He's Calling Another Woman on the Sly

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Visitor's Question:
I have been married for 15 years and my husband is calling a former women he worked with. He calls her on the sly with his cell phone so I will not find out. He seems to think this women can give him better advice than me. This has been an ongoing relationship.

Do I approach him and tell him that I know about this calling or do I forget about it and become more angry each day?

Our Suggestion:
Well, definitely ignoring the problem isn't the answer. A relationship is all about honesty and trust, and he's breaching that right now just with these sly phone calls, never mind anything else.

On the other hand, it's very healthy for men to have women friends and visa versa. And having lots of points of view for advice is also a good thing. So the issue isn't really with him talking to another woman in general. If say they worked together and he chatted with her during smoking breaks, that'd be normal and fine. The issue is that he's sneaking off to do it and not telling you about it, and making it a secret from you. Because that sort of also implies that he sees her as more than an innocent female friend, because if she was he wouldn't be hiding her.

So anyway, what to do. I have a page on how to have a difficult talk -

http://www.romanceclass.com/miscr/howto/hardtalk.asp

so set the scene as well as you can. And then say to him that you know it's important to have opposite-sex friends to chat with. Mention a guy that you talk with sometimes that you find helpful. And then say that you know he talks with ZZZZZ for advice, and that's fine. If you phrase it like that, hopefully he won't deny it and make it difficult, because of course you can always prove it if he does.

But either way, now it's in the open. Tell him that it doesn't bother you that he *talks* to her, because we all need friends. But that it does bother you that he *hides* this from you, when you two should be gladly sharing your lives with each other. Why did he feel he had to hide it? Was it something about the relationship that bothered him? While friends are always important, your main relationship should always come first, and in a way he put his friendship with this woman over his relationship with you, since the friend knew about you but you were not being kept up to date about this other friend.

Try not to get angry and into a "You can't talk to her!!" rage. You don't want to make anything worse. Show him that having a friend is OK, but having secrets is NOT ok. And that each other should always be your main focus. By bringing the issue into the light and then talking about it in a friendly way, you defuse it. You can then ask about her once a week or so, how is she doing, what is she up to. Now she's not "his little secret", she's "a friend of the family" that you both know about.

--Your Friendly Advisors at RomanceClass.com

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