Lines a Married Man Should Never Cross with Another Woman

Last summer my friend Marlene sat at my kitchen table and cried into a paper napkin. Her husband Pete had not slept with anyone. He said that about a dozen times. He said it like it should end the conversation. But by then he had crossed so many smaller lines that the big one hardly mattered. Marlene felt like a stranger in her own marriage.

Marlene and Pete live three doors down from us. Tom and I have known them for almost twenty years. We watched the whole thing unfold between Memorial Day and the first cold week of September. Tom and I talked it over on the back porch most nights, and I started writing down the lines Pete had crossed, one by one. I also asked readers of this blog to tell me where the line was in their own marriages. A few of their answers are in here.

I am not a counselor. I am a woman who has been married to the same man for more than thirty years. These are the lines I watched Pete step over, and the ones Tom and I agreed we would never step over ourselves.

Keeping a friendship hidden

It started at the Memorial Day cookout in Pete and Marlene’s backyard. Pete’s phone buzzed on the picnic table. He grabbed it fast and turned it face down. Marlene asked who it was. He said nobody. A woman from work. Marlene said she had never heard him mention a woman from work. Pete shrugged and went to flip burgers.

Tom noticed it too. On the walk home he said, “A man does not hide a nobody.” I thought about all the women Tom has known over the years. Coworkers, neighbors, the wives of his friends. I have known about every one of them. Not because he reports to me. Because there was nothing to hide.

The line is this. If your wife has never heard her name, that is a problem on its own.

Deleting messages

Two weeks later Marlene told me she had picked up Pete’s phone to look up a phone number. The text thread with the woman from work was there. It was empty. Not short. Empty. Every message gone, but the thread still at the top of the list, which meant it had been used that day.

Marlene said she felt sick. Not because of what she read. Because of what she could not read. I told her I understood. Tom’s phone sits on the kitchen counter every night. I have never gone through it. I have also never needed to.

The line is this. The moment a man deletes a message so his wife will not see it, he already knows it was wrong.

Texting after the house goes quiet

Marlene started waking up at midnight and finding Pete’s side of the bed empty. He would be in the den with his phone lit up. He said he could not sleep. He said he was checking the weather. Nobody checks the weather for forty minutes.

I asked readers about this one. Gary M., 66, from Billings, Montana, wrote me a long note. He said, “I used to tell myself the late texts were harmless because they were about work. Then I noticed I never texted my wife at midnight about anything. If I had something to say to her, it could wait until morning. That should have told me something.”

The line is this. Late at night, the only woman a married man should be messaging is his wife.

Complaining about his wife to her

By late June Pete had stopped bringing up the woman from work at all. But Marlene found out something worse, and she found it out from a neighbor who had been to lunch with a few people from Pete’s office. Pete had been telling this woman that Marlene nagged him. That she did not understand him. That she had changed since the kids left.

I will tell you plainly that I have complained about Tom. Plenty. I have complained to my sister. I have complained to Marlene, for that matter. But I have never once complained about him to a man who might be glad to hear it. That is a different thing entirely.

The line is this. A husband can gripe about his wife to a lot of people, but never to a woman who might like him better for it.

Telling her things he has not told his wife

Marlene found out from the same neighbor that Pete had told the woman about a health scare he had in the spring. He had not told Marlene about the health scare. She learned about her own husband’s doctor visit secondhand, at my kitchen table, in July.

She did not cry about that one. She just went quiet. I think that was the moment she understood what she was dealing with. Tom and I have had plenty of hard news over thirty years. Every bit of it went to each other first. Sometimes it was ugly and sometimes it was late at night, but it went to each other first.

The line is this. The first person a married man tells his private things to should be the person he married.

Meals that look like dates

One Thursday Tom came home from the hardware store and said he had seen Pete at the diner on the highway. Pete had been in a booth with a woman who was not Marlene. Lunch, in the middle of the day, in a diner twenty minutes from his office. Tom had walked right past the window. Pete had not looked up.

Tom said, “It might have been nothing.” Then he said, “But I would never sit in a booth with a woman and not tell you about it.” That is the truth. Tom has eaten lunch with female coworkers over the years. He told me about it the same way he told me what he ate.

The line is this. If a man would not want his wife to walk past the window, he should not be in the booth.

Saving her number under a different name

Marlene finally looked at Pete’s contacts in August. The woman from work was saved under a man’s name. Pete said he did it so Marlene would not get the wrong idea. Marlene said the wrong idea was already there and he had put it there.

Rita S., 61, from Peoria, Illinois, told me her ex-husband had done the same thing years ago. She said, “He saved her as his cousin. When I found out, it was not the texts that broke me. It was that he had sat there and planned how to fool me.”

The line is this. A man who changes a woman’s name in his phone has already decided that she is a secret.

Comparing her to his wife

Pete said something at a Fourth of July picnic that I still think about. Marlene brought her potato salad, the one she has made for twenty years. Pete took a bite and said the woman from work had brought in a potato salad last week that was lighter. He laughed when he said it. Nobody else laughed.

I watched Marlene’s face. Tom squeezed my hand under the table. Later on the porch he said, “I would rather eat your worst dinner than praise another woman’s best one in front of you.” For the record, Tom has eaten some of my worst dinners. He has never once compared them to anybody else’s.

The line is this. A married man should never hold another woman up as the measuring stick for his wife.

Taking her side

In August Marlene and the woman from work ended up at the same office picnic. Marlene went because Pete said she was making a big deal out of nothing and she could see for herself. There was some small disagreement about where to set up the chairs. The woman wanted one spot. Marlene wanted another. Pete sided with the woman in front of everybody.

