Read Being The Other Woman: Who we are, what every woman should know and how to avoid us Online
Authors: Micalle A. Culver
Like every woman I picture walking in my shoes, I believed in my heart of hearts that
we
were
different
.
This
was
my
soul
mate
. The world did not understand what he and I shared. My rational, logical mind experienced a sort of astral projection. It hovered over me, watching my foolishness. I was like a teenager acting out the Sleeping Beauty myth and singing “someday my prince will come.” If I had a dream about him or if I were to pass him on the highway or coincidentally run into him at an unplanned location,
it
was
fate.
He assured me we were doing the right thing and these “signs” convinced me.
In many ways our relationship
was
different. The difference was in the particulars. Blake’s lifestyle provided advantages most married men do not have. He had multiple homes and changed location regularly. His wife was very active in their children’s school and bore the sole responsibility of getting them there, and often other children as well. Each home they owned was at least forty-five miles from their main dwelling, so to stay at one of the other houses meant packing bags for all of the children and waking up much earlier than usual to drive them to school. Beth refused the added effort and Blake refused to participate in helping her, which allowed Blake and I to live a very “regular” relationship where we could spend our nights together freely. Since I spent so many nights a week with him in his home, or he in mine, it was easy for me to believe that he was “separated with complications.”
Eventually as we stuck by one another, others began to open to our relationship and accept us.
We often traveled together. Three weeks would pass with only e-mail communication to and from home to “check on the children and the business.” We threw large parties, attended functions, and blended our five children with events and slumber parties. For all intents and purposes, we spent more time together than he spent with the woman who bore his last name. Our similar careers melded us into a potentially powerful team. The business he started, which also held his wife in title, we began to dabble in together.
I believed that Blake was my partner for life. He shared in my family events. My mother, who had originally opposed our affair, grew to love him and build a bond of her own with him. My brother-in-law made business connections through him, and even years after our break up invited Blake to my sister’s birthday party instead of the man I was dating at the time. But like the other woman in any affair, I still spent almost every special occasion or holiday alone. Gifts that I purchased or tokens of affection were stored in “his drawer.” The photo albums we created together were kept in my home. Because his wife now began to read his e-mails and study his cellular bill, we created a secret e-mail account and purchased a cell phone we called the “love line.”
She knew I existed, and he had told her he was in love with me. Or so I was told. The secret “love line” was to not rub it in her face and cause her additional hurt. Though I knew his children and spent a considerable amount of time with them, I was unable to create the bond that I desired
.
If Blake had divorced Beth and married me and if I were the step-mother, then I might have been able to be with him without creating psychological damage to the children, but as his mistress, I was simply a friend the kids could play with. But it’s the children who are often the rope in their parent’s tug-o-war. Beth felt her life slipping out of her hands. She responded by also involving the children in ways that an adult who understands desperation and temporary insanity can find forgivable, but the children are still damaged. She told her children that I was trying to take their daddy away from them and the oldest became very guarded and aware. She was frightened of me.
Seeing my role in Beth’s breakdown and what Blake and I had exposed our children to, I had to step back from his children for fear of doing more harm and creating long-lasting negative affects. I was living in an illusion—actually a delusion—that Blake and I were moving forward. Establishing a relationship with his children seemed natural to me. As insane as it may seem, not being able to have a relationship with his children, especially after getting a taste of one, was a terrible loss to me. I had grown to care for them deeply. As a mother myself, I could understand the fury that possessed Beth when she thought about “that woman” coming into the lives of her kids. I wanted them in my life. Though we naively and irresponsibly tried to share our children with one another, the sickness of what we were doing to them became undeniable, tragic and unforgivable.
One of the last times I saw his children, he had brought them out to the lake house. I had fallen asleep naked in his bed after lovemaking. In the early morning they opened the door and came into the room to wake their dad. I woke when I heard the bedroom door open and quickly tried to roll off the bed onto the floor. It was too late, his oldest daughter saw me. I woke Blake after she left the room and told him what had happened and in his sleepiness, I was never sure if he took it in. I kept repeating my concern to him but he seemed to dismiss it. I took it in, however, and knew we were at an important cross roads. To this day, I still worry over her psyche. I’ve run into his daughter a few times since, once in a restaurant bathroom and a couple of others at our children’s mutual school. Each time, her eyes became filled with horror and darted down as she scurried away. She knows, she remembers, and she is scarred.
