I’ve always considered myself to be a pretty peaceful person. I don’t particularly like drama or arguments of any kind. I try to keep myself out of any issues within my family or group of friends unless I absolutely have to get involved.
I’m like a hibernating bear, just minding my own business and trying to live my life happily in my quiet cave, with a full belly and sleeping peacefully until spring.
I’m like this until I am poked. When I get poked and poked, repeatedly for almost three years, then my eyes will open and you are going to see my long, sharp teeth.
This analogy is somewhat silly, but it is very relevant for the story I’m about to tell you.
I am the bear in this story and the person poking me is my husband’s female co-worker.
My husband works in a small office, with six other people. The job itself is demanding and the clients they cater to are not always the most wonderful of people to deal with day in and day out.
As a result, the six people that work there have become friends and have bonded over the stresses of the job and some are friends outside of work.
When clients aren’t around, they all sit in the common area and talk about their families, kids, or trips they plan to go on during their next vacation time.
They are work friends.
One of the women he works with is somewhat addicted to social media.
She and I were actually friends in high school and college. Not close friends, but we had several friends in common and got close again once she started working in the same office as my husband.
We started going out to dinner with her and her boyfriend, they came to our house for a holiday party, and we had a couple of wine nights at their house when we all had a rare child-free night. It was nice, friendly.
Then I started noticing it.
About six months after she started working there, she began tagging my husband on her private Facebook page. His name was tagged on silly memes and then she began quoting funny things he had said at work on almost a weekly basis.
Then the selfies started.
She posted pictures of herself at the forefront and my husband in the background sitting in a chair 7 feet away from her simply talking. He wasn’t even aware she was taking the photo half of the time.
When she’d post it she would make some kind of snarky comment about him and/or their working relationship.
That’s when the messages started.
Friends of mine from high school starting sending me messages and asking if everything was alright between my husband and I.
I was very confused since everything was fine. We fought like every other couple here and there but we were doing great.
In our 16 years together, we have only been close to throwing in the towel once or twice and both of those were in times of great stress.
The messages took me by surprise but I reassured my friends that everything was fine and just brushed their concern off as the female co-worker being a little addicted to social media and bored at work.
Then the texting started.
She started texting him in the evenings after work, on the weekends, during the week he took off from work after our daughter was born.
Some were work-related but most were not. Some of them were her making fun of her boyfriend or the father of her children – borderline inappropriate.
That’s when my flags started to raise.
I asked my husband about it and he told me that he rarely responded but he wasn’t sure what to do about it because he had to work with her.
He gave me full access to his phone and Facebook to prove he had nothing to hide. I started to check his accounts and texts.
I was becoming paranoid over my husband of ten years and the man I had been with since I was 18 years old.
I had never had this issue in all of our years together with another woman! Never. Not even once!
That is when the fighting started.
Almost daily we’d get into some kind of disagreement about this woman. I had received more messages from concerned friends. My worries came out as jealousy and accusations were thrown at my husband.
I racked my mind thinking about if he could actually be having an affair. Logistically I could not figure out when he’d have the time. But, that’s what it had come to.
The final straw was when he went away for a work trip.
When he called me at home that night he told me that she had texted him knowing he was out of town for work.
He showed me the texts. I had enough! It was three years of this!
So, I sent her a text and told her to please stop contacting my husband in off work hours and to please stop tagging him in stuff on Facebook because our mutual friends found it weird that she tagged my husband more than her own boyfriend.
I thought she got my point. But then she unfriended me and resent my husband a friends request.
I put her on blast on social media. I almost called her out by name, but I did not. I put enough information on the status for our mutual friends to know who I was talking to.
Do you want to know what she did? She threatened my husband to go to their boss about it and put his job at risk!
I’m a stay-at-home mom. Our family relies on his income to live. We have two children and a mortgage like everyone else. We need him to keep his job.
This woman who had started all of the drama in the first place, was deciding to play the victim card in the situation she created!
Little did she know that I had saved every one of her texts, pictures, and tags she sent to or included my husband in. I had the proof to prove that she was not the victim here.
She is the kind of woman that gives women a bad name.
The kind that uses her gender to her advantage in a bad way. The kind that makes it hard for women who are genuinely being sexually harassed in the workplace to report it. The kind that likes to push boundaries and cause drama in an otherwise peaceful marriage.
Little does she know that my husband told their boss everything that had happened. He is completely innocent in everything and was just trying to keep the peace for the sake of his job.
He told his boss his side of the story. It made her look like the fool she is.
Also little does she know that our marriage is fine. We are okay, perhaps even stronger because of this. I honestly don’t know if she was just naïve, stupid, or really trying to be a homewrecker but she really should focus on her own relationship and leave mine alone!
I hope that other women reading this will take away this: Trust your husbands and don’t be afraid to stand up for yourself and your marriage.
Don’t be afraid to stand up to others that try to cause harm to your love or to show them that you mean business!
Because let’s not forget, there is nothing scarier than a mama bear when someone is trying to come after something she holds precious.
