You visit your neighbor often? I wonder why. :dubious:
My first thought was: “Well, OP is looking for something to be wrong with this scenario, so I suppose a person could suspect pedophiliac motives, but honestly it’s most likely just a nice guy trying to help a neighbor out.”
The “get in her pants” angle never occurred to me. Probably because it would be a really dumb way to go about the attempt, at least for me, and I suspect for quite a lot of women. If I were grieving my husband, any attempt to manipulate your way into my pants would backfire SPECTACULARLY. If a guy can’t respect the fact that I was in love with my now-dead husband, why on god’s green earth would I want to sleep with that douche-bag? Remember, in grief, anger is also one of those emotions roiling just under the surface, along with far less ability to care about not making a scene.
He’s either a really nice, thoughtful guy, or he’s trying to get into her pants.
This is pretty much the scenario as I related it to my co-worker. I didn’t even say it to the first man, he overheard the conversation. It was only after he said what he did that I even considered relating the situation to anyone else because it wasn’t that important.
That some of the men said that he was trying to get in her pants didn’t surprise me, that all but one did was surprising. Several of the women thought that way too.
I didn’t ask anyone if they thought he was trying to get into her pants for the same reason I didn’t do a poll here, I wanted to hear their first thought without leading them in any direction.
I would never ask my co-workers ‘do you think he’s cheating, do you think he’s trying to get into her pants’ because that is not the kind of question I’d ask in a work situation.
It really was more of a ‘do all men really think this way?’ kind of question,
That’s why I’m asking here and I purposely did not give too much info. I wanted to see if the majority of men think that way, and how many women would think that way.
We fight all the time, as far as I know he has never cheated on me, I know he has cheated on at least one other partner but he was in his early 20’s - I don’t think once a cheat always a cheat because people can grow up, at the time she had been widowed about a month and I have no idea what she looks like. It never occurred to me to ask.
It’s what I thought too, that a recently widowed woman would not be too receptive to a man trying to get into her pants, then again some women are very vulnerable at that time so maybe it’s easy to take advantage of them.
My first thought was that your friend was clued into the fact that this mother was about to sell her kids’ organs for beer money, and he offered to let them stay over in order to get them into a safe place while child protection services were called.
Female. I think it was a kind offer with no ulterior motive.
Perhaps your male coworkers answered honestly. Perhaps they were strutting their adolescent machismo. I wish men who behave like that would realize that they are creating an atmosphere of suspicion toward all men.
I refuse to believe that men are incapable of behaving nobly without a sexual motive.
Female, thought it was a really nice thing to offer.
And I don’t think this is “trying to get into her pants.” Unless he is normally a jerk.
Male here.
My take on it is that the guy was simply offering a way of helping out a family who had just found itself in a stressful, emotionally-wrenching situation. Having the boys be with their friends in a warm, inviting atmosphere is an extremely nice thing to do. I don’t see any ulterior motive there at all.
Anybody who thinks that the guy was doing it just to get in the widow’s pants is a jerk.
In fact, the attitudes of the guys at the office may be fairly accurate indicators of their own behavior patterns. I have a theory about people that has worked pretty well for me when I am trying to understand a person’s behavior. My theory is that people tend to project their own behavior and motives onto others. Thus, my gut reaction to the comments from the guys in the office is that they are probably the type of person who would be callous enough to try to take advantage of the widow at an extremely emotional time.
I suspect this is the root of your coworkers comments. How much do they know about your personal life?
The way you related it sounded perfectly normal, to the point where my first thought was nothing more than “ok.”
My guess is the reason your coworkers are jumping to conclusions like this is because you’ve given them reason to believe that your “friend” is not a good guy.
I was betting on this being a story taken from “Touched: The Jerry Sandusky Story”
You work with a bunch of assholes.
People tend to assign their own motives and ways of thinking to others. So take a hard look at the “just trying to get into her pants” people, because that’s how THEY think, and you’d do well to note that going forward.
My first thought was “Good Man!”
Before reading any of the replies:
It sounds like he’s doing a good thing to help a family out some in a time of crisis. You don’t say if he’s cancelling already-made plans with you, or if he’s just giving you a heads-up that he’ll be unavailable; if the latter there’s no problem at all, and if the former there’s still no problem because “unexpected death” trumps whatever plans you might have had in the first place. Frankly, I don’t see that there’s any issue here whatsoever.
I’m male, married, with a 14 year old son, FWIW.
On preview, after reading the rest of the thread:
I think the OP’s coworkers are a bunch of jerks.
I think you nailed it!
I think I figured this whole thing out. The OP’s coworkers knows they fight. The OP is attractive. These coworkers are telling her that her boyfriend is trying to get in the widows pants to upset her/cause a breakup. All so said coworkers can get into the OPs pants!
These dudes are clever! Except the one nice guy who probably never gets laid.
Male.
When I read the OP that thought immediately crossed my mind.
But, due to the specific circumstances I figured there was a good chance it was sincere.
No.
They would have no way of knowing that we fight at all. Not something I talk about.
You’re reading more into it than what is there.
Cool! You figured it out!
Except the one nice guy was incredibly handsome, incredibly hot, incredibly nice and unfortunately less than half my age.
Well he still is, we don’t work together anymore but I ran into him a few weeks ago and he is still incredibly hot.
I asked MrPanda. His first thought was the guy is going to be with the 4 boys and is maybe trying to do the whole male comfort thing for the 2 kids who just lost their dad.