u/EveningCurve49

I’m trying to understand a situation I’ve found myself in and would appreciate some outside perspective.

I’m 27M and she’s 28F. We grew up in the same area but only really started talking a few years ago during a course. After that, we stayed in touch casually, maybe a call every few months.

Recently, we’ve both been working in the same area, so we started meeting more often. We mostly meet at a cafe and sometimes go for a walk. The frequency is inconsistent. Sometimes we meet multiple times a week, sometimes at regular intervals, and sometimes we go a month without any contact. When we do meet, we usually spend 3+ hours together. There’s no other communication like calls or texts unless necessary.

She got married at 21, has a child, and has described her marriage as emotionally distant similar to hundreds of other utility based marriages. She initiates most of the meetups. Our conversations are mostly her venting, and I tend to just listen. She shares a lot about her life to the extent that there's hardly anything I don't know. In contrast I don’t share much about mine as I see no point.

I’ve started feeling like I’m doing a lot of emotional heavy lifting, and not sure I want to keep doing that.

What’s confusing me is the shift in physical boundaries. It started in a very normal way, like me checking out her new watch, but there has been increasing casual physical contact since then, touching each other under different pretexts and blurring personal space.

I’m finding it hard to brush it off. She doesn’t seem uncomfortable or try to create distance, which I find unusual.

There is no real romantic or physical attraction from my side, and there none from her either. It feels like a casual friendship, but the level of physical closeness doesn’t match that. Also, we can go weeks without talking and be completely fine. The long meetings and physical contact have become normalised.

I’m trying to understand: Is this kind of boundary acceptable in friendships for married women? Is it possible she just doesn’t see this as crossing a line or is she aware and just doesn’t mind?

Would appreciate honest perspectives about boundaries especially from married women.