Anonymous wrote:The elephant in the room is how attractive the two woman are. If OP is a 4 and the business partner is a 9, then this situation is a problem, because (a) they are having an affair, (b) they will eventually, (c) OP's jealousy will overtake everything, or (d) all of the above.

But if they are the other way around (i.e., OP is hot and business partner is not), then this is nothing to worry about.

Anonymous wrote:The elephant in the room is how attractive the two woman are. If OP is a 4 and the business partner is a 9, then this situation is a problem, because (a) they are having an affair, (b) they will eventually, (c) OP's jealousy will overtake everything, or (d) all of the above.

But if they are the other way around (i.e., OP is hot and business partner is not), then this is nothing to worry about.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP: It’s hard. I try to be fair in these things, but my husband is old (we’re 50+), and she is this hot young 20-something. I’m trying to be logical, but I understand the appeal of a shiny new toy. It also doesn’t help that they go into the office together a lot. It’s just the two of them. It just makes me feel uncomfortable.

If your husband wants to cheat he will. He’s not lacking for opportunity in this scenario. Make sure you have your ducks in a row and try to live your life as best as you can.

Disagree. He’s lacking for opportunity to cheat because he’s middle-aged and she’s young and hot. She might like the attention and connection and he might want to be banging her but chances are they won’t.

This- why does everyone think just because you talk to a person of the opposite sex and form a bond you will sleep with them?

It is very Karen Pence around here.

Anonymous wrote:Your husband is flirting with crossing the line.

Anonymous wrote:OP: It’s hard. I try to be fair in these things, but my husband is old (we’re 50+), and she is this hot young 20-something. I’m trying to be logical, but I understand the appeal of a shiny new toy. It also doesn’t help that they go into the office together a lot. It’s just the two of them. It just makes me feel uncomfortable.

Anonymous wrote:I guess I’m a dissenter.

I don’t know if your DH is having an affair with his business partner or not.

But if he isn’t, this just sounds like a close colleague friendship to me. It wouldn’t bother me personally.

If he is, I don’t see how you monitoring or setting rules for his work relationships would help.

I guess I basically feel like cheating or not cheating is in the spouse’s hands. You can’t prevent it by policing his friendships. It’s on him.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My husband has a female business partner, and I am uncomfortable by the amount of communication they have and how much personal information is shared.

Every single day, the two of them have a one-on-one meeting for an hour where they just have coffee, discuss what they did the night before, chat about personal things (“Oh, did you do yoga on the beach when you were on vacation?”, “If you could eat one thing forever, what would it be?”, “what’s your middle name?”), and laugh.

After that, they are in near constant contact from 9 am to 7 pm. She calls him around 7 times a day. They chat on Slack when they’re not on the phone. They call each other before meetings to plan, call after meetings to discuss how it went, and any questions she may have during the day, she calls him. It’s never less than 30 minutes.

Now, she’s pregnant. She told him when she was about 6-7 weeks, which is way early for work. He’s been mentioning things like, “Oh, She came to the meeting today but she was so nauseous” or I’ll overhear her whining to him about how nauseous she feels or how unwell she feels.

I have talked to him numerous times about how the excessive communication makes me feel like he does nothing but spend his days giggling and flirting with her. If there’s a question, I think email or slack is appropriate. It doesn’t need to be an hour long phone call. If you need to plan meetings, do it during your hour long morning call when you do nothing but just chat about your lives and how much you have in common. The pregnancy stuff is really throwing me off too— that’s stuff I would never, ever share with a boss or coworker; I’d text my husband if I was feeling morning sickness.

I am preparing to talk to him about it again today because I’ve gotten to the point where it deeply bothers me. His response is always that he’s doing nothing wrong except running a business and if I have a problem with the way he’s doing it, THAT is a problem.

Any advice? Am I overreacting?

