Interacting with son's best friend's dad

In My Humble Opinion
1

Ok, so my wife met this one guy(father) and his son at my 7 year old son’s soccer practise session. They live close by our house and my son shares the same school bus with his son and they became close friends. Then I was introduced to the father and we have been kinda friends ever since. Clearly he’s not my type of a guy whom I would keep in my friend’s circle, but since my son loves the company of his son, we just hang out occasionally to take the kids out for play dates, sleep over and stuff.

My wife was in charge of the soccer sessions and the father was in charge of his sons activities. His wife is weird, doesn’t interact much with other people and don’t do anything related to their kid’s school or extracurricular activity stuffs and hence he’s totally in charge of his sons all activities.

Long story short, I just noticed some of my prior months phone bill statements and there are lot of text messages going on back and forth between the father and my wife. Sometimes it’s during weekdays over the holidays, while I was at work and my wife was off, as well as the father. It starts as early as 6:40 am and goes on all day until bed time at night. Turned out they were planning to take our kids out to some play date during Xmas vacation. But still whole day texting back and forth, as well as around 40 messages between the two under 1 hour early in the morning?

The father rarely communicates with me through text, only with my wife to arrange and schedule all activities and I never bothered about it until now, since I saw the ongoing messages happening multiple times weekly. I never text his wife neither has her number, none of my other male friends text my wife either. For some reason this guy thinks its ok to contact my wife instead of me since they started the friendship first before I was introduced. On one occasion I happened to see the text between them and he was sending lot of happy emojis including tongue out emojis to my wife.

After seeing the text history through my cellphone provider website, I checked her cellphone and all the texts to him has been deleted. Last week she told me he was discussing his health concerns with her (she’s a family nurse practitioner)that he has diabetes, cholesterol and all other stuffs and I got mad at her why he thinks it’s ok to tell her all these stuff. Since I rarely got involved in my sons soccer sessions for the past year and a half, I have no idea what was going on between them.

Now that she knows, I’m not happy about this guy contacting her instead of me, she deleted all messages between them from her phone.

Also, my wife is a very outgoing and friendly person unlike most girls in the sense that she goes and talk with random guys in a very openly fashion when we are in groups. Once, soon after our marriage, one of her male friend from her college used to call her weekly to catch up and she used to sit in front of me and talk to him for almost an hour on phone as if it’s totally normal. It went on for few weeks until finally, I told her this behavior was unacceptable since I never met that guy.

So, thats her personality and I noticed she initiated most of the text conversation going on with the father and ends up extending throughout the day.

Now I am super pissed at the guy, but knowing my wive’s personality, I can’t totally blame him either, but again I don’t appreciate him contacting my wife instead of me since we have met several times by now. I don’t really want to keep him as my friend either, but my son and his son are close friends and that’s the only reason I haven’t told him to fuck off yet.

I started accompanying my wife and son for soccer lessons lately and he always approach us to start a friendly conversation. I completely ignored him after the initial greetings and kept chatting with my wife with my back facing him. After a while, he got the point and walked away. I know it was rude, but since she deleted all the text messages, I have no idea what’s going on and I want to make it clear to him that I am not his friend but merely his son’s friend’s dad.

He used to come vent out with us how nonunderstanding his wife is and he has to do all the chores after coming back from work blah blah blah, not sure if my wife is feeling sympathy for this guy or what. Anyways I ignored these scenarios and let her hang out with him for almost year and half on a wekly basis weekly and now I found out they are texting a lot without my knowledge and the text has been deleted.

I hate to break my sons’ heart by loosing his best friend but at the same time I want to put boundaries between him and my wife regardless what personal issues he has, that’s none of my concern.

In addition, he always has to ask his wive’s permission every time we approach him for a play date for my son, and depends on her mood, if she doesn want to clean up and prep the house, he will say they are unavailable. At the same time, whenever he request us for play dates, we always say yes because my son loves to play with him. So I feel it’s kinda unfair and thinks he merely uses my son as a play toy for his son totally according to their convenience. Even though his son wants to play, if his wife says no he will just back out. Once his son, told my son that his mom doesn’t want anymore guests over since she doesn’t want to clean up.

So how should I proceed to handle this situation? Should I ignore and move on for my son’s sake or tell my wife to cut out being over-friendly with this guy or just tell the guy to stop texting my wife moving forward and contact me instead.

