Am I overreacting to this note from my husband's colleague?

[ElizaD81]

A year and a half ago a (married) woman joined the company my DH works at. They quickly struck up a close friendship. It made me a bit uneasy but I tried to ignore it. I trust him and he’s never shown me any reason not to.
Yesterday I was washing some winter coats and I found a little note she had written to him. It was about a page long and said ‘you brighten my day whenever I’m with you’ and ‘our coffees together are the nicest part of my day’ ‘I’m so glad to have met you XX’.
I asked him about this and he brushed it off. ‘She’s just a friend and I’m being old fashioned’. We’ve always both been relaxed about our friends of the opposite sex but this feels different and in truth it’s really playing on my mind and unsettling me. I’ve told him this but he shrugs it off.
We’ve been together for 18 pretty happy years. I’ve been hurt a long time ago in a previous relationship so worried I’m projecting this. This note has really worried me. Just don’t know what to think!

A bit late for that.

Very disrespectful of this lady to be giving your husband little notes, its so obvious she is flirting with him and this sounds more than friends and could lead elsewhere. Id be having words with the husband this is bang out of order , how would he feel if the shoe was on the other foot? Pissed off i believe this stops or no more marriage.

And nova fing, how would he feel if he found a little letter to you from a male colleague saying those words? Have you asked him? Its not okay. Sometimes we are so worried about overreacting we lose sight of a justified reaction. I wouldnt be happy at all. In fact I would contact her and let her know you found the note she sent YOUR husband. Tell her straight you are not happy, its inappropriate an opinion anyone would form so she needs to be mindful he is married. Don't tell DH about that conversation. If she runs to him to tell him and he reacts badly to you over it I think that will speak for itself. X

Send it to her husband with a note asking how he feels about her sending g this to another married man! Or confront her and tell her it’s inappropriate. I wouldn’t be putting go with his lame excuses as you know exactly what the reality is

Your husband knows full well that’s a completely inappropriate note. I can feel myself absolutely cringing at the thought of either sending something like that to or receiving that from one of my male colleagues.

I would divorce over this. That sounds extreme but I think it’s crystal clear where this is headed (or where it has already been) and I wouldn’t accept being disrespected in that way.

Obviously not ok. I think the ultimatum is that they must not work together. There will be rules in the office about this, so either he figures something out quickly, or you advise his HR, or he/she leaves the company. Otherwise this will escalate from coffees...

Pretty much sums it up.

Thank you for your thoughtful comment. Yes, I think when I originally posted that the responses would be quite mixed and it would help to clarify that it wasn’t something to worry too much about!

Haven’t disappeared, just trying to get my head around this atm. plus son had A level results yesterday which weren’t what he hoped for so am supporting him with all that.
thanks everyone for taking time to respond to me.
I think what is most difficult right now it’s in the open as it where, is DH totally refuses to talk about it, brushes it all off. Treats it like I’m being weird for being upset. But it is massive for me!

Except that every time I try to have this conversation with the powers that be on this site I get ignored, which speaks volumes in itself.

Amazon announced this week that it will start to notify people if the music they are streaming is AI generated rather than by a genuine artist. I think that's the right thing to do and people can choose to engage with it or not, but in the knowledge that it's not a real human being creating it, instead of being potentially tricked.

I think the same policy should be adopted on here. If there is a commercial benefit to using AI generated content, lightly managed by human beings to keep the forum very active and the wheels of advertising revenue turning (or to create extra exposure to those ads by agents working for the companies who are paying for them) then it's no good us complaining about it on a free-to-use site. They aren't going to stop doing it.

However, it's quite patronising, disrespectful and insulting to take us all for fools when without us, the end users, there is no revenue and no business. People would probably still be quite happy to add their two penneth to these threads, fully in the knowledge that they are being presented with fake scenarios and hypothetical dilemmas, just for the fun of it.

Just be honest about it instead of refusing to acknowledge that it's happening.

My handyman sent me a few WhatsApp messages like this and asked me for a drink. I ignored the first message, replied about my kids, and eventually blocked him. I didn’t tell my husband because I thought it would make it a bigger issue. However, if my husband found the messages, I would understand him being upset and finding it inappropriate that he’d messaged me. I found it inappropriate, and that’s why I’ve blocked him and wouldn’t hire him again. Does your husband say the messages are ok? Or that she's out of order for sending them but no reason for you to be upset as its one sided.

Um, could you just give me a break please? I posted because I’m confused as to whether I’m being naive or I should rightly be worried.
im not sure my comment was ‘blithe and breezy’ either. It was acknowledging the situation and how massive it is for me.

Of course. Totally understand. Can you post a photo of the note please? Then we can decide how much you should be worried.

Regardless of what the note says, what stands out for me is how dismissive he is of your feelings. Whatever the contents of the note, he should be concerned that the woman he loves is not ok.

I’m not going to be pushed into ‘evidencing’ something so you can pick over it and make snide comments. If you really think I’m ingenious wouldn’t you then say I had just written it myself? so what’s the point? Really don’t get where you are coming from but hey ho.
I’m not going to respond to your comments anymore because quite frankly I find them upsetting on top of everything else.
I posted here because I want to hear opinions from people who don’t know me so they wouldn’t be biased.
thank you, that’s all I’m saying to this.

This is what I’m finding difficult too. It feels very much as though he is in her ‘side’ with it which actually is the most upsetting part. This is what I don’t know how to handle

I would not be happy if dh received a note like that from someone at work. That’s majorly over stepping.
the refusal to talk about it and the brushing it off would be the red flags for me.
He should be open to discuss it as it’s upsetting you. Don’t let him minimise it op.