My wife recently expressed that she feels deeply insecure that I’ll cheat on her while I’m away for a work trip.
I often travel once a month but some months twice (2-3 days every time) to various cities. She said she’d been feeling this for months and later found some statistics about a non-insignificant amount of partners who cheat during work travels, which reinforced her fears.
She says she feels the urge to check on me to make sure I’m alone in my hotel room but doesn’t do it because she doesn’t want to be the crazy jealous wife. On the times we have videocalled, I often go to the balcony or the hallway if I’m sharing a double with a co-worker because I don’t want them to listen in on an intimate conversation, and this has made her feel like I’m hiding something from her even though she trusts I’d never cheat on her.
I don’t know what we should do start untangling this. What should we do?
**tl;dr** Wife irrationally fears I’m cheating on her during work trips. Don’t know what to do to make this go away. What should we do?
27 comments
SHE needs to be in therapy so she can figure out exactly where this is coming from.
As /u/Dfahnz said, your wife needs therapy to work on her insecurities. There is nothing that you can do to convince her that you aren’t cheating, short of taking her with you on every single business trip where she never lets you out of her sight. But that would be crazy and untenable.
Your wife needs to be able to trust you. Trust is the basic foundation of a relationship and if she doesn’t trust you then this isn’t going to work.
My wife said I was cheating on her. Than I found nudes she sent to me and her boyfriend at the same time. Boy that was fun
There’s nothing you can do besides (obviously) don’t actually cheat on her – and encourage her to talk to a professional to find the source of this fear and tools to address her fears.
Do you go away with female co workers? If she’s a regular reader of Reddit then this has maybe put doubt in her mind 🤦♀️
I think you just need to sit down and have a conversation with your wife. Talk about why she’s feeling this way and what you can do to make her feel more secure. You can reassure her that you’re not hiding anything and that you have no intention of cheating. If she’s still feeling anxious, maybe try to limit the amount of time you’re away or find ways to stay in touch more frequently while you’re away. It’s important to be understanding and supportive of her feelings, even if they seem irrational to you. Ultimately, trust and communication are key in any relationship, so work on building and maintaining those things with your wife.
Well, it sounds like she recognizes this is an irrational fear of hers and she likely knows your not. Sometimes you can’t help your thoughts. Recognizing this is an issue is important.
If she ever spent any amount of time on Reddit I can see why she’d be nervous. Swear there’s a cheating story every other post on here. Lots that come from traveling partners. There’s just so many stories and stats out there for people to see that faithful partners//spouses are feeling the consequences of all the shitty ones out there.
I’m not saying you’re a terrible husband or anything, but maybe it’s worth spending more time when you’re home connecting with her and just reinforcing your relationship. The more solid she feels with you, the less it should come up in her mind.
That being said too, if nothing is helping, I hate to be the “therapy!!!” person, but maybe your wife is dealing with some undiagnosed anxiety issues and could benefit from talking with a professional.
It’s definitely true that the bulk of the work to assuage this is on your wife. Business trips are hard because of course she’s missing her husband, but there’s not a ton of time for communication when you’re working. It’s also entirely reasonable for you to have conversations with her on the balcony instead of in the hotel room. In sum I don’t think you’re doing anything wrong, she’s exacerbating her own anxiety. You’re away from home to work. You shouldn’t have the added stress of an anxious partner seeking reassurance and worrying that you’re cheating on them.
Irrational trust issues in a relationship can stem from needs not getting met. How is the quality of your relationship when you’re home? Are you both affectionate, intimate, supportive? Irrational trust issues can also be a consequence of previous trauma or infidelity in a relationship. Does your wife have experience with toxic relationships, infidelity, or abuse? It would make sense that past experiences could provoke an anxious trauma response in her when you’re away from home, but that’s a larger issue she needs to work out in therapy. I feel like “go to therapy” is a pretty blanket statement nowadays, but it does seem helpful for your wife to have an open, non-judgmental forum for her to explore her feelings, and a therapist to help her start connecting patterns in her thinking and point out certain events that trigger her emotionally.