I own a business and I'm a bit like this with my male partner (I'm a woman). He & I travel together and will sight-see, hang out, etc. I also have a woman operations manager and she & I talk/text/Slack alllll day long. It's just a way of getting social interaction. It's also really fun & exciting to build a business, I love talking about it, and it's not really something I can talk about with H - he doesn't really get it (just like I don't get his line of work, so he talks a lot with his coworkers, both male and female).

That being said, H and I put a LOT of effort into our relationship, and daily coffee dates with another person wouldn't sit well with either of us. Maybe 1-2 times a week is okay, but we'd instead try to have coffee dates with each other.

I also don't believe women should be quiet, secure, "cool", or whatever.

In the past when H and I have had issues around his communication with other women, I realized it wasn't necessarily the communication itself that bothered me - it was that their communication was on a deeper level than the communication he and I had (if that makes sense). As an example, he had a woman friend who he would compliment on her brain, personality, the connection they had, etc - NOT even her looks or anything sexual - but it bothered me because he never complimented me in that way.

So even though I know he loves me, it felt like this woman was special to him in ways that I wasn't. We had many, many, MANY long discussions about it and he now puts in the effort to appreciate me for who I am beyond just wife & mom, and to make me feel special. I hope that makes sense.

I think if you approach it as "H, you CANNOT do this anymore", you're not going to get anywhere. I'd have an open, vulnerable conversation with him - that you miss him, you feel unattractive, you feel like he doesn't care about you anymore, etc. Make it more about the state of your relationship rather than just telling him what he can and can't do. I wouldn't like if my H tried to tell me I was no longer allowed to travel with y partner, but I'd absolutely listen if he expressed feeling insecure and worried, and I would do everything I could to reassure him and build our relationship up.

You don’t believe women should be secure? That’s so weird. Everyone should be secure.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My husband has a female business partner, and I am uncomfortable by the amount of communication they have and how much personal information is shared.

Every single day, the two of them have a one-on-one meeting for an hour where they just have coffee, discuss what they did the night before, chat about personal things (“Oh, did you do yoga on the beach when you were on vacation?”, “If you could eat one thing forever, what would it be?”, “what’s your middle name?”), and laugh.

After that, they are in near constant contact from 9 am to 7 pm. She calls him around 7 times a day. They chat on Slack when they’re not on the phone. They call each other before meetings to plan, call after meetings to discuss how it went, and any questions she may have during the day, she calls him. It’s never less than 30 minutes.

Now, she’s pregnant. She told him when she was about 6-7 weeks, which is way early for work. He’s been mentioning things like, “Oh, She came to the meeting today but she was so nauseous” or I’ll overhear her whining to him about how nauseous she feels or how unwell she feels.

I have talked to him numerous times about how the excessive communication makes me feel like he does nothing but spend his days giggling and flirting with her. If there’s a question, I think email or slack is appropriate. It doesn’t need to be an hour long phone call. If you need to plan meetings, do it during your hour long morning call when you do nothing but just chat about your lives and how much you have in common. The pregnancy stuff is really throwing me off too— that’s stuff I would never, ever share with a boss or coworker; I’d text my husband if I was feeling morning sickness.

I am preparing to talk to him about it again today because I’ve gotten to the point where it deeply bothers me. His response is always that he’s doing nothing wrong except running a business and if I have a problem with the way he’s doing it, THAT is a problem.

Any advice? Am I overreacting?

I own a business and I'm a bit like this with my male partner (I'm a woman). He & I travel together and will sight-see, hang out, etc. I also have a woman operations manager and she & I talk/text/Slack alllll day long. It's just a way of getting social interaction. It's also really fun & exciting to build a business, I love talking about it, and it's not really something I can talk about with H - he doesn't really get it (just like I don't get his line of work, so he talks a lot with his coworkers, both male and female).

That being said, H and I put a LOT of effort into our relationship, and daily coffee dates with another person wouldn't sit well with either of us. Maybe 1-2 times a week is okay, but we'd instead try to have coffee dates with each other.

I also don't believe women should be quiet, secure, "cool", or whatever.

