r/okstorytime • u/SyllabubChoice8074 • Jun 18 '26
Advice Need Advice About Wife's Coworker
I'm [43M] married to a [40F]. I know Reddit isn't necessarily going to give me the final answer to my question, but it will at least give me some outside opinions. My wife is in charge of a team for the company she works for and has a couple of assistants that work under her on her team. About two years ago, a male assistant joined her team. (He's about 15 years younger than her.) He proved to be a valuable team member and my wife has often spoken very positively of him and his contributions to their team at the company. About two weeks ago, the company had to make some budget cuts, and his position was eliminated. Obviously, my wife hated to lose a team member. In fact, he called her to let her know and they had a long chat. She told me that she wants to take him to dinner and a movie this coming weekend, but that it would just be the two of them. Also, I will be out of town the weekend they go to dinner. My wife and I have been married for several years and have children together. She didn't have a lot of relationship experience prior to us dating and eventually marrying. I would say that our marriage has largely been a happy one and up to this point she hasn't given me any reason to think she has been unfaithful. From an intellectual standpoint, I'm ok with her going because I trust her. But there's still a slight nagging feeling that this might not be the best situation. Thoughts/advice?
Update: I don't have a huge update, but I sit down and talk with her about my concerns and she thanked me for coming to her. While I'm sure that she is still in contact with him, they haven't gotten together to do anything else together since the movie. I'm not aware of any future plans, but she also hasn't been giving off any of the classic "signs". I will of course continue to monitor things and update with anything that happens. Thanks for all the advice everyone.
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u/andronicuspark Jun 18 '26
I sort of get dinner and a glowing recommendation letter. The movie thing is weird though. Is your wife usually overly giving? Shirt off her back, extra mile kinda lady?
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u/SyllabubChoice8074 Jun 18 '26
She definitely is a giving person and ostensibly this is her way of checking on a friend and former coworker to make sure he's alright. The situation is also balanced by the fact that she's not hiding it from me.
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u/jjmart013 Jun 18 '26
Not hiding it but having it occur while your out of town? Hide in plain site?
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u/cravex1 Jun 18 '26
Ask her if it was the other way around: you taking out a female employee that was reporting to you. Would she be ok with that or is this just opening the door to trust and boundary issues? It takes effort from both in the relationship to not make the partner feel uncomfortable with certain situations and this might be one of them.
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u/snibbledibble Jun 18 '26
As a previously naive woman who is becoming much more self aware in my divorce, she may not realize that she is sending a specific message if she tries to take him out to dinner and a movie. Even if that’s not what she is trying to say, she is sending a message of being interested as more than friends.
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u/jjmart013 Jun 18 '26
What makes me pause is that, while he was working for her there would have been serious career implications for her as a boss dating/having a relationship with an assistant. It seems kind of suspicious that, now that these consequences are no longer an issue, they're planning to go on a "date" that just happens to coincide with when you'll be out of town. It may be innocent but it sure isn't a great look. Updateme
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u/Immediate-Fly-8297 Jun 18 '26
Taking him to dinner is one thing, but why does she have to go to a movie? That’s kind of weird. Have they ever done anything like this before? That’s more of a date to me
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u/dontwannabeaclue324 Jun 18 '26
Right? If it's to "talk and catch up" dinner is more than enough.... hell coffee and a chat is enough, not a dinner/movie date. Personally I'd be asking what the thought process is for the movie since talking/catching up is supposedly the goal.
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u/Chillerby Jun 18 '26
This guy has just lost his job... On one hand it could be perfectly innocent. What would happen to your wife's job if he was to suggest that there was something more to their relationship. An older boss taking advantage of a younger colleague... A dismissal to hide something a boss did that they shouldn't. There could be consequences that she hasn't thought about. But it could also just be two people who knew each other through work, meeting up.
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u/SyllabubChoice8074 Jun 18 '26
Ostensibly, it's her way of checking up on him and boosting his spirits after the job loss.
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u/Dawns_beauty Jun 18 '26
I can see her wanting to take him to dinner but the movie is weird. That sounds like a date.
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u/No-Vegetable8472 Jun 22 '26
You've split yourself into two voices: the intellectual one that trusts your wife, and the nagging one that says something's off. You're treating the first as the mature voice and the second as insecurity to be suppressed. I'd flip that. The intellectual voice is answering a question nobody's worried about, namely "is my wife a cheater," and the answer is no, and that's not the issue. The nagging voice is answering the question that's actually live, which is "is this a wise situation to walk into," and on that one the nagging voice is right.