That aside, I think the best reddit advice for untangling would be what I call the “therapy pregame” — questions to get percolating so she feels open and ready to explore issues with a therapist. Has she always considered herself a jealous person or struggled with trusting others? If so, can she pinpoint foundational memories where she felt betrayed, abandoned, or unsafe? If not, does she think her anxiety is related to you traveling? What does she feel like she has lost emotionally or physically when you leave? Does her anxiety vanish into relief when you come home (like a fear of abandonment) or does it linger? When you’re home, does she feel that you are present?
Again, these are on her to explore, you can be as involved as you want to be but it sounds like you’re already being a supportive husband and dropping everything to reassure her insecurities is just going to breed eventual resentment in you. I’ve found that jealousy problems are best solved when the jealous partner realizes their anxiety triggers and then can come to their partner and have a healthy discussion about what makes them feel insecure and how they can tackle it together. “Prove you’re not cheating and be available to reassure me throughout the day” is a tall order — something like “Send me a goodnight text when you’re away and tell me you missed me when you get home” is much more manageable.
I’ll be honest I can understand where your wife is coming from. My husband also travels for work more than me (similar frequency, once or sometimes twice a month). Most of the time I don’t even think twice about it and I completely trust him but it’s hard not to have those moments sometimes where I’m like “but what if…?” Usually it happens if I’ve been on reddit for too long or just having a downer of a day, but you hear these stories all the time of partners who cheat while traveling so it’s hard sometimes to not think, am I just being naive? Did other women completely trust their husbands too before finding out they were cheating?
But at the end of the day this is a risk we take when getting married. We can never know for sure what our partner is doing when we’re not around so we choose to trust them completely until given a reason not to. It sounds like your wife realizes this is irrational and that’s good. What does she do when you’re on a work trip? Do you have kids? Could she try to keep herself occupied while you’re gone, like having friends over or going out for dinner? I get the sense that part of her insecurity is because she’s at home a lot (not idea if this is true) so maybe part of the solution is to encourage her to find some activities or hobbies to occupy herself? Beyond that, I think all you can really do it allow her to be open with you when she’s feeling this way, continue to reassure her, and maybe explore therapy if it doesn’t get better in 6 months.
I just want to say that your wife is doing this right – she’s sharing this concern with you and wants help to work through it.
I would suggest counseling for her and maybe couples counseling – if for no other reason than to help you both strengthen your bond and continue to communicate clearly.
After the thousands of posts with horrible people cheating it’s just really nice to see a couple wanting to work through an issue rather than start accusations and fights.
I’ve traveled for work on and off for years and only once had to share a room. That alone seems odd to me.
You can talk more with you wife. Ask her what set this off. If there was something specific. If it’s about your female coworkers. Has she been cheated on in the past? Does she have other anxiety issues or is it just this?
The fact that she KNOWS she’s being irrational and is holding herself back from her urges is good!
Just to validate your wife though…. I just recently went on my first big girl job business trip and I was disgusted with how much infidelity was going on. Literally so gross, like can’t even take them seriously/professionally anymore bc WOW if you don’t respect your partner can’t imagine what you’re like to work with!
But my bf and I talked about it and its mostly fun to watch all of this happen then turn in to my hotel room early for a fun gossip chat on facetime to catch up! I’m thankful for our trust for sure, and it can take a lot of trust and I recognize that now; esp because of everything I had to witness
Is it irrational if you are sharing a double room with a Co-worker? That sounds incredibly inappropriate and your work shouldn’t be expecting it. It would be massively frowned upon where I work and I travel a fair bit for that too.
That aside, I still don’t think she is being irrational. Nobody believes they’ll be cheated on until they are, and we all loved and trusted that partner with our lives, till we find out they betrayed us.
