'AITA for wanting my GF to quit her job since she's basically her boss's 'hired wife'?' UPDATED

"AITA for asking my girlfriend [23F] to consider quitting a job that bothers me?"

Before anyone gets upset, I am not insisting that she quit this job, and if she chooses not to, that is her prerogative. I just asked her to consider doing so. My girlfriend, Ana, is currently a law student, her second degree after qualifying in a language degree. During the summer, she works for a family friend named David.

She calls her job a personal assistant, but it seems much broader than that - she is his translator and interpreter, she goes to events with business partners as his "date" or "partner", and when clients visit David at home or go to dinner with him, she entertains their wives and makes drinks or entertains or cooks, etc.

When David hosts events, Ana runs them, wrangling guests and arranging seating plans and so on. In essence, it often appears she is a kind of "hired wife". I have never encountered a job of this kind before. David is mid-30s and unmarried. Ana has alluded to him hiring escorts when they are abroad. I have never met him, but this made me feel very uneasy.

For the whole summer, she is with him - there is a room in his London house she calls her study with a sofa she sleeps on, and they regularly travel abroad together. I never see her during this time, she claims to work from 7am to 11pm six days a week and says David does not like her to use her phone during work hours.

She also said David does not like her to eat during work hours either but he counts her going to the gym as a valid use of work hours. On top of this are "business expenses", such as David buying her clothes. Even when she is at university, she is frequently getting phone calls from him at all hours of the night, which she says is due to the time difference.

Two nights ago, we had a big fight over this job. I told her she looked like she had lost a lot of weight and she just brushed it off and said she had a stressful job. I said it seemed like a very weird set of duties, and she got defensive it had started out as a more normal job but that she had taken on more duties as David had started to depend on her.

How much can he depend on her when she's still at university for a third of the year? She let slip during this conversation David was funding her law degree and paying her a stipend even when she was not working, and I told her that I found the whole arrangement to be very suspicious.

I asked if she was sure it wasn't something sketchy or that she wasn't being exploited in some way, not saying in what way. I told her she might want to reconsider a job which basically turned her into a non-sexual escort and that I was uncomfortable with the whole thing.

She shut me down and told me that I was being a controlling AH and that her job was her own, and that even suggesting she consider what a weird occupation she had was a massive dick move on my part. But me, I genuinely feel like I'm going crazy anytime I try to explain her job to others... and even when I think about it myself.

FAQ:

1.) I have known her for five years, dating for three. We live together while studying with four other roommates. She has had this job since before we started dating, and David was always her quirky boss that she would have anecdotes about.

2.) David knows her family and is close to her older cousins, from what she has mentioned it. Ana and David are both Russian. His family is much wealthier than hers, if I understand correctly. Her family know she has this job, and think it is great.

3.) She includes this work on her CV. She is on the books to some degree, as she gets her weekly salary into her account and bonuses in cash, from what I understand. The clothes she gets are nice but not flashy, just normal work clothes like blouses and pants or neat dresses.

I do not know if they are designer. She has the occasional very nice cocktail dress from an event that she either sells for extra cash or keeps for other events. I do not know if it is from a high-end label.

4.) He is not paying for American law school, it's a UK undergraduate degree in law. Still expensive, but not as bad as Yanks think it is. About £27 000 total, if I remember correctly.

5.) There is a possibility, mentioned elsewhere, that she may be misrepresenting the eating rules due to her history of disordered eating. This is something I intend to discuss with her.

6.) You can stop telling me she's likely having sex with David. There are 800+ comments here saying something similar, and it isn't particularly relevant to the discussion.

What do you think? AITA? This is what top commenters had to say:

[deleted] said:

NTA - She dropped a few of these: 🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩 16 hour shifts 6 days a week, not allowed to eat or use her phone during "working hours"? This isn't a job, that kind of regular overtime is illegal in the UK (48 hour per week average maximum). Something else is going on here & she isn't telling you everything. You're right to question this, as everything you mention looks like another relationship.

ailurophile_foxglove said:

NTA. The fact that it seems like an affair AND she won’t recognize her own health being at risk... I don’t know man I think these are major red flags and super suspicious. You’re definitely right to question this sketchy stuff and be concerned for her well being. Not being allowed to eat from 7 am to 11 pm?!?! That’s an eating disorder against your will! Why is she okay with that?!

