouldn't stop talking to a colleague if it was just jealousy.

It’s wrong on so many counts and you know it. Messaging a married coworker outside of work is wrong. This sounds like the foundation for an affair and ‘we’re only friends’ is tiresome bs.

The gif is entirely accidental and editing the post won't let me remove it so obviously please disregard that😶

Look I see what you’re saying, there’s no attraction there for you. There’s a chance there is for him. But either way I’d probably just distance myself rather than upset someone else relationship, and focus on my own marriage / other friendships.

It's what you two message each other is key here isn't it? She's seen the "playful" messages and is not fine with it, so there's something you two are talking about which has raised the red flags..

If you know how she must be feeling then why are you continuing?!?

I think the problem with m/f friendships is that feelings from one side can be hidden. More often than not, one party fancies the other, or they both do, but it isn’t said. His wife is unhappy and he needs to respect that and frankly so do you.

You appear to be contributing to problems now between him and his wife - a good friend would realise this, and back off from the contact. Who wants to be responsible for causing problems in a friend's marriage???

I have several close male friends. They are just friends and neither are interested in more. We have never sent each other playful, bantering messages that could be misconstrued. We have never sent each other anything that any of our partners couldn't see. So in that you have done that, even once, there is something else going on here than friendship. It might not be on your side, but it would seem to be on his. And in any case, his wife is concerned. Does that not make you want to back off? Even if you have no interest in anything more than friendship, would you want to be the person who made your friend's relationship rocky? Would you not wish him a wife who was content and secure? I would like to think if any of my male friend's wives showed any concerns, I would back off no matter the truth of it, because I want the best for them.

Stop the messaging immediately. Having a friendly chat at work over lunch is absolutely fine but messaging is risky.

Op this is MN.
No friendships are allowed between men and women.

It's utter bollocks obviously but it always ends up like this on here

Great idea … if it’s a NO then you have something to hide.

This is why I feel like people’s worlds can get that bit smaller and more boring when you’re older and married. When I was at uni I had lots of friends, men and women, and never thought that much about the difference. We could text each other whenever etc. As soon as people are married, I get the impression that I have to be mindful of not texting too much in evenings etc with the blokes. It also feels like we’re not meant to catch up one on one anymore. Plus I feel like if I made a brand new bloke friend and we were both married it would be deemed inappropriate. So basically your potential friendship circle halves

So clearly there’s something about the way you are communicating with him that is upsetting her! She’s clearly not controlling if she has no issue with his other female friends/colleagues.

You don’t care. If you did, you’d simply stop.

Given you’ve said you doubt your husband would have any issue with it, why did you not tell him about it rather than confide in a friend? You haven’t done this because you know deep down what the answer is, in fact even your friend has told you and you’re still not accepting it because you want to continue! So maybe be honest and stop making out this is just a harmless friendship from your side, when you are clearly desperate for people to tell you that you’re doing nothing wrong so it justifies you continuing despite knowing it’s upsetting his wife.

I very much think your husband would have an issue. Equally, if this was your husband and a colleague/friend of his, I’m sure you would!

You are deluding yourself about your motivations OP and loving feeling important in this couples life.

His wife has asked you to respect her marriage and stop texting her husband. So do that.
And you have no idea about his past texting history with women outside of his marriage.

Leave them alone and text your own husband.

Yes, you are being weird. Of course it is ok to have male friends. But if he is that good a friend then you would have him and his wife over for dinner, or go out to dinner as a foursome? I would think it super weird if my husband had such a close friendship with another woman who I had never met, and had never met her husband either. So if it really is platonic on both your parts (which I suspect it isn’t) then have a dinner together. All of you.

So clearly there’s something about the way you are communicating with him that is upsetting her! She’s clearly not controlling if she has no issue with his other female friends/colleagues.

This