My (39M) wife (38F) is jealous and hateful towards my attractive secretary (22F)
8KNames are fake.
Ok, first some background. My wife Susan and I have been together since our early twenties. We both come from lower-class backgrounds but I always wanted to do better for myself and my kids (3F, 10F). I didn't go to college, but I managed to start my own business at a young age and slowly built it up throughout the past two decades. I met Susan soon after things started taking off, and she's always been incredibly supportive of everything I do and how much work I put into it, even when that meant I had to put in long hours and wasn't able to see the kids as much as I wanted to during difficult times. Thanks to that, I've been able to grow it into quite a successful business. We're not super rich, but we're doing very well, especially considering where we came from. I'm not sharing the details of the business for obvious reasons. My wife worked at first, but now stays at home. I don't imagine she'll ever go back to working, but if she does I would be fine with that. All in all, it's been very great. We have a wonderful marriage and I love her more than anything. However, we've had more and more issues since I hired my new secretary, Kate, a little less than a year ago.
First, some info about Kate: Last summer I decided that I needed to hire some sort of assistant since my workload was gradually increasing, and I wanted to be able to focus more on the important decisions while still knowing everything that was going on. So, I decided to hire someone for a personal assistant/secretary position. Kate applied straight out of college, and at first I was extremely hesitant to hire someone with very little relevant experience, but she went to a very good school, had excellent grades, and throughout the interview process it became clear that Kate was more than qualified for the position.I called her a secretary but that's definitely underselling what she does. She helps me with organization, finances, business events and trips, and countless other things that I couldn't even name. Like I said, Kate was more than qualified for the position. She's incredibly smart and competent, extremely hardworking, very good at dealing with people, and just very positive in general. She gets along with nearly everyone and has overall been a very positive force for the company. Hiring her was one of the best decisions I ever made for the company.
However, she is also incredibly attractive, and that is where many of the issues arise. I would never think about trying to do anything with her, because I love my wife and am 100% loyal to her, but I can't deny that Kate is an extremely attractive young woman—it's something that everyone notices about her almost immediately, and I've heard others in the company comment on it as well (in a respectful way; I don't tolerate any sort of sexual harassment here). It's simply a fact of life that she is one of those people who is very attractive, and puts a lot of outfit into her clothes, makeup, workouts, etc. I believe she even did some sort of modeling at some point, though I don't know the specifics.
Susan never expressed any reservations about my hiring a secretary, even knowing that it was a young woman, until she met her face to face at a company holiday party. I still remember that moment, she seemed almost stunned when she met Kate for the first time. Ever since then, the problems have started to pop up. It started with Susan making snide comments about Kate whenever I would mention her. Then she started to refuse going to any event if Kate would be there. Whenever I talk about anything at work or any social event, Susan will ask me if Kate was there (and she almost always is) and then will make some rude remark about her. Whenever I get home late, Susan seems mad at me, and distant. Recently I've started working late again because of some issues, and Susan keeps asking me questions about Kate then as well. I asked her if she thinks I'm cheating, and she said no.
Obviously, I'm not cheating and would never cheat. My relationship with Kate is 100% professional and neither of us has ever done or said anything inappropriate to the other. We have a very friendly relationship, and often talk about personal matters at work, but we never hang out outside work or company parties. Everything is 100% professional. However, even with my reassurances, Susan doesn't seem to be put at ease. The one company event that Susan did go to recently, she was extremely rude to Kate and almost made a scene. I think she's being totally unreasonable. We've been arguing A LOT more recently, and she's basically told me to fire Kate without saying it directly. She'll say stuff like “You care about Kate more than you care about me and the kids.”
I don't know what to do. I can't prove to my wife that I'm not cheating, and she says she believes me anyway, but is still mad. And of course I can't fire Kate over this. I feel totally lost. What should I do? How can I fix this without being unfair to Kate?
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