FresherBlife said:

Your GF is a sugar baby

Taytoh3ad said:

NAH. I can see why you’re uncomfortable, sounds more like a sugar daddy than employment. However, if they aren’t physical in any way I think it’s great that she is getting her education funded and then some. Most people struggle through or have to pay hefty student loans after a law degree, and she is avoiding all of that.

Finding any old part time job won’t do that for her so I can also see her point. If you’re that uncomfortable with her doing this you may need to re-think the relationship because it doesn’t seem like David is going anywhere until she graduates at least.

And Chocolate_isMe said:

NTA. Reading this halfway through it’s apparent/obvious that David is a sugar daddy, I don’t know if anyone else has said this but that’s no job I have ever heard of, especially if it’s just one main client.

she’s a sugarbaby and he’s the sugar daddy, think about it, paying for her tuition, paying for her to travel, basically being arm candy, come on guys the signs are all there.

QueenB413 said:

So does David know you’re sleeping with his sugar baby? The whole thing stinks, could you possibly call David without her knowing and get him to confirm some of what she has told you? The number of work hours, the not being allowed to eat part and the stipend even when not working all point to some kind of weird relationship not a job.

Edited to add my judgement: NTA if you ask her to quit but she’ll probably choose David over you. Or she’ll tell you what’s really going on (sugar baby relationship) and you’ll have to decide if you can live being her side piece.

Mini-update:

We spoke briefly on the phone this morning before she started work. She apologised for flipping out, saying that she was stressed and unwell. I said I wanted to bring her and David out for lunch to clear up this misunderstanding and apologise for being controlling.

She went off the phone to speak to someone and came back on and said David wanted to have me for dinner, presumably not in the Hannibal sense. She said she would get back to me by the end of the day with a day and time that works, so if she doesn't, well, I don't know.

He later shared this longer update on the situation:

So. Long story short, Ana and I talked about taking a break from our relationship due to the demands of her work, but we are still together. First things first, I told her about the post and she found it hilarious that so many commenters thought she was good looking enough to be a sugar baby and said to say thanks.

I’ve apologised for overreacting and telling her to quit her job, and she’s apologised a ton for how little time she has had for me and our relationship and how she dismissed my concerns.

At the suggestion of some comments here, she let me run some of her texts with David through Google Translate, although I could tell she felt a bit insecure about the lack of trust that implied, but she agreed in black-and-white her relationship with David seemed sketchy.

They were all friendly and mostly business related, some that read like good friends complaining or teasing each other. He sent her a few photos of him in suits (her replies were all style-related) and she sent him a few photos of food e.g. while we were on dates, my name cropped up a few times in a very natural way.

I went for dinner with her and David a few weeks ago. This mainly confirmed what I had suspected/hoped – first, that their arrangement has a lot to do with their families and a sense of looking out for one another.

When I say David has photos of Ana in his house that might seem like a red flag, but they were not “girlfriend” pictures – there was one of her graduation with her father, and one from a trip to Russia where she’s with his grandfather, and lots of photos of her brothers as well.

Second, that David is on some kind of spectrum that means Ana helps him with social aspects of business. I don’t mean that in an insulting way at all but that was just the impression I got. He was very polite to me and told me he was glad to meet me at last and that he had been instructed to relay information back to Ana’s family about whether or not they should approve of me.

Third, like a lot of people suggested, Ana’s interpretation of the rules had a lot to do with her ED – she isn’t allowed to eat in front of clients, but she’s self conscious about eating in front of David as well so she ends up not eating at all during work. She has promised to go back to therapy about this issue, I got the impression David wasn’t happy she had told me a lie about her working conditions.

Not really sure what else I can add. We’re gonna stay together, she has promised to renegotiate some of her terms with David to try and have a bit more of a normal existence during the summer, and David sent me a nice watch with a little message attached thanking me for coming to dinner. Ana has joked that this was payment to keep me happy and technically makes me her pimp, so we’ll see.

TLDR, both of us consider ourselves the asshole, David seems to be neither an asshole nor banging my girlfriend, and we’re still together.