DH Got emotionally connected with a Female co-worker in Official trip

I know one lady who's H actually had affair (but I'm not sure whether H knows that W knows of affair).

Now, the lady accompanies H whenever possible to these trips.

Married 40+ yrs with grandkids

 

I am actually confused..

+1 to Sokana's post

What exactly is this emotional bonding ? what are its symptoms ?

Is it wrong to connect emotionally with another human being who is not your spouse?

Let me give an example ..

I have a male collegue and we both are book lovers.... we keep telling each other what we are reading, favourite author etc.

recently we were on a business trip together for two days...the business obejective was common.... so we were practically together through out the trip except from the time when we went back to our own rooms after dinner / coffee till we meet next day at the breakfast table.

After we returned to the hotel from work, we did spend some time talking about the books that we both recently read and shared a lot of views, emotions that the book touched upon etc... later went on to have dinner together and ended the day with an ice cream together...

Is this emotional bonding ? is this wrong ??

Let me add few more points here

1) My husband is very much aware of my upcoming travel and its purpose and the fellow traveller/s.

2) I keep pinging him where I am and what I am doing when I travel.. not that he insists on knowing but I do it relegiously so that I can feel his presence. I never do it when I am in town.

3) Even though I tell him my where abouts I did not particularly tell him that I was discussing so and so book with this collegue.. my husband does not read and can't care less what I am reading now or ever... let alone a passionate discussion.

4) My collegue and I do reach out to each other on whatsapp.. things like "heading to so and so restaurant for dinner .. pls join.." or "how about a dinner on terrace.. weather is great .." with a smiley ...
let's say we were in the midst of a particularly boring meeting with a bunch of people on whom we had opinion, we would just send a smiley on whatsapp to let the other person know what we are thinking at the moment..

 

swt.charu,
I dont think there is any wrong intention in your case. Problem happens when some folks miss the "other person" more than they even notice the absence of their spouse, then things may have gone too far.

 

@cutesmile09,

I really don't understand what emotional bonding you are describing in your initial post and your subsequent responses. If they are spending time together because of their professional official work or because of their need to spend time together getting to know each others interest, I don't see any problem. But here things seems to be much more than that for you to worry about it. Your husband is clearly removing the messages from his colleague because he is not comfortable you reading it.

In general, if one of the spouses raised an objection questioning the behavior of another spouse, in a right healthy relationship, the spouse who is questioned would go out of the way to set things right and fall in line with the requirements of the other spouse. Your mind is telling you to probe more but your heart is telling you to forgive your husband because of your long association with him. In situations like that trust and transparency play a prominent role. If you have implicit faith in your husband, your husband should demonstrate by being so transparent in all his communications with his lady colleague.

I know you like to lead a happy and healthy married life with your husband. In my view, part of this happy and health married life is the mutual trust with each other which in general is established through transparency. When one lacks transparency, the trust is violated. By you expecting your husband to be much more transparent and he having regretted the situation, I don't understand his logic of creating suspicion in your mind by deleting his female colleagues messages.

In my view, you have every reason to be concerned about and you have to get to the bottom of it as quickly as possible. But once you firmly establish your faith, you have to forget it and move on. But until you establish that faith, you need to get into a lot more details and right now, I don't think you have enough information to establish faith in him.

I am sorry to give you this opinion but sometimes, we need to go through a bad patch in order to get into a healthy relationship. Unfortunately, I agree with many ILites here. I wish you very best.

Viswa