Shelia
Monday 28th of October 2019
I have a similar problem here. My husband is 40 and his 20 year old female coworker claims him to be her rock and emotional support. I have became friends with her also. He always says she has anciety and she dont know any better cause she is only 20. Ok so a 20 year old dont have enough sense to not rub his back in front of his wife, also she tells.him her sex stories, but not me. She wont text me for 2 weeks but I ask him have you heard from her and he says yea she hits me up every now and the. Im done with her bull now. I am actually waiting for her to text me so I can ignore her. She acts like my friend so she can stay cool with him, I guess. Im done with this crap completely. It will either make us or break us. I feel used and stupid.
Jacqueline Gold
Tuesday 15th of October 2019
Any woman who flirts with a man, knowing he's married, is trash. She is low-grade scum. She is a loser, filth of the lowest order and a pig. That is merely the way it is.
Jennifer
Monday 30th of September 2019
There's a girl that works with my husband and I found notes written to him by her with her name on it. I had also found out she has bought him a couple of stuff such as sunscreen....my husband said she has a crush on him but he doesn't like her so I told him he should set boundaries out of respect for me and tell her to stop. He said he's not going to make a scene and he rather not do anything about it, but just brush it out...and all I got to do is trust him? What should I do? Go and confront her? Or just trust him??
Nancy
Saturday 29th of June 2019
When this happened to me the female coworker started the “friendship” by talking about scripture (OF COURSE) and constantly asking if I had gotten pregnant yet. Weird right??? I told my then husband to tell her to stay out of my ovaries, and thought he would be smart enough to realize that she was up to no good. Sadly, I trusted him and didn’t watch the situation. He ended up “gifting” her some of my stuff, taking her out on my boat on more than one occasion and bringing her into my home when I was on a work trip. We are divorced now, I mean, of course - I was married to a selfish fool and that had to end. I have no idea what in the hell she thought she was doing in MY house. Gross. I can only imagine she was impressed with my success and wanted a piece (guess what honey - this one comes with a packed suitcase and a ton of debt!). They didn’t get together, by the way. Her husband moved her to a different state to live with his mother when they were discovered and she refused to stop contacting my husband. I hope that was fun for her. LOL.
Tatjana
Friday 31st of May 2019
I have similar story with lesser degree of harassment, but only because I acted out very quickly. My husband and I are very quiet people, we have both been faithful for 20 years now, raising 2 teenagers. Flirting is something I despise when interacting with married people. We both know how to communicate with married individuals, giving same amount of attention to both. There was a single woman (pretending to be healer due to my spouse having health issues) and too friendly with my husband. She met him on some seminar and initiated idea for doing business together. I was letting her visit us on two Sundays, evening hours, and spend hours with my spouse talking about equipment, website, marketing etc. I left them alone to talk, as I was busy with other things in my office or running errands. Also, I did not feel any jealousy as I also have guy friend since early age and now, we are still friends, including our spouses and kids. But I felt a red flag when this woman started to text him late at night, when she was obviously in bed, as she would mention that in her messages “Just before bedtime, my intuition told me to ask you and meet you tomorrow at this place for talk, business talk”…. My spouse has Aspergers syndrome and usually sees things black and white, also very naïve and honest. I let it go, but later noticed that her texting continued next day into harassing to meet him and he followed to meet her, around noon at some store. Next Sunday night she texted she is coming with 22-y old son, who she said was drug addict (she disclosed that to us), to try our health equipment. She was already coming, did not ask for permission. My spouse was in restaurant with our kids, so she found out from him and followed him there. I called him shortly to come home soon, and 2 hours later he came back, seeing that I am not in good mood. My husband goes to bed very early and I noticed another late text message from her on his phone past 10PM, where she was in bed again…trying to get his attention that she had amazing time walking (near the restaurant downtown) and talking to him that evening, and wishing him great night…That really hit me! I forwarded her messages to my best friends and relative for their opinion and I expected them to tell me not to worry about it. But, all my friends told me that this is a BIG red flag and this woman has to be eliminated from any gatherings or near my husband. They doubled my worry, proving that this woman obviously has alternate motives. I wrote her a text message about how inappropriate all this night texting is and it all has to stop, and there is no business or any other meetings in future. I am ending it all now!!! Her response came next day, she did not even apologize but asked me why I am so insecure. Her senseless reply speaks volume that she is actually little (or more) crazy and I told my husband to stay away from her. Period! He thought I am exaggerating but considering he does not have common sense in social interactions, I stayed firm. Few month later, she shows up at the doctor’s office of my close relative (who is young doctor). She introduced herself to the doctor that she got recommended (a while back) from my spouse and immediately she spilled the story to our doctor, that she could not have business with my spouse (doctor’s uncle),because of my jealousy and that happens to her a lot of women get jealous to her… Now, this is actually disturbing, because from all doctors in our 8 million city area, she had to pick the doctor who is our closest relative. My relative cannot refuse service to her. But if I see her nearby I will initiate a restraining order immediately. Since then, this has been eye opening to us and it had strengthened our relationship. I give him more attention and we are closer than ever before. At the end, it turned out that this senseless harassing person brought us closer together. My point is, do not wait if your intuition tells you that something is wrong. Act on it! Immediately! Us, women, we have great intuition and if on top of it your friends agree with you, immediately cut the cord and remove any future involvement or use any resources to prevent the harassment to continue.
Keep and eye on what is yours :)
Krystal Kleidon
Saturday 1st of June 2019
Wow, it sounds like you have been through so much! I'm so glad your experience has brought you and your husband closer together.