Vanessa - posted on 02/16/2011 ( 122 moms have responded )
15
0
********
Update:
Thanks to everyone for their support and advice
It seems the storm has passed.
After months of struggling my husband finally talked to his friend. This morning he received a text message from her inviting him to another concert. He called her and told her that if she wants to hang out outside of class she can't just invite him, but both of us because we are a married couple. He told her that they had a connection after 2 years of being buddies in class together and that it wasn't fair to me. He also explained to her that he had never thought there was a problem being friends with her because I had male friends of my own, but he realized that I had always made sure that he got to know them and became friends with them too and they (my male friends) view us as a unit and would never invite me out without asking him along too.
Apparently she also has trust issues and doesn't open up to many people for fear of being judged. She was afraid to let her guard down around me because she thought I would make fun of her.
They are still going to be friends in class, but he told her that if she had something funny to share with him she could feel free to send it to me, because he would still get to see it but it wasn't right for her to send them to him. I am very optimistic about the future.
******
This may end up being very long and windy, and I apologize. I'm having a very hard time and I want to make sure I explain the entire situation to get good advice.
I am a 31 year old stay at home mom with an absolutely wonderful 3 and a half year old daughter. She has just started pre-school and is inquisitive about everything! It's very cute in small doses but it is starting to cause me a pretty significant amount of stress. She also repeats the last few words of everything and anything I say to her.
While I'm caring for our daughter at home, my husband owns and operates his own pool cleaning business. It's very tedious and monotonous work and he's by himself all day. A few years ago he started taking Japanese at the community college nearby. I'm half Japanese and I'm teaching my daughter to speak Japanese so it seemed like a really great thing. He has been doing extremely well in his classes (had the highest grade in his class). When he first started taking classes it was really awkward and uncomfortable for him because all of his classmates were 18-20 year olds (he is 33) and he had would sit by himself during the break and have no one to talk to. Then one of his 19 year old classmates befriended him and included him with her group of friends. He told me about her, and I really thought nothing of it. He added her on Facebook and they kept in touch over the Summer (emailing now and again) because they were going to be in the next level of Japanese class the following semester. She is the only one from the first class that stuck with Japanese. She is his only friend in class, and he probably would have quit going to school if it were not for her (due to it being so uncomfortable and unfriendly).
Then there were a couple of incidents that made me feel incredibly uncomfortable. She invited him to a concert, he asked me if it was ok that he go, I was fine. He went to the concert with her but didn't end up coming home until 1 am because he was talking to her in the parking lot. I should explain that the concert was her ex-boyfriends bands. She had come to him for advice about the ex on previous occasions, and he had told me all about it. Even knowing all that I was still really uncomfortable with him being out until 1 talking to her about it without even calling me. I started getting paranoid at about that time. They would be partners on school projects and he would have her over to work on them (while I was home.) But one night when I was supposed to be out babysitting overnight for his sister, he told me he planned to have his classmate over to work on the project some more late at night. I flipped out and told him he should not be having a 19 year old girl come over at night when I'm not at home, regardless of the situation. He cancelled on her, and rescheduled for the next night, but he was annoyed and didn't understand why I would be so upset since he saw absolutely no harm in the situation. Then she started texting him pretty frequently, and he started texting her. Not just replying to her messages, but sending his own texts. I started getting really upset about the texting and the facebook messaging so I asked him to tell me about any messages that were going back in forth. He has been completly forthcoming, but he felt like he was having to ask my permission every time he decided to send a message which made his messages strained and increasing his irritation at me. If I ask, he lets me read them.
I should also point out the fact that I have a male friend that I was texting back and forth with in the past 6 months. We were just starting to become better friends and my husband is also friends with him, and I didn't get any feeling from my husband that the texting was bothering him. Since I started feeling uncomfortable about my husband texting I have stopped texting my friend completely.
So we've been really fighting since December about his 19 year old classmate. I've brought up divorce a few times, but whats really awful is we've fought in front of our daughter, she is now no longer phased to see me crying.
I know that nothing inappropriate is going on between my husband and this girl. He has brought her over a few nights to have dinner with us (at my request) and he still is willing to share all his messages back and forth with her. But it still sinks me into a pit of dispair every time I hear his phone buzz, or I see him texting. I know all the messages back and forth are harmless (mostly about food and funny things that happened) but i'm really bothered by the fact that they are getting to be such close friends. He still has class for another 3 months and then that's the end of Japanese classes at the community college. He's convinced that they will lose touch with each other at that point, but i'm not so sure.
He's done everything I've asked him to do to make me comfortable with the situation (even if it's been grudgingly at times). At one point I was seriously considering moving out and he called her to cut off communication with her. I later relented because I don't want to dictate who he can and can't be friends with. But Even knowing all of that in my head, It bothers me that my husband would be close friends with a 19 year old girl. I don't know what to do. She even babysat for us on Valentines Day so we could go out for dinner. She's 19 and young and enthusiastic which is why the texting is happening, but it hurts me that he reciprocates in kind. I'm depressed and sad alot of the time, I know i'm reacting irrationally and most of this is based on jealousy but it's not getting any better.
Please help :(
- People thought this was ...
- Helpful
- Nice
- Funny
- Encouraging
- Hugs
122 Comments
View replies by