Husband's Female Classmate Cannot Stop Calling

[ThisGirlNameKD]

My husband takes a distance education course. A friend of his had referred him to a woman who wanted to take the same courses. He gave her my husband's phone number, and she's called to get set up in the school that he's in. I have no problem with him helping her out with this. The problem is, lately, for the past few months, she's been calling everyday just to talk with him. Sometimes they talk about school, and sometimes they talk about personal matters. I find this to be strange and alarming for a married woman to be calling a married man practically everyday just to talk about school or whatever. I feel that boundaries should be set in marriages regarding people of the opposite sex, and that calling another married person's house everyday is crossing boundaries. My husband doesn't see anything wrong with this, claiming she's just a classmate (she lives in a difference state from us), and that nothing improper is going on and that I should trust him. My husband has given me no reason to believe he's cheated before. I don't believe that's the issue here. My issue is with crossing boundaries and respecting other people's household. Am I over reacting? Or do I really have reason to feel the way I do?

[jenny]

it *is* odd. i think you man is *not* flirting, he's just naive.

 

if this guy was calling you, your man would assume he's on the hunt and would shake his head at your innocence about the ways of men. ask him how he would feel if you were to call a classmate every day to chat - and long distance too! the effort and the expense clearly indicate an investment that is inappropriate for the situation.

 

this can only continue happening as long as he is being obtuse about it, and it should not be a problem to give up these calls if he is not interested.

[Iamhappy]

I'm with jenny on this one.

 

This woman clearly has no respect for you or the sanctity of marriage or she wouldn't be engaging in this type of behaviour. I would be suspicious of her motives. Her behaviour (which isn't limited to women) seems almost predatory in nature - with your husband her prey.

 

I would ask your husband to respect your wishes and cease and desist contact with this woman.

[ThisGirlNameKD]

Thank you both for your advice. I have asked him to stop the phone calls. It's nice to know that others agree with my stance on this.

[Leikela]

Yes, that is definitely over the boundaries of marriage. Why can't she talk to her own husband about these things? It looks as though she is looking to receive from your husband what she isn't getting from her own marriage. That's a recipe for disater. I hope your husband stops receiving these calls.

[Natalie]

My exhusband used to get phone calls from a girl from his job. I never suspected anything. But it got suspicious whenever I came in the room he would get up and go to another room. He used to tell me that those calls were from a friend who needed someone to talk to. She was being abused by her uncle and she didn't have a mom or dad to talk to. It was innocent. He even asked me one time if it would be ok for him to invite this girl to our house so she could learn how to work on the computer. At that time I was already sure that I had to be careful with her.

I guess it's your gut feeling that tells you something's up.

 

My question to him was, if he was a social worker. Didn't he realize that he put a strain in our relationship by "helping" this "poor" girl? Didn't he know what he was doing to us? We had problems of our own, why doesn't he try to solve those problems first before he reached out to help others if he's so kind? He said that I was just being jealous.

 

At the end he did admit to have cheated on me with her. And that's how he solved our problem I guess. 'Cause now were not together anymore.

 

So you are right to feel that this woman is disrespecting your household. And I think your husband is a bit naive. Wake him up. He'll put an end to this and it shouldn't be hard for him to do so if it doesn't mean anything to him.

[moimeme]

Whether or not a person is 'just' a classmate, getting into a habit of regular contact is part of establishing intimacy. Another is exchanging information about personal matters. It is inappropriate for a woman and a married man to have such a relationship, because the path from intimacy to love is very short and people go from one to another without intending to because they haven't realized that they have begun to create the environment where love can bloom.

 

The secret to avoiding affairs is to avoid situations which create emotional (or physical) intimacy. People too often focus on the latter when the former is every bit as treacherous; often more so.

[amerikajin]

Everyone's right on here. I think this girl is testing to see what she can get away with, and while I don't think your husband means any harm, I agree that he isn't quite aware of what's going on. Maybe he thinks that since she's so far away, nothing can happen anyway, so what's the big deal?