Since yesterday morning, his son had some difficulty breathing and he has been texting my wife all day asking tips and advice on how to deal the situation. He did took the kid to urgent care, but still expects my wife to answer his concerns. I would have been ok with this behavior but now that I am aware of the text situation, I just dont feel comfortable him contact my wife at all.

Any tips would be appreciated.

2

It sounds like you have some serious trust issues with your wife.

I suggest you work on that. And telling her who she can or can’t be friends with, as well as telling her “don’t be so overly friendly” is NOT a good way to start.

3

If it was pure friendship, why would she delete the messages? I was ok with their texting until I figured that out.

4

I don’t know. It could be anything from “she’s fucking him” to she knows what a jealous possessive guy her husband is.

You’ll have to talk to her.

5

Do not cause you son to lose his best friend. It’s YOUR problem, not your son’s.

Whatever is going on now with your wife and this fellow, your past behavior in trying to control who she talks to is appalling. You act like you think you own her. You don’t.

You and she have a lot to work out. Don’t ruin your son’s friendship with his best friend over it.

6

Your issue is with your wife, not this guy. Obviously nobody here knows if they are having an affair or if that is just her personality. But it bothers you and you need to address it with her.

If you address it with this guy then you aren’t really solving your problem because it will just be another guy next week/month/year. There will never be a shortage of guys trying to fuck your wife—which regardless of her intentions, is clearly what he is trying to do—I mean, fuck off with that discussing his son’s health care. His son has a doctor to discuss that with.

But as others have said, if you (try to) forbid your wife from talking to this guy, and it turns out they are having an affair, they will just be more sneaky about it, and in any event will buck at your attempt to control her. You need a heart to heart with the wife.

7

It’s concerning how much they text. You need to tell her your concerns.
She’s either gonna go ballistic or not.
I don’t know your dynamic.
You have a right to be concerned, but not to the point you pick and choose who she’s allowed to engage with, up to and unless they are being/becoming romantically intimate.
You’ll have to find out. The only way to do that is talk to her.
Your son is probably gonna lose his friend over this, I hate to say.

8

Link to previous wife thread

9

Oh good grief!

Should have known better to post in this thread.

10

Oh jeez, I remember this asshole. Pissed off that his wife went and got educated and got a full-time job, making him work from home to watch the kid on days when the kid was sick, though he could make it work with his job and she couldn’t. Was angry that she wasn’t good enough with the kid, but he wanted to leave the marriage and the kid behind with her instead of taking care of his own kid himself if she was so bad. Awful situation then and now.

11

Probably because she doesn’t want to deal with your criticism. Your contempt for her is so intense and your criticism of her is so extreme, that I wouldn’t blame her for destroying any potential fodder for your anger and disapproval.

My advice is to get into marriage counseling asap, so you can learn how to treat each other respectfully after the divorce, which seems inevitable. That is the best thing you can do for your son.

12

Oh, crap. I posted a better answer in the old thread.
Apparently I’ve gotten dumber.
(:))

13

Are you in a position to hire a private investigator? The deleted texts are a serious red flag.

14

I thought he hated his wife. Why would he care if she was texted with someone else?

15

Maybe the deleted texts involved HIPAA violations. They were medical in nature, after all.

Not like this is gonna end well, of course. Is this wife the same individual as the other linked thread?

16

OK.

https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=862886

17

You need to back off. Let your wife live her own life. Maybe she’s having a sexual relationship with this guy. But maybe it’s innocuous. Either way, it’s her business. If you can’t tolerate it, then leave her, but it’s not right of you to put her under constant surveillance.

This thing you did to her friendship was horrible and controlling and possibly abusive. There’s nothing abnormal about having long phone conversations with a friend, there’s nothing disrespectful about it, And the fact that you hadn’t met the guy was irrelevant. Your wife is her own person and should be free to have her own friendships without interference from you.

18

texting, of course.

I agree this thread is likely to not end well.

19

OP seriously you might as well just get divorced at this point.

20

OP, you are pretty much screwed. You can’t control what she does, that’s a given. But you find that many text messages suspicious. You need to talk with her and tell her your feelings. If she says they are innocent, then either you believe her and you get over it, or you don’t and move on with your life.