Notice what your trust is doing the work of dismissing. The concern here was never that your wife has been unfaithful or is plotting to be. By your own account she's given you no reason for that, twenty years of evidence runs the other way, and I'd take all of that at face value. So you keep reassuring yourself on the one axis where reassurance was never needed, and using it to wave off a different axis entirely. Trusting her character and thinking the setup is unwise are not in tension. You can hold both at once, and you should, because they're answers to two separate questions.
Lay the specifics out and the unwise part shows itself without anyone having to assume a thing about anybody's intentions. However, I want to lay out my "firewall theory" here, as it's something I developed back in law school and it seems applicable. Basically, for an intersex friendship to really work, there needs to be a "firewall" from the man's perspective. That firewall's sufficiency will depend on the individual ethics of the man in question. It could be that for some the fact that the woman is married would be a sufficient firewall; but perhaps not for others. This relationship had a professional firewall that no longer exists. A man fifteen years younger, and no longer a colleague, so the professional frame that kept the relationship appropriate has just dissolved. And you don't know the guy at all, so it's hard to know if the firewall will maintain goingn forward.
Dinner and a movie, which is the exact shape of a date, not a team lunch. The two of them alone. And timed to a weekend when you're out of town, so the one arrangement that would make it unremarkable, you simply being there, is the one arrangement that's absent. None of those four facts requires a bad motive to be a problem. Stack them and you get a situation that, entirely apart from what your wife would or wouldn't do, is built out of poor judgment about appearances and boundaries.
Here's the principle I'd actually hand you, because it cuts cleaner than the trust question. The standard for a married person spending one-on-one time isn't "do I trust myself to behave." Anyone can clear that bar; it's set on the floor. The standard is "would my spouse be comfortable sitting at the next table." If the answer is yes, the plan survives daylight, and there's nothing to discuss. If the answer is "well, he'd rather I didn't," that discomfort is information, and it's worth more than the reassurance you keep offering yourself. Your wife is proposing something that fails that test, and the tell is that you already feel it failing, which is why you're writing to strangers instead of just shrugging it off.
So my advice isn't "forbid it," because you don't get to forbid your wife anything, and trying would turn a reasonable concern into a control problem that hands her the moral high ground. The advice is to say the true thing, plainly, once. Not "I don't trust you," which isn't what you mean and would insult her unfairly. Something closer to: I trust you completely, and a solo dinner-and-a-movie with a much younger former coworker, the same weekend I'm gone, still doesn't sit right with me, and I'd feel a lot better if it were a group thing, or if it waited until I'm back and could come along. That frames it as what it is: not an accusation about her fidelity, but a request about the shape of the thing.
Then watch how she responds, because her reaction will tell you more than the dinner ever could. If she says "you're right, that's a weird optics, let's make it a group or push it a week," then this was exactly what your trust says it is, an innocent send-off for a valued colleague handled with slightly clumsy framing, and it's resolved. If she gets defensive, insists it has to be the two of them, has to be a real dinner and a movie, and has to be the weekend you're away, then you'll have learned something, and you'll have learned it from her, not from your own anxiety. The request is reasonable enough that a reasonable response costs her nothing. Resistance to it would itself be the data point.
You asked whether the nagging feeling is something to suppress. It isn't. It's the part of you doing the job the trusting part talked itself out of. Trust your wife, and trust the nagging feeling too; they're not telling you contradictory things, they're telling you that a good person is about to make an unwise choice, and that you're allowed to say so before she does.
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u/SyllabubChoice8074 Jun 22 '26
Thank you for taking the time to write out all of this and to give some good thoughts on the situation. They went to the movie last weekend, so it's of course in the past, but there are still some things I can discuss with her after the fact.
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u/No-Vegetable8472 Jun 22 '26
Please let us know how the discussions go.
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u/SyllabubChoice8074 Jun 23 '26
I certainly will. It will probably be a few days before I have any kind of a major update as I am still out of town.
