A reader writes:
My husband works for a well-known and well-respected organization. The supervisor of one of his projects, “Jane,” is also a personal friend of ours since before she was promoted. We’re pretty close; we house-sit for each other, etc.
Jane broke up with her long-term boyfriend earlier this year because she fell for her boss, “Bob” (also my husband’s boss on another project, and one of the overall department supervisors) and they’ve been sleeping together in secret for several months. Only I and one of her other friends know. He is married with two kids, and is pretty obviously in it for the thrill with no intention of leaving his family. He comes across aggressively in my opinion, but my friend is in love with him. She is absolutely miserable with herself. She can’t make herself break it off so she’s looking for a new job several cities away. My husband has no idea, and thinks she broke up with her boyfriend due to stress that has been getting worse, and that’s why she must be leaving. He himself is worried now and gets depressed about work, because he feels like his workload will soon be as impossible as hers must be, and her example has been one of self-destructive, workaholic misery.
I don’t want to betray Jane’s trust, and since my husband works for Bob, I don’t want to jeopardize their relationship either by telling him what’s actually happening. But it’s getting hard to keep it a secret, and it almost seems like she isn’t trying. She doesn’t give anyone (of the 6-10 coworkers who know she’s looking) a reason for why she’s taking an offer elsewhere. Not even a fib like “the workload is just too much” or “I want a change of pace.” Most people think it’s because of the break-up. I have a feeling I will need to keep supporting her because her new job is still only an hour away … not that far from this married man.
What do I tell my husband? Is there anything I can do to intervene, when talking to her directly just results in sadness and destructive behavior? Can I reasonably confront the predatory boss (who has always been SO charming and truly loves my husband)? Can I put in an anonymous note to HR without him knowing it’s me? I’m at a loss, sad for her, and feel weird keeping a secret from my partner.
This is tricky because parts of this are affecting your husband; because he doesn’t know what you know, he’s drawing incorrect conclusions about what’s going on with Jane and starting to worry about his own job.
And Jane has put you in a difficult situation by asking you to keep a secret about your husband’s boss that your husband might care about quite a bit if he knew.
But it is absolutely not your place to get involved to the extent of talking to your husband’s boss or sending a note to his HR department. You don’t work there, and both of those would be oversteps. The fact that you’re considering those is, I suspect, a sign that you’ve gotten too close to the situation and aren’t thinking clearly about where your responsibility for fixing this begins and ends. (Can you imagine if a friend of yours who didn’t work for your company contacted people who worked there about your affair? Even if they had your best interests in mind? It would be wildly inappropriate.)
As far as intervening goes, you really only have standing to intervene on the part that’s affecting your husband. But you do very much have standing there.
At a minimum, you could say something to your husband like, “I know you’re concerned that Jane is under so much work stress that it’s driving her to think about leaving, and that that bodes badly for your own workload. Jane talked to me in confidence about what’s going on, and while I can’t share details, I do want you to know that she’s dealing with some personal stresses right now — it’s not about work at all, and it doesn’t sound like you need to worry that it means anything for your own workload.”
You could also talk to Jane about this aspect of it, saying something like, “I can’t tell you how to handle this, but I do want you to know that (husband) has assumed that the reason you broke up with (old boyfriend) and the reason you’re looking for a new job now is because of work stress — and he’s really concerned that his own workload will soon be as impossible as he assumes yours will be. He’s becoming depressed about work because of it. I don’t want to betray your trust and tell him what’s really going on, but you’re putting me in a position where I know information that would make him feel significantly better about his own workload, and preventing me from telling him. That’s not something I want in my marriage, and I’m asking you to find something to communicate with him to fix that.”
If Jane blows that off, it’s reasonable to tell her that you can’t stay silent with your own husband when you know information that would significantly change how he feels about something, and that you’re going to need to let him know what’s going on. It’s not that you can’t know things your husband doesn’t know or that you won’t keep friends’ secrets; it’s that in this particular case, her secret is actually affecting him, and as his spouse you can’t watch that happen, know more than he does, and say nothing. If he finds out at some point that you knew and said nothing, he’d rightly feel betrayed.
Frankly, you might even decide to go straight there rather than start with the “tell him something that will fix this” request of Jane. That’s up to you and your sense of what your intimacy with your husband requires, but you’re allowed to decide that you’re not willing to have this big of a secret from your husband, particularly when it involves his job and his boss.
It also would have been okay to say to Jane at the very start of the affair, “Hey, I can’t have this kind of secret from (husband) when it involves his job and his boss. If you want to talk to me about this, I need you to know that I won’t be comfortable keeping it from (husband).” And it’s not too late to say a version of that now.
But those are really the only pieces of this that are yours to handle: what you discuss with Jane, and how you and she handle it with your husband. The rest of it, as gross and problematic as it is, is not yours to fix.
my husband’s boss/our friend is sleeping with their married department head was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.
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