I work for a company which has offices in a few different countries – USA, UK and Malaysia. At the very beginning of April, 2022 I (UK) began talking to a girl in the US. We work with the guy from Malaysia. Me and her are 32, and that guy is around 40-45 I would guess.
Me and the girl, let’s call her Jane, hit it off. We talked so much on the first few days of April, that within 10 days, she was booking a flight to come and see me. (We were supposed to meet halfway but she wanted to see London, so decided going to UK would be best).
We met up and everything we’d experienced “online” via work/video calls – it was all real. We decided very soon to get into a relationship and then discussed the idea of one of us moving. I tried to get to the US, but found it would be 10x easier for her to re-locate. She has no family (parents died etc). We’ve spent a small fortune buying each other gifts – she has bought me t-shirts, a watch, apple watch chargers etc she’s even ordered breakfast to my house on a weekend so I when I wake up, I’ve got a delivery driver bringing me over breakfast. She’s making a huuuuge effort – and so am I. She has told our boss about her plan to move her, plus she has told her sister about me, plus she has posted me on her instagram page when we met up back in April.
She rents in the US and I have my own place here in the UK, so I have said i’m happy for her to move in with me and see if she can transfer departments at our workplace. It’s my birthday soon and she has booked a $1,000 (each) cruise – she’s even paid it all. It seems like she’s pulling out all the stops – she said she loves me more than any of her ex boyfriends and that she sees her future with me – we’ve even talked about marriage and kids in future – as we’re 32 and have both never been married or had kids.
So… that being said. Malaysia guy. It just so happens that my girlfriend is Asian and so is he. They’re both the same nationality (not Malay, but i’d rather not say on a public forum). Work assigned him to be her “mentor” a while ago – so he has got her phone number. She told me that he has taught her everything she knows about the job etc. She said they’ve never flirted, never been on a video call, but have talked and it has pretty much always been about work etc. But I quizzed her a bit more about the nature of their conversations – he seems to message at least once every 3 days. Some of his messages have said things like: “I can’t sleep”, and there was one where he had to put together a word document in work and he messaged her saying “I have a long document”. She told me she thought it was innocent and that he has nobody to talk to over there. Still, I told her to put a stop to it immediately.
I’m completely weirded out by the fact a man in a different country (albeit same workplace) is messaging my girlfriend these things. She told me she didn’t see any harm in it but she’ll reply less. And, she has replied less. I know the guy so I let him know (in a nice way) that me and her met up and we’ve started dating. He laughed and didn’t say too much, just asked about why we can’t be on the same team anymore (I explained: company policy, two people on the same team cannot be in a relationship).
TL;DR!
3 people work at an international company. My girlfriend lives in US. I live in UK. She’s moving to be with me, but a work colleague of ours in Asia messages her somewhat strange messages and fairly often (every few days). I’m totally weirded out by the fact this guy knows she has a boyfriend and is still messaging despite being in a different country. Even if he’s not sending dirty pics or videos, my gut feeling says he’s got an ulterior motive. Why else would a 40+ year old guy be messaging a 32 year old girl in another country?
4 comments
What advice are you actually looking for here?
You provided two examples of messages that aren’t strange or inappropriate at all, and specifically say he’s not sending her anything dirty.
Got anything else?
Cause right now it looks like this is a You Problem.
You are rushing things way too fast here. You just started seeing this girl long distance in April. There are obvious signs you are both still in the honeymoon phase like lots of expensive gifts. Yet you are already having serious discussions and making actual plans to have her move countries to be with you. This relationship seems to be moving massively fast with a lot of love bombing on both sides but not a lot of investment into building a strong, trusting bond.
As for the other guy, nothing you mention really sounds that suspicious. If you don’t trust her having opposite gender work friends, why are you dating her?
The man is her mentor and potentially has power over her career. Especially in a situation where she is looking to move it makes perfect sense for her to not rock the boat. Also he has not really been inappropriate.
I Get that you dont like it, but if she is looking to move for you this is really nothing.
4 months in and you already want to be controlling. This doesn’t bode well for her. Her mentor, who talks to her only every few days, and seems to consider her a work friend, and who is on the opposite side of the earth, is making you feel threatened? You might want to work through this yourself before she upends her life to come be with you.