I was also unable to meet Blake’s parents, who were a central part of his life. Blake idolized his father and quoted him so regularly that I longed to meet the great Max. I also ached to show his mother how much her son was loved. I believed that once she saw how happy her son was, she would come to accept me.
My own family was close, and when I discovered that Blake and his mother did not talk freely about their lives and feelings, I was confused. I did not understand how his mother could be neither aware nor interested in how poorly her son was treated at home, how sad he was living with such a cruel woman. To me, getting his parents to understand his predicament was simple: just tell them. I could not comprehend why it was so difficult to speak from the heart. I didn’t understand how anyone could fear the judgment and rejection of their own parents so keenly that they told the parents only what they thought they wanted heard. I truly thought that Blake’s mother would come to understand and want only happiness for her son. He shared with me the hurt and rejection he felt from his parents when they learned of our affair. He said he had never spoken about me to his father, who turned every visit into a business meeting. He said that his mother had disowned him over our involvement.
I couldn’t accept this. I was sure it was only a misunderstanding on his part. I thought they would realize how he had been living before he met me. I understood that they would be angry and disappointed by his behavior, that they would be hurt for Beth and have concern for the children. I even understood that they would feel fear of losing Beth from their life. Blake’s affair would make them uncomfortable and change the way that they all lived. I expected that, with their love of Beth, they would not want anything to change.
One summer when they visited Blake, he told me that he’d had a conversation with his mother. She talked about witnessing Beth’s ugliness to Blake and his children. His mother agreed Beth was acting unkind, he said. He had briefly spoken to her about our affair. But I came to feel that Blake had missed an opportunity to take the conversation deeper so that his mother might have come to understand how unhappy he really was. If he only could have opened to her about how he felt for me, maybe she would have begun to accept things. Still, I began to hope that she would open her heart to us because she had seen a bit of how her son was treated first hand.
Spring was upon us and Blake’s parents arrived from their winter home to spend their summer nearby. Emotions were high. Blake’s family ruled his financial life. He was a private investor who used his father’s pool of funds and connections in every facet of business. During their stay, Blake’s mother received an anonymous Easter card in the mail that commented on her son’s “hop-hop-hopping around.” Blake accused me of sending this card to his parents, which I found absurd. Up until that day, it never crossed my mind to tattle on a thirty-seven-year-old man. I never thought such a thing would affect him. It seemed juvenile and ludicrous. But he was coming to mistrust me, and now I realized the game playing I was up against. Beth was using manipulative tactics to make me seem either crazy or childish.
Because I hadn’t sent the card, I emphatically denied his accusation. I also tried to convince him to use logical thinking. There was only one person who could know the catastrophic affect such a stupid card would have on him, and it wasn’t me. But he still doubted me. I was beginning to feel that he was seeing me as Beth saw me. She was pounding the image of me as malicious into his mind.
For the first year of mine and Blake’s relationship, I had no contact with Beth. I only heard second-hand what she thought about things and what she said about me and my children. Blake kept telling me that she was a constant angry bitch, that she was mean to him and the children all the time. When I explained why she behaved that way, he always assured me that it wasn’t entirely due to our affair. He said she had been like that for years and nothing had changed. He said she brought up the topic of our affair in front of family and friends, even while the children were present, just to humiliate him, paint him as the asshole, and make herself the victim. But, he added, this only caused others to see her for who she really was.
I never could understand why she did not contact me, if for no other reason than to say, “Stay the fuck away from my husband.” How was it that she never wanted to ask me questions? Why wouldn’t she want to know the truth about what he told
her
versus what he was telling
me
? I could only assume that she did not want to know the truth. Knowing the truth meant she would have to act to preserve her self respect. But I also thought maybe, as long as she did not have to divorce him and leave her lifestyle, she did not care or want to know. Never once during that time did I see real evidence that she cared about him, only concern for loss of finances and social prestige.
