Ask Aviva: Flirting with her imagination

Dear Aviva,
 My husband just switched to a new job. At this current job there is a female co-worker who he has become friendly with. She is frum like us. My husband keeps talking about her and it’s making me nervous. He said that she is unattractive (at least to him) and they are merely work colleagues, but I get uncomfortable every time he brings up her name, and my imagination starts to get the better of me. He’s never proven untrustworthy before. How do I calm my fears and trust my husband?

-Dubious Wife

Dear Dubious Wife,
Ok, first and foremost, relax. This doesn’t sound so bad. It actually sounds pretty good. It sounds to me like your husband values sharing his day with you. It happens to be that he spends most of his day with his co-worker, so naturally her name will come up often.
There is some research that shows that if a spouse is open about a relationship he has with someone (like in your case), there is not likely to be anything fishy going on. However, according to some informal anecdotal evidence, this is not always the case. Sometimes a spouse will openly talk about his/her extra-curricular buddy in an (ostensibly) innocuous way.
So I would say that you have to gauge your relationship. How is your marriage in general? Is it rocky? Just be on alert. Or, do you two like to spend time together? Do you laugh together? These are signs of a healthy marriage. Another sign of a healthy couple is if one spouse can turn to the other and say, “Sometimes so-and-so flirts with me.” Now, there is a disagreement in how to handle things when you notice someone flirting with your spouse. Some say not to mention it because it will perk up the flirtee’s interest and look forward to the opportunity to be flirted with. I am of the general school of thought that says, “Communicate Openly!” If there was even one drop of a reason for a wife not to trust her husband, she would most likely end up resembling some screeching shrew-witch. And this would be the perfect self-fulfilling prophecy to push her husband closer to the sane female in his life. 
Since you don’t know if this lady flirts or not, you can gently ask, “Does she ever flirt with you? If there really are some unsavory work conditions, (business trips with her or working late alone in the office with her), you can and should say, “I’m not so comfortable with this. Is there anything that can be done differently?”
Don’t forget to be proactive—make sure that the two of you are not stuffy, professional colleagues administering your home. Flirt and giggle before you clock out and run off to your day job.

-Aviva

 Aviva Rizel is a Marriage and Family Therapist in private practice who can be reached at AvivaRizel.MFT@gmail.com.