Any normal, functional relationship relies on trust. Even white lies or lies of omission are still the sorts of cracks that erode the foundation of, for example, a marriage. How a couple handles these sorts of conflicts tends to be what determines if anything lasts or not.
A woman asked the internet for advice after getting into an argument with her husband after she liked some of his receptionist’s selfies. As it turns out, he’d done the same thing and had been having secret picnics with her for weeks. We reached out to the woman who shared the post and will update the article when she gets back to us.
Discovering that your husband has been secretly having lunch with someone else for awhile can be a shock
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So one woman tracked down her husband’s receptionists Instagram
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Image credits: serefina_slay
A partner keeping secrets about hanging out with coworkers can be cause for alarm
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There are few things that can shake the roots of a relationship like having that nagging feeling that your partner is not being completely honest with you about something. For mixed-gender “friendships,” especially with colleagues they spend all day with, it can feel oddly slippery to draw a line between professional intimacy and emotional closeness. If your partner appears to be lying by omission, not sharing details, or making light of the intensity of that relationship, it can make you feel suspicious, unappreciated, or even betrayed.
Omission is a sly beast. It’s not necessarily so cut-and-dried as a lie, but the withholding of information still hurts. When someone intentionally omits facts, such as how often they have lunch with a coworker, or how personal the conversation gets, it creates a hole. That hole is soon filled with suspicion. Humans are excellent at reading patterns and sensing when things just don’t add up, so even if nothing is said overtly incriminatory, you can tell when the pieces are missing.
The difficulty in such a situation is distinguishing between insecurity and intuition. On one hand, it is too easy to over-intellectualize normal workplace friendships. On the other hand, if your partner is consistently evasive, brush-off-oriented, or defensive whenever you bring it up, that kind of behavior is an even bigger red flag than the friendship in itself. Emotional openness is a foundation of trust, and if a person guards information like they are hiding illegal substances, you have to wonder why they would need to keep it under wraps.
It should be obvious, but honesty is the best policy
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The healthiest approach to this is honesty, but also clarity. Accusations tend to bring on defensiveness or denial, but describing the effect of their behavior keeps the matter on the problem rather than on whether or not it’s a battle. Clear communication allows both parties to be able to assert boundaries and expectations so that the matters underneath are surface issues rather than beneath the surface.
Meanwhile, drawing the line is fine. Every relationship has its own definition of what is and isn’t acceptable. For some couples, daily one-on-one with a co-worker is no issue. For others, it’s not comfortable territory. The issue is defining what feels respectful and fair to the relationship, not believing in one’s own definitions of what is and isn’t a big issue.
Ultimately, it’s not so much the coworker relationship, it’s whether your partner is going to be honest with you. A good relationship doesn’t require you to know the mundane day-to-day details about each other’s workday, but it does require an open-ness, reassurance, and an amount of trust. If you find yourself having to pull teeth just to get a straight answer all the time, the problem is no longer a coworker, it’s whether your partner cares about your need for honesty.
White lies of omission may not seem like much at the moment, but they drain trust over time and create space where intimacy should be. It is only courageous to tackle it: courage to speak up without ferocity, and courage to live with the reaction you get, whether or not it reveals something distasteful about the relationship. Ultimately, the real issue isn’t how intimate your partner is with a co-worker, but how intimate they will allow you to be with them in actuality.
She gave a bit more info later
Many readers didn’t think she was overreacting
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She later had an update
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Image credits: The Yuri Arcurs Collection / freepik (not the actual photo)
Image credits: serefina_slay
