Am I reading too much into his friendship with his coworkers?

Throwaway account for obvious reasons.

I have been married to my husband for 8 years. I have always been fine with him having female friends, but I have become uncomfortable with a newer situation. He has two female coworkers that he has become very close with. He is in a group chat with just them and him. I am used to women flirting with my husband, and it doesn’t bother me. He is incredibly handsome and is very charming and outgoing. His coworkers are both beautiful, much younger women, and he likes every selfie they post. On our bank statements, I saw that he buys them lunch occasionally, and he mentioned in passing several times that one of them buys him lunch. They text throughout the day, but he deletes every message on his phone, which I don’t have access to (and I mean every message- he doesn’t keep a single conversation or text). I have only occasionally been able to see a few text exchanges when he leaves his messenger turned on on our computer. If I do touch his phone to change the music in the car or something, he gets really stressed and either watches my every move or asks for it back immediately.

I have asked him about them in passing (how they are doing, I would love to meet his new friends, etc), but he always changes the conversation immediately, brushing off his friendship with them. The thing that mostly bothers me is that he and I don’t talk anymore. We don’t seem to have anything in common, and when I brought that up to him, he didn’t think it was a big deal that we don’t have conversations anymore. However, he is constantly giving them advice, sending them encouraging quotes, etc. One of them is always sharing details of her relationship problems with her boyfriend with him. He doesn’t ask me about my day. I really feel that he knows more about their relationship problems than he does our own.

He never wants to go out. He doesn’t even want to go to his work’s holiday parties (which we had gone to every year in the past). I also found out the pie he “bought” for thanksgiving was made for him by one of them.

I am fit and I take good care of myself. I have put in so much effort to be an amazing wife to him, but I feel like I can’t compete with these other women, and I don’t know what to do. I am just afraid that I am starting to check out of the relationship in fear of getting hurt. I haven’t confronted him yet because he gets very defensive, and I know he will say I’m being stupid. Am I overreacting?

TL;DR: it feels like my husband is closer with his female coworkers than he is with me, but I’m not sure if I’m overreacting.

Submitted November 29, 2019 at 03:00PM by throwaway536468 https://ift.tt/2R3IVaH