Marlene left early. She came to my house instead of going home. She said, “He did not even look at me. He just agreed with her like it was automatic.”

The line is this. In public, a married man’s first loyalty belongs to his wife, even over a folding chair.

Keeping his wife away from her

The thing that bothered me most was that Marlene asked, more than once, to meet this woman. She said she wanted to have her over for dinner. She wanted to see her face and shake her hand. Pete said no every time. He said it would be awkward. He said Marlene would make it weird.

Tom said something sharp about that. He said, “If I had a friend my wife was not allowed to meet, I would not have a friend. I would have a problem.” That is how I have always felt about it. Everybody Tom spends time with has sat at our table at some point.

The line is this. A friendship a wife is not allowed to see is not a friendship.

Calling it harmless when she says it hurts

Every single time Marlene brought something up, Pete had the same answer. It was harmless. She was overreacting. It was all in her head. By the end of the summer Marlene had started to believe him. She told me one night that she thought maybe she was crazy.

Beverly T., 54, from Macon, Georgia, wrote me about this exact thing. She said, “My husband used that word, harmless, for two years. One day I told him that if it was harmless, then it should be easy to stop. He could not stop. That was my answer.”

The line is this. If a wife says something hurts, a decent husband does not argue about whether it should.

Flirting dressed up as joking

Marlene showed me one text she managed to see before it vanished. The woman had sent Pete a picture of her new haircut. Pete had written back that she was going to get him in trouble looking like that. Then a winking face.

Pete said it was a joke. I have been married long enough to know what a joke looks like. A joke is something you would say in front of your wife. That was not something he would have said in front of Marlene. Tom teases the waitress at the diner sometimes. He does it while I am sitting right across from him, and he does it the same way he would tease his sister.

The line is this. If a man would not make the joke with his wife standing next to him, it is not a joke.

Doing favors he will not do at home

Marlene had been asking Pete to fix the gate latch since April. In August she found out that Pete had spent a Saturday morning at the woman’s apartment putting up shelves. He had told Marlene he was at the hardware store. He had been, for the shelves.

That one made Tom quiet for a long time. Tom is not a man who fixes things quickly. But he fixes our things first. Our gate, our step, our dripping faucet. He has helped neighbors, and I have always known about it, and it has never come before the work at home.

The line is this. A married man’s Saturday mornings belong to his own house before anyone else’s.

Riding alone in the car

One of the small things Marlene mentioned almost in passing. Pete had started driving the woman from work home when her car was in the shop. It was on his way. That was true. It was also every day for three weeks, and he had not mentioned it once.

Lou D., 59, from Scranton, Pennsylvania, told me he had given a coworker rides for a month before his wife found out. He said, “There was nothing to it. But I had not told her because I knew how it would look. I should have listened to my own gut.”

The line is this. Twenty minutes alone in a car, every day, is time a man should not be hiding.

Drinking with her when his wife is not there

Late in August Pete started staying out after work. He said it was a group of people from the office having a beer. Marlene called one night and he did not answer. When he came home, his shirt smelled like somebody’s perfume, and it was not hers.

I remember Tom saying that a man can have a beer with coworkers. He has done it himself. But he said the test is simple. Would you be glad if your wife walked in. If the answer is no, you should not be sitting there.

The line is this. A married man should never be in a place with another woman where his wife would be unwelcome.

Letting touch become familiar

At the office picnic Marlene saw the woman put her hand on Pete’s arm while they talked. Then on his back. Pete did not move away. He did not look uncomfortable. He looked like it happened all the time.

Marlene told me that was the moment she decided she had to do something. Not the texts. Not the lunches. The hand on his back and the way he let it stay there. I thought about Tom and the way he steps back just slightly when a woman who is not me gets too close. He has done it for thirty years. He does not even know he does it.

The line is this. A married man does not let another woman touch him in ways his wife has not seen and would not like.

Gifts that stay hidden

Marlene found a small box in Pete’s truck. Inside was a bracelet. It was not for her. Pete said it was a birthday gift for the woman from work, that everybody chipped in for it. Marlene called the office. Nobody had chipped in.

This one is simple to me. Tom has bought gifts for other women in his life. His mother, his sister, our daughters-in-law. Every one of those gifts I either picked out with him or heard about before it was wrapped. A gift that has to be hidden is not a gift. It is a message.

The line is this. If a man cannot show his wife the gift, he should not be buying it.

Making his wife the problem for asking

Through all of it, Pete never once said he was sorry. Every time Marlene asked a question, he turned it around. She was jealous. She was snooping. She was the one wrecking the marriage with her suspicions. By September Marlene had stopped asking, not because she had answers, but because asking cost too much.

That was when she told him she wanted them to see a counselor, and that she would go alone if he would not. He went. I do not know everything that was said in that room and I am not going to pretend to. I know they are still married. I know Pete left that job. I know Marlene has met every person he works with now, and she has his phone password, and he gave it to her without being asked.

The line is this. When a wife asks a hard question, the answer is never to make her feel like the one who did something wrong.

Marlene still comes to my kitchen table. These days she brings her potato salad and we eat it on the porch. Tom still says it is better than anybody’s, and he says it with me sitting right there.

I did not write this to pile onto Pete. I wrote it because almost every line he crossed was small, and he crossed them one at a time, and he could explain each one. Nothing happened, he kept saying. But the marriage nearly ended anyway, one hidden text and one unmentioned lunch at a time.

Tom and I have never had to have this conversation in thirty years, and I know how lucky that makes me. It is not because he is a saint. It is because he decided a long time ago that the easiest way to stay out of trouble is to never take the first small step toward it.

Where was the line in your marriage, and how did you find it?