In the past when H and I have had issues around his communication with other women, I realized it wasn't necessarily the communication itself that bothered me - it was that their communication was on a deeper level than the communication he and I had (if that makes sense). As an example, he had a woman friend who he would compliment on her brain, personality, the connection they had, etc - NOT even her looks or anything sexual - but it bothered me because he never complimented me in that way.

So even though I know he loves me, it felt like this woman was special to him in ways that I wasn't. We had many, many, MANY long discussions about it and he now puts in the effort to appreciate me for who I am beyond just wife & mom, and to make me feel special. I hope that makes sense.

I think if you approach it as "H, you CANNOT do this anymore", you're not going to get anywhere. I'd have an open, vulnerable conversation with him - that you miss him, you feel unattractive, you feel like he doesn't care about you anymore, etc. Make it more about the state of your relationship rather than just telling him what he can and can't do. I wouldn't like if my H tried to tell me I was no longer allowed to travel with y partner, but I'd absolutely listen if he expressed feeling insecure and worried, and I would do everything I could to reassure him and build our relationship up.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The one hour coffee every morning is weird.

Talking on the phone to your co workers is normal and can be productive. It's also often better from a liability perspective not to put things in email. SO telling him he should email rather than talk to his worker is weird and controlling.

the baby nausea, well, maybe she's letting him know she feels bad and it is impacting her work.

This is dumb. I see people in my office all the time chattering away in the kitchen, male, female, non-binary. Have you never heard of the proverbial water cooler?

Work colleagues don’t sit an hour before or after work downloading from the night before. I don’t do all this or share all this with work colleagues.

Anonymous wrote:My husband has a female business partner, and I am uncomfortable by the amount of communication they have and how much personal information is shared.

Every single day, the two of them have a one-on-one meeting for an hour where they just have coffee, discuss what they did the night before, chat about personal things (“Oh, did you do yoga on the beach when you were on vacation?”, “If you could eat one thing forever, what would it be?”, “what’s your middle name?”), and laugh.

After that, they are in near constant contact from 9 am to 7 pm. She calls him around 7 times a day. They chat on Slack when they’re not on the phone. They call each other before meetings to plan, call after meetings to discuss how it went, and any questions she may have during the day, she calls him. It’s never less than 30 minutes.

Now, she’s pregnant. She told him when she was about 6-7 weeks, which is way early for work. He’s been mentioning things like, “Oh, She came to the meeting today but she was so nauseous” or I’ll overhear her whining to him about how nauseous she feels or how unwell she feels.

I have talked to him numerous times about how the excessive communication makes me feel like he does nothing but spend his days giggling and flirting with her. If there’s a question, I think email or slack is appropriate. It doesn’t need to be an hour long phone call. If you need to plan meetings, do it during your hour long morning call when you do nothing but just chat about your lives and how much you have in common. The pregnancy stuff is really throwing me off too— that’s stuff I would never, ever share with a boss or coworker; I’d text my husband if I was feeling morning sickness.

I am preparing to talk to him about it again today because I’ve gotten to the point where it deeply bothers me. His response is always that he’s doing nothing wrong except running a business and if I have a problem with the way he’s doing it, THAT is a problem.

Any advice? Am I overreacting?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The one hour coffee every morning is weird.

Talking on the phone to your co workers is normal and can be productive. It's also often better from a liability perspective not to put things in email. SO telling him he should email rather than talk to his worker is weird and controlling.

the baby nausea, well, maybe she's letting him know she feels bad and it is impacting her work.

This is dumb. I see people in my office all the time chattering away in the kitchen, male, female, non-binary. Have you never heard of the proverbial water cooler?

Work colleagues don’t sit an hour before or after work downloading from the night before. I don’t do all this or share all this with work colleagues. [/quote

I do. With both men and women that I work with. OP and everyone in her court are way overreacting. Even if the husband is just digging the attention, so what. When you're in your 50s and married for decades, partners do get bored and annoyed with each other. So what if you just like a little new energy in your conversations. OP needs a job and hobbies herself and to stop relying on her husband for all her emotional needs.

An hour every day? Wow, don’t you have hobbies and other things?