Hello, everyone! I have an update on the situation with my wife. First post here: https://www.reddit.com/r/relationship_advice/comments/12auopl/how_do_i_38m_reassure_my_wife_34f_that_im_not/
After I posted and read everyone's advice, it really just solidified my worry that I couldn't do anything to reason with my wife because her concerns were unreasonable in the first place. Everything I could think of or that someone suggested to prove to her that I wasn't having an affair with Marcie (or anyone) was either something I'd already told my wife or something that, the more I thought about it, I didn't feel it was fair that I should have to convince her of at this point in our relationship.
So instead I sat down with her and just explained to her how hurt it made me feel that she didn't trust me after 4 years together where I'd never done anything to make her doubt me, and that it wasn't fair for me to be on trial when I hadn't done anything wrong and she didn't have any good reason to think that I had, and then I asked her if she really honestly thought I was cheating on her or if there was something else going on that she wasn't telling me about.
She got really upset by the last part because she thought I was accusing her of cheating, which turned the conversation into a fight but then afterwards she at least finally understood how I felt and then after that she apologized and actually started talking to me about what's been going on in her head lately.
So long story short there were really 3 factors that were making my wife insecure about my working relationship with Marcie, some of which were things that commenters on my first post guessed correctly, and none of them were really things that had anything to do directly with our relationship.
First- one of my wife's good friends got divorced last year, which I knew about but I didn't know any of the details as to what happened. My wife told me that the cause was her husband having an affair with "the coworker that he told his wife not to worry about". Apparently supporting her friend through that situation was feeding into my wife's insecurities about me having a new assistant, she actually admitted that part of the reason she decided to stop by my office that one time was also because she wanted an excuse to get a look at Marcie and that was why she got so angry about us having lunch together.
Second- my wife says that after switching to the new gym she feels more insecure about her body/looks than she ever used to because she's the least fit person in all of her classes now. (I did suggest that she should go back to her old gym where she feels more comfortable but she says she'd rather power through until she can catch up to everyone at the new gym and I'm just going to let her do what she wants on this one.)
Third- apparently my wife had been having "weird menstrual symptoms" for the past few months but she didn't think it was anything to be worried about, I got her to go to the doctor and it turns out she's starting menopause. She agreed that her hormones being out of whack is likely a big part of why she got so unreasonably upset about all this.
So after we talked my wife said she'd stop bringing up Marcie and so far she hasn't mentioned it again. And then after she saw her doctor she also started a mild antidepressant that's supposed to help with the emotional symptoms of menopause, but's only been a couple of weeks so I'm not sure if I've noticed any effect yet.
But we're past the original issue, it seems like it was a lot less to do with my wife not trusting me and a lot more to do with just a bunch of internal stressors that she was dealing with that happened to result in her getting fixated on this one issue.
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