 

I think you have every right to confront him about this. Speaking from a man's perspective, just please, please, be careful how you do it. How you do it has everything with how he takes it, and if he takes it as "I don't trust you" or "You're an idiot for not seeing this" he may react out of spite or at the very least, you might provoke a bad argument that might take some time to sort out. With men (just like with women), you have to let us "save face".

 

I speak from experience here as I was in a similar situation a few years ago with a lady I was dating at the time. My ex girl who I thought had since become just a friend started trying to win me back after I told her about my plans to marry (something we never did). My girlfriend and I were 3 states apart but I was always honest about it whenever she asked, and I told her that she was trying to contact me. Like your husband, I shrugged it off at first because I didn't really see it until later when it was obvious to both of us what was going on. When I say "save face" understand that men (like you women) like being trusted and consider it a slap in the face when we're not. Nevertheless, you're doing the right thing here, so proceed.

 

I guess the angle you have to take here is being direct while being gentle. Just tell him that it has NOTHING to do with not trusting him, tell him that it's HER. Tell him that HER calling is making YOU upset and that you don't want to be upset anymore - no more, no less. Don't say "You're being naive." Don't say "What's your problem?!" or anything like that. If you maintain that balanced approach, that should be enough for him. I'm sure he loves you and I'm sure he'll respect you enough to put an end to it. If not, then you may have to be a little more direct, which you'd have a right to do.

[JustDunno]

I'm in total agreement to relationship boundries but what to the people that say, "I can do whatever I like as I am my own person and can make choices on my own without being told what to do" ???

[amerikajin]

It doesn't quite work that way in marriage. If you want to stay married, you have to respect the other person and there have to be boundaries. There are times when someone is irrationally jealous, but I don't think this is one of those instances here. People need to be trusted, but in order to be trusted, the other person also has to show some respect. That's not too much to ask here.

[moimeme]

I'm in total agreement to relationship boundries but what to the people that say, "I can do whatever I like as I am my own person and can make choices on my own without being told what to do" ???

 

Say 'goodbye. You're obviously not ready to be in a relationship'.

[ThisGirlNameKD]

Thank you all for your advice and comments. They have all been very helpful. Amerijakin and moimeme, both of you hit it dead on. Amerijakin, I like your advice as to how to handle approaching him. When I did eventually approach him about it, I wasn't very gentle, and it turned into an argument. Not because of what I was saying, but he didn't like how I came at him, and looking back, I could have done better. I was just upset with the situation. But when I cooled down, I apologized for my approaching him the way I had, and I'm learning how to better communicate with men in general, seeing as how our communication styles are different (hey, this marriage thing takes time!).

 

My husband is a very gregarious person who loves people and loves helping people. In the past 2 years we have been married I have seen people take advantage of his generousness and his kindness. So while his thing could have been strictly helping her out, and he might not have given a thought to her calling everyday since she was in another state, and because she was his frat brother's wife, my alarms went up. I did not feel that if was necessary for a married woman to call another married man everyday....in fact I think it's inappropriate. Her husband may have been alright with it, I don't know, but I wasn't. This is not something that happened all of a sudden. It happened gradually. I have no problem with my husband having female friends because I have male friends and have had male friends before we got married.

 

He understood that, and I understood he was going to have female friends, just as long as our friends respect our boundaries. So it wasn't an issue of me not trusting him talking with another female. My issues were that boundaries were being crossed. In the beginning, she'd been calling but it would be maybe twice a month. I had not problem with that. I had no problem with once a week. But eventually she started calling everyday and wanted to talk for more an an hour, and I saw things getting out of hand. My husband would tell me that she said her husband doesn't really feel like discussing certain school matters with her, so she would end up calling my husband to talk about whatever. Well, I told my husband how that made me feel, and he eventually put a stop to the telephone calls.

 

Moimeme, I agree with you when you say that getting in a habit of regularly contacting someone is establishing intimacy, and as I've said earlier, I don't mind them being friends. But when it became an everyday things, I knew something could possibly come out of it. Things don't just happen. There are steps that lead to actions and that being said, I had to put an end to it then.