He comes home late from meeting his 14 years older female boss, says he wants to keep his job

I have been married for eight years now and have three children. My husband works for an NGO and things had been moving on well until he started getting very close to his boss who is 14 years older than him.

He now comes home late at night claiming to be from a business meeting with her and he says that he has to keep up with this to keep his job.

He started drinking and our intimacy is now dead. His boss does not respect me and does not even talk to me when we meet. He is the breadwinner as I am a housewife but as time goes by, I am feeling helpless by the day.

I have tried talking to him about this but he becomes defensive and worked up for no reason at all. He no longer listens and does not even seem to care about me.

Simon says

Sexual harassment is real and is prevalent in many aspects of our lives. It happens to both men and women and either sex can be the perpetrator or the victim even though most of the time it is women who fall victim to this. Men are also harassed and most (almost all) choose to remain silent for fear of being profiled. It is a difficult situation for anyone to have even the slightest suspicions that their spouse is being sexually harassed.

When the harassment is most likely happening at the workplace, then it compounds the situation especially because this is the place we spend the bulk of our time and the perpetrator in most instances wields a lot of power over the victim.

The difficult part is that one cannot raise a complaint of sexual harassment on behalf of a spouse especially without tangible evidence. The most appropriate person to take action is the victim. There are two possibilities here - one, is that she may be coercing him into things and two, they could be having a relationship. It is not common and neither is it professional for a supervisor to have a social life with a junior staff member of either sex but of course it is worse when the officer is of the opposite sex.

I don’t understand why he has changed his attitude towards you and there is really no reason to get offended and defensive when a spouse asks for accountability. The reason why someone is likely to get defensive is because they are most probably covering up for something. I urge you to go out of your way to confirm if indeed he is usually with her when he comes home late.

He could be using it as an excuse to be with another woman so see how best you can confirm this. If confirmed, you could try and talk to him one more time and if he does what he has become very good at involve a close associate of his to try and get him to understand how all this is making you feel. If this does not work out then you will need to take action.

Show up at his office one morning and request to talk to her. You should not do this alone rather, have one or two associates to support you through it. With the level of contempt she has for you, it is highly likely that something could be going on so if you confirm this, talk to her and give her a piece of your mind. You can also make a formal complaint to the higher office. Most companies take sexual harassment seriously and this could get both of them into trouble. A threat to file a formal complaint against her is likely to get both of them shaking like leaves but you have to do something to protect your territory.