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?

If the wife feels bad enough about it to contact you, a stranger from her husband's work, she is either madly insecure and jealous or she has good reason to be upset with her husband. But really he is the one she should be talking to, not you. Having said that, I think taking the "banter" outside work constantly to evenings and weekends and buying him things is a bit much when you're both in relationships. We all lead busy lives, don't you have other friends to interact with? He sounds like an incorrigible flirt. Maybe his wife has tried to talk to him and not got anywhere. He must have done something to make you think he could be unhappy at home - really it's the oldest trick and book.

Sounds like you’re doing a bit of cock stroking and he’s enjoying the attention. And you like that he likes it. It’s not very fair on either of yours partners.

you say you assume his relationship isn’t good. Well I’m sure you speaking to him outside of work hours isn’t helping. You may have no intention of leaving your dh but are you leading him on? Sounds like it. And with him possibly having that impression he may well not be giving his relationship the focus it needs.

Exactly this, doesn't give a shiny. Saddening 🤢

Asks AIBU?
99% say you are....
Inisits she's not and carries on anyway

WHY ASK?!

Define 'playful' messaging.

I bet you won’t

Lol. You are definitely not naive and you are totally enjoying it and there is nothing nice or good about it.

If a woman came on here and said her partner didn’t allow her to have any male friends everyone would be saying he’s an abusive, controlling arsehole

I don’t give my friends gifts outside birthdays and Xmas (maybe) and I don’t text with them multiple evenings a week or every weekend.

So why ask if that's your opinion? The majority say your in the wrong and you clearly don't care. Or was you hoping we'd all agree with you?

You “know he has other female friends that the wife seems fine with”, but she had enough of a problem with your relationship with her husband that she tried to contact you directly. As he knows she’s been upset about your friendship for a while, it sounds like she’s tried talking to him, but he’s prioritising his friendship with you over his marriage. That doesn’t sound particularly platonic (or good for his relationship) from his side, does it?

As other posters have asked, many times - why didn’t you answer? If the partner of one of my friends called me I’d pick up, or at least send a message when I saw they’d called - there’s no reason not to. The fact that you ignored the call and spoke to your “fabulous, kind”, funny, colleague who you have such a ‘rare’ connection with instead is quite revealing. Personally I’d have guessed his wife was arranging a surprise party. You clearly guessed something quite different.

I have confided in a friend and she thinks I am playing with fire.
So…your colleagues wife has seen some of the messages and she’s not happy. You showed your friend and she thinks you’re playing with fire. You can even “understand why [colleague’s wife] could have been upset from a few of them”.
You know you’ve crossed a line.

“We don’t talk about feelings or anything personal” and “We honestly don’t have deep conversations” but:
I think he wants to talk with me because we are good friends and he could really do with a laugh right now. He’s had a difficult year (I won’t go into details as it would be outing)
You know enough details of his difficult year that it’d be outing to post them…but you don’t talk about anything personal? How does that work?

Look OP, if this friendship consists of only “jokey banter” and nothing deeper than that, you’re not “good friends” at all. It’s not some kind of rare, special connection where you’re lucky to know each other - you’re just colleagues who have a laugh. You should be able to reign in the evening and weekend chats quite easily, if you don’t want to see him stupidly blow up his marriage over a superficial friendship with a colleague.

If, on the other hand, you do share personal details, offer each other support, connect over just how much you have in common (musing about how it’s so rare to find someone like that 🥰), buy each other thoughtful gifts ‘just because’, send each other messages that even you acknowledge could understandably upset his wife, and you can’t bear the thought of having to reduce your out of work contact - you’re having an emotional affair, even if (somehow) you don’t realise it.

Am I being naive?
No. You’re lying to yourself though.

If this is genuine and not just rage bait, then I’d say you are in no way being naive because you know exactly what you’re doing.
You can declare “we’re just friends” all you want, you’ve now been asked in no uncertain terms to back off…so you back off. It’s that simple. If you don’t back off now knowing what you are doing to his wife then you are absolutely complicit in being the other woman.
If he wants to maintain a “friendship” with you then he needs to leave his wife. He can’t be faithful to his wife and be doing what he’s doing with you. She’s made her boundaries very clear so if you care one jot about your good “friend” then you would back off and stop ruining his home life. If he doesn’t back off then he’s got no respect for boundaries or for you knowing he could also be wrecking your marriage if his wife speaks to your husband, and also what he’s making you look like (the other woman). And he certainly would have no respect for his wife either so I don’t know why you’d even want to be “friends” with him anyway.

You’ve now had it pointed out to you by almost all of mumsnet, so the “naivety” card is out of play. You decide whether getting a bit of attention from someone you say you wouldn’t leave your marriage for anyway is worth blowing up someone else’s family for.

I think you just enjoy the attention. Look - just back off. You're affecting their marriage. Do the right thing, for goodness sake.

How have you assumed “things aren’t great” if he hasn’t discussed his marriage with you?

If your friend is unhappy in his marriage it's not up to you to make him happier I'm afraid. He need to work on his marriage in that case, not make more female friends... Him calling you to make you smile, while his wife is unhappy about it and they are going through stuff, is just not ok.

The gender thing, I agree, but in practice it just doesn't always work. I can totally get why she's upset when he's getting his "happy self" back with another woman (friendship or not). She wants him to do this stuff with her, obviously.

And just because you're not attracted to him, doesn't mean he isn't attracted to you.

Honestly, I'd stay out of it. It will just invite drama.

I have a work friend that I got really close to really quickly, we just clicked right away. We always like to try and work together when we can (we work a lot remotely) and always meet up before training days etc so we can sit together.

We text pretty much every day and can spend a lot of the evening messaging or sending reels etc - sometimes I barely speak to my husband at the time as I am caught up messaging.

Oh - she's a woman by the way and so am I, why does it feel like this is ok but not if she was a man?? The "impact" on my time at home with my family is exactly the same

All these people making out it’s an issue about friendships with the opposite sex -I have tons of male friends and none of their partners need to call me up to tell me to back off, none of their partners would have their call ignored if they did, none of my female friends need to say I’m “playing with fire” and I don’t feel the need to tell mumsnet that only I understand him and his “difficult year”. OP is just an arsehole. Hope this helps.

In this case the ‘someone else’ is his wife. Something is making her feel uncomfortable and from what OP says some of their messages could be interpreted as flirting. I’d bet the farm she was calling OP to ask if they are having an affair. So no, her feelings are just as much his problem because he’s the one who’s causing them, however unintentionally.

I’m guessing that what’s ‘different’ is that in a same sex friendship (like yours) neither are likely to fancy the other or develop an attraction to the other and start crossing physical/romantic boundaries.

That would be a pretty major difference to me?!

Maybe because unless you’re gay or bisexual there’s no chance of the friendship spilling over into affair territory.

well I am bisexual and I have very close male and female friends that I message a lot, co-work with, go for dinner with. Should I just never have any friends?

You sound so gleeful, it's awful. You don't sound like a kind person at all,

All of this makes you look like you have incredibly low self esteem, I'm cringing for you. You must look very foolish at work

😂😂😂😂 utter horseshit. OP isn’t responsible for his wife’s feelings. Why would she care? If I had a genuine platonic friendship and had their partner call me telling me to back off, I’d be embarrassed for the partner and concerned for my friend.

Why would you not have any friends ? The issue here is not that men and women can’t be friends, whatever their sexual preferences, it’s that the intensity of this particular friendship is causing a spouse some concern.

“Intensity” seems to mean they discuss personal/emotional issues, have some banter outside work hours and she bought him a gift. Those are all very normal things to do with friends in my book.