In today’s story, a woman struggles with her strong dislike for her husband’s coworker, only to be told by him that she’s overreacting. As the situation gets more tense, it highlights the challenges of communication in marriage, setting personal boundaries, and figuring out when concerns are valid or just overreactions.
Here’s what’s happening:
I’m a 27-year-old woman, and my husband, who is 34, and I have been married for 3 years, after dating for 4 years. He recently got a promotion and moved to a new department at work, where he started interacting with a 24-year-old female colleague. I didn’t like her from the start.
Whenever I’m around, she calls him her “work husband” and does things like making him food or giving him really tight hugs. But what really upset me was last week when he came home with the lunch I had packed for him still untouched.
When I asked why he hadn’t eaten the food I made that morning, he said she had made him food, and he didn’t want to be rude by wasting it. I tried to let it go until I saw him throw away the food I had made. I had gotten up at 6 a.m. to make his favorite meal.
Since then, this has been happening every day, and it’s starting to really annoy me. So today, I decided not to make him lunch.
When he came downstairs while I was making breakfast, he asked where his lunch was. I told him I didn’t make one because it was just going to be wasted anyway. He got upset and said I was being petty about something small. I tried to talk to him about how I felt, but he brushed it off.
People got on her side.
- “Who is hugging their co-worker in front of their SO (or at all) in the first place? I think you need to sit down and have a real frank conversation with your husband. Because if the shoe was on the other foot, he would not like you doing any of this.
- “I think, in plain words, you need to tell your husband that you don’t want him interacting with her at all unless it’s required for business and only as minimum as necessary. Her behavior from consistently cooking for him to calling him her work husband and giving him tight hugs is extremely inappropriate.
He should not be more worried about hurting a coworker’s feelings than disrespecting his marriage. He didn’t want to hurt her feelings by not eating her food, but he has no issue with throwing his own wife’s food away in front of you?
His coworker’s behavior is a direct threat to his marriage, and it is his responsibility to set and enforce the boundaries to protect said marriage.
- “Your husband is an idiot and opening himself up to complaints if he has any sort of seniority and makes preferential decisions regarding this friend. It doesn’t take much effort for those around them to extrapolate extra tight hugs into they’re having an affair via office gossip.
