Tonite she asked me if I could help her get a cd onto her MP3 player in her cell phone. I said 'sure' and took it to my office.
While I was ripping the CD around 9:40 tonite, a text message came in from a guy who was one of the parents who went on the trip to Rome with her. It was gibberish, like 'Uujk'. I thought that was weird. I looked at the 'sent messages' history and saw about 10 messages she had sent to him in reply to messages he had sent (but were deleted).
A couple were things like "Thinking of you" and "sending love". Most were benign. Nothing like "I love you" or "I miss you" or other things like that.
I knew this guy and I know he's married. He was one of the 3 chapperones in her group of 23 kids so they spent the whole time together.
Well, it pushed my "Do not mess with a married guy" button and I confronted her about it. I said "Isn't XXX married?" and she said "Yes" and I said well, he just sent you a text message and I noticed it, I also saw you sent him some also with things like (the ones I mentioned) and I don't care what else you do, but do not screw with another family's stability by carrying on with a married man. I've seen too many stories of a wife being hurt when she finds this on her husbands phone."
She paused for a moment and said "XXX loves his wife and they are very happy people. We got to be really good friends. I didn't do anything inappropriate". She said "He sends me these weird messages and a lot of times I have no idea what he's talking about".
The look on her face wasn't one of "I got caught" but more like "puzzled that I thought she did something wrong" although when I mentioned the 'sending love' and 'smoochy icon' in one message she had a look of 'maybe' that wasn't appropriate or could be misunderstood.
I said "well I just want to make sure someone isn't being set up to be hurt. Does his wife know he texts you?" and she said "Well, I guess he would have to tell her if he thought she'd be concerned.
She said "There's nothing going on, he loves his wife and talked about her all the time in Rome. They're very happy. We're getting together this week - with his wife - to put together a video of the photos everyone took on the trip."
It all seems weird to me, but I know that messages like 'sending love' are things she'd send to any of her massage friends - guys or women. Still, the 'thinking of you' message is questionable.
What else could I say? I see so many people getting their marriages messed with and the wife finds out the hard way. And like I said, most of the messages were benign.
I had to believe her, but I got the sense that she's reaching out to get attention. Other than a 30 minute call to him today which I can believe was to talk about the 'video' they are collaborating on, there aren't any other calls more than a couple minutes which would be consistent with her story of coordinating with him and his wife perhaps to set up the photo editing session.
She said she knows there's a little 'flirting' going on and it's childish. I compared it to some of what goes on on the DB board, harmless as long as nobody sees it out of context. She said she realized it's silly she shouldn't do it but it's all in fun.
She got a little angry when I asked her "Are you sure there's nothing going on?" and she said I am SURE there is nothing going on. She also said she'd be more careful what she says in messages, but it's really 'none of my business'.
Said they are really nice people and his wife is really lucky to have him because he is such a all around nice man.
Anyway, maybe I made a mistake, maybe not. But I wasn't going to let her get into an affair with a married man if that was the case.