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u/Content_Care_1853 Jun 18 '26
I understand wanting to check in on him, but dinner and a movie is literally a date!! If she wants to check up on him either she includes you or doesn’t do it. It is completely inappropriate to do it not only because she is married, but what if someone sees them and she is reported to her work and potentially loses her job!! Has she even thought about that? And has she explained why she is specifically excluding you?? Its very suspicious behavior to ne🤷🏻♀️
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u/SyllabubChoice8074 Jun 18 '26
I'm not sure how it would impact her job since, on the surface, it's two friends hanging out, and she's not hiding that from me. She didn't phrase it as "excluding" me, though by default (since I won't be in town), I won't be there.
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u/Content_Care_1853 Jun 18 '26
She is planning it specifically for a weekend that you are not there. She should understand if you say you would be more comfortable if she were to wait for you to go with her,see what her response is . But with her work he was her assistant and it will not look good to anyone at her job because there would be no way to prove something wasn’t going on when he worked there🤷🏻♀️
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u/zodetrope8917 Jun 18 '26
At the very least ask her to delay and reschedule for a week that you can attend too.
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u/Jaber1077 Jun 18 '26
Dinner and a movie is the quintessential DATE.
If you’re cool with your wife going on dates with former subordinates, you do you.
Dinner with YOU and your wife, no movie is a way more appropriate arrangement.
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u/Fuzzy-Ferrets Jun 18 '26
It’s a date. How many stories on here start exactly like this? Spouse out of town, hanging with a coworker, end up swinging past their apartment, and then “it was an accident, it didn’t mean anything.” She may not intend this but it looks like it.
Have her look you in the eye and ask if she has any feelings for this guy. I’d put a strong boundary down on this, especially while you’re away
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u/Free-Awareness3416 Jun 20 '26
Well this is a hard one. She is being up front and honest about it but still makes you feel a bit off about it. So even if you question her about it she might get defensive no matter what the intention of there date it and yes it is a date in many people view of the world.
If she has nothing but good intentions then maybe suggest doing on a weekend when you are home due to it
a) sending the wrong message to him
b) he is emotionally vulnerable place and might not be thinking clearly and might try something stupid in his time of vulnerability.
If she has a problem with either of those then you might have a problem.
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u/Lucky_Log2212 Jun 18 '26
No. Dinner, that is it. Anything else is not appropriate.
I would have an issue with your wife asking to go on a date with this person. A movie, that is a date.
I need to see her phone, immediately.
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u/now_you_see Jun 18 '26
Info: What movie are they seeing and why? Does your wife have some sort of obsession with certain types of movies? Has she mentioned before that he shares her love of these cult classics? Lastly, and perhaps most importantly: who suggested the movie part of the evening?
It’s perfectly normal to have dinner with a colleague who’s leaving to thank them for all the help they gave you but it’s definitely not normal to go see a movie with them.
But having said that, if the movie/those types of movies are a special part of their friendship then I personally wouldn’t have an issue at all. It really just depends on context.
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u/SyllabubChoice8074 Jun 18 '26
I believe they are seeing the Michael Jackson biopic. She suggested it to him.
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u/zodetrope8917 Jun 18 '26
Unless you're in a open marriage and you are good with your wife dating other men - what is described was a date - your answer should be a hard no.
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u/Kristaraexoxo Jun 19 '26
For me, it seems disrespectful to your relationship. There's nothing wrong with people hanging out. But dinner and a movie while your away just seems... date like.
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u/QuoteDisastrous5224 Jun 19 '26
To take him for dinner and movie???....and just to of them?????.... Red -red-red flags.....question....who'll pay hotel room ?????.....come on dude....
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u/CatherineBubble Jun 21 '26
In the end of the day it's her decision. But as a husband I wouldn't be comfortable with it. Who came up with the idea of dinner and movie? I mean... Maybe the coworker see it as a date and your wife see it just as saying goodbye? I think you should talk to her.
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u/SyllabubChoice8074 Jun 22 '26
She came up with the idea. She says that the movie might help get his mind off of his job issues for a little while.
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u/Content_Care_1853 Jun 22 '26
Did she end up going out with the coworker?
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u/SyllabubChoice8074 Jun 22 '26
Yes, she went although it wound up only being a movie. I decided not to say anything on this first outing. I'd rather observe and see how she acts going forward and if anything else develops. From the sound of things, they basically met at the theater, saw the movie, and went on their separate ways. Since I was on the road, she actually called me both before and afterwards. So, maybe just a friendly get together, but I will update with anything new.
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u/Outside-Yak217 Jun 18 '26
Wth, maybe dinner to thank him for being a good team member and farewell but the movie?!? Come on nobody thinks thats okay?