Business trips are well known for infidelity, they are an environment that breeds it, putting colleagues together and often with fairly obligatory social events, people are thrown together more than usual and you end up spending a lot of time with these people. If you travel frequently with the same women, I can see why she is scared.
Trust isn’t some kind of shield, it’s fragile and can be broken even when you haven’t done anything wrong. It also doesn’t mean that because you are trustworthy that her fears are irrational, given the environment, they are entirely rational and you must recognise this, it’s not enough to say “I don’t cheat on you” when you work in an environment which can be rife with it”.
So I am normally Team “Your Partner is Projecting!” but given how she approached you calmly, owns her feelings, and acknowledges that this is in her head and not about something you did…I think she’s let her imagination run wild. Or was cheated on previously? Or her friends got in her head that with you gone all the time it’s a foregone conclusion you’ll cheat?
Keep the lines of communication open and work on reinforcing your communication and intimacy (not just physical but date nights, little acts of kindness, etc) when you are home.
My fiance cheated on me during a work trip. I 100% trusted him before that. Never in a million years did I think he’d cheat on me.
Now, I’m much more concerned about it with partners. That trust is really hard to get back, even with other people.
My brother has spent the last 30 years traveling for work. Everyone thought he was a good guy. Then he hit on a woman in a hotel bar who knew his family – he didn’t remember her. He had the smoothest traveling salesman line she’d ever heard. When you’re away from home for long periods regularly, it’s a lifestyle.
This isn’t necessarily irrational. She’s not wrong, it happens a lot, but she’s dealing with her fears in a mature and open manner, which is great. Hopefully you two can keep doing what you’re doing and keep reassuring her that it’s not happening and hopefully she’ll calm down.
I feel like all you can do really is provide reassurance for your partner. It’s good she cares and better than the alternative of her never checking on you. It’s good that she can communicate this to you rather than accuse.
Has your wife met your co-workers? My wife and I have shared hotel rooms with co-workers on work trips, including occasionally cross-gender roommates, and one thing that helps a ton with trust is that we know each others’ co-workers socially. I do much more of the travel, and she knows that if I were unfaithful, *she’d* hear about it from my co-workers.
Unless you work with a chronically flirty younger attractive woman who’s going to enflame her worries, I’d suggest finding a way to occasionally bring her along to after-work beers or something like that. May not solve the issue, but I think it would help.
Personally, I’ve never once shared a room with a co-worker (or anyone) on a business trip. But, if that were the situation, then when it came time for a phone call I’d be sure to show her who it is, first: “Hey, I’m here at the hotel with co-worker Joe…say hey Joe….OK I’ll step out on the balcony”. She needs to see/hear Joe say “Hey”. Without that, you’re just feeding the fear.
You share rooms with co-workers on business trips? Is this a thing?
Your wife went about this the right way. She brought it to you when she was calm, laid out that she knows it’s not accurate, and is wanting your help. Please, don’t call her fear irrational though. Maybe it is when applied to you but then every husband and wife thinks that until their SO cheats. Time to see a counselor
Wait, your work makes you double up? Fuck that.
Maybe I’m a slacker, but when I travel for work I work. A lot. No time to fuck strangers.
Why not offer to have her come along to quell her worries? Or just get a room by yourself with no coworker? One or both of those might help.
Be as transparent to her as much as possible. If you show to her that you are willing to share literally everything to her that would be something that will reassure her that you got nothing to hide. If you try to hide something or refuse to share something, her irrational fear will only get worse. That is when the relationship starts to go downhill. The best way is prevention as always.
Basically, don’t give her a reason to be irrationally fearful.
Has your wife met some of your colleagues? Might be comforting to her that she knows them and they know who she is.
Have you ever taken your wife on a work trip? Might be that she doesn’t feel like she knows what goes on during those styles of trips. Maybe she imagines it as all dinner and drinks fun. Not drudge work stuff.
If you go to a nice area you could include her once and then take an extra weekend or something. Just to give her a taste of what usually goes on.
and then maybe extended it to a little weekend extra?