One of our readers has a dilemma and reached out to us for advice through our Mailbag. We'll call her Angie for purposes of this post. Here's Angie's problem:
I've been battling with this situation for about 3 weeks now, and have decided it's time to reach out. My husband is in the Army reserves and for the most part I don't pay much attention to it. It's hard to actually be involved with a rear detachment unit. There just isn't much going on. But, recently I've noticed my husband has been talking about a female soldier more and more. I'm not a jealous person and I understand the need for communication. I've been wondering why after four years in the same unit together she's now a topic. This summer she had some situations during drills that caused her to reach out to my husband for help. No big deal. Since then, she is consistantly Facebook messaging him. Harmless stuff really. The last message (my husband and I give each other full access to each other's social accounts) I read a message where she gave him her number and asked him to call her for a favor she needed. Which ended up being putting her dog down. She lives an hour and a half from us, there are other soldiers in the unit that live in the same town and who asks someone to do that?I'm beginning to think she got the wrong impression by him helping her. So, I messaged and asked her to stop messaging him. After a few civil messages, she got hateful and snotty. Now, my problem is: messages are for privacy, I understand messaging a phone number, but as far as the rest it should be wall to wall. Or, even text or call him. I'm am debating on contacting the commander for her disrespect of my request. My husband did nothing wrong and didn't reply to her messages. But, I don't want him in trouble because he was on the receiving end. But, I do feel like she needs some assistance with respect of a fellow soldiers wife. I was very civil in my request. How should I address this situation? My husband doesn't want to be involved.
These matters are always difficult to deal with online. We have Angie's version of events and although I have absolutely no reason to doubt her version, there's a lot that we simply don't know. And even if all our questions were answered, we don't personally know the players involved so it's difficult to give a stranger advice in this type of situation. However, we can offer our opinions based on the information Angie provided.
Angie is brave to reach out for advice, and should be commended for doing so. Our regular commenters are always good about offering constructive advice so let's keep it civil and on point in the comment section. One thing I found interesting about Angie's email is the fact that she is contemplating taking this to her husband's commander (whom I'm assuming is also the commander of the female soldier at the heart of the problem) but she fears her husband may get in trouble. So I'll throw out two questions to our audience. 1.) Have you ever been in a similar situation and if so, how was it resolved? 2.) Have you ever taken a problem (any problem) to your spouse's commander and if so, were you glad you did, or did it turn out badly?