There were times when I felt certain that he was telling Beth that he was not seeing me anymore, but we were still together everyday. It was obvious that I was still in the picture. She knew we had always stayed at the lake house. Why did she never show up to catch me there when she knew he was there but wouldn’t answer the phone? Even well after she knew we had alternative methods of contact, she was still snooping on his e-mail and phone records, constantly looking for evidence of our relationship. I thought the woman was insane or down right wearing the crown of fools. Now I have to wonder, though, if he wasn’t painting a picture of me as an ugly person out to get her. By not contacting me, maybe she thought that she was winning the battle against the “crazy woman.” Otherwise, it didn’t make sense for her to choose to search in places she was sure to be convinced we did not have contact, rather than taking action to search in places where she was sure to find real answers. It reminded me of the saying “A fool would rather be deceived than disturbed.”
I think that about a year’s worth of suffering might have been saved if she had called me. I would not have been able to bear hearing the voice of a broken woman when I was a major cause of her pain. I am certain that if she called me, crying, spilling her heart, begging to know why I would wreck her family and damage her children, I would have felt obligated to end the affair. If I wouldn’t have ended it, I would have suffered tremendously every day that I continued. It would have killed me to hear her despair. I would not have forgiven myself for aiding in causing it. Wanting to get out of a relationship with him would probably have been reinforced had I been told all of the dishonesty that was inevitably told about our relationship or all of the lies he told me about theirs. When she did speak to me for the first time, she didn’t seem to come from a broken place, however, but expressed concern only about her finances. This made me believe him all the more. It justified my fight for my true love. I saw her as pure selfish evil.
I guess I don’t understand her behavior because I have never been someone’s wife for fifteen years or more. Maybe what she really did was focus on her family, and I was the outsider who didn’t matter in the larger scheme of things. What mattered to her was what took place in the confines of her home, and that was where the problems needed to be addressed. If preserving her family was in fact what motivated her, then there is a redeemable quality there. I might admire her ability to handle things. I would not have been able to handle things as she did. I would have not rested until I had gotten to the bottom of it all.
Before Beth and I had our initial confrontation, I envisioned her as this dear, sweet woman whose life was wrapped around the domestic needs of her family. I tormented myself with this vision so much that it was a relief to me the day she became “that bitch.” I had phoned Blake an hour after a delightful breakfast together and was feeling mushy. I called him to share my happiness, only to be stunned when Beth answered the phone. She said some harsh words to him and I heard an incredible amount of chaos in the background. So I said to her, “Beth, why don’t we just talk?” I was thinking that at this point, there should be no more secrets. I had told Blake that I would never lie to her, so if we ever spoke, he should be prepared for the truth to be laid out. I had assumed that eventually she would contact me. If I had been in her place, I would have contacted the other woman a long time ago.
But her immediate response to me was, “Bitch, you will never have my money.” Forever changing my view of her reason for remaining in the marriage. It also gave me a way to justify our affair. As Beth felt challenged to win the war between us, she informed me, “I am powerful.” Then she started screaming at me and threatening to ruin him financially, destroy his relationship with his parents, take his children away, or move next door to wherever we lived. She promised to make my life a living hell. Unable to calm her, all I could say was, “Take the money. I only want him.” She mocked my comment and I surrendered to an inability to communicate, by hanging up.
The only time that I ever heard any affection from Beth about Blake was when I listened to Blake’s voicemail. The first time he played them for me as he retrieved them in my living room. I saw a tear fall from his eye and asked him if everything was all right. He played the messages back and groaned for the sadness and hurt she was feeling. I heard a woman in pain, but what she was saying always confused me and I still thought she was playing games. One time she said, “Are you over there because I can’t have sex right now?” Weren’t they not having sex long before I came along? He was “over there” every day.
He had told her he had feelings for me and that our relationship was clearly not just sexual. So what did she mean? I often wondered just what it was she thought was going on. There were a lot of crazy voicemails that made me ask him what he was telling her, but he always said, “I don’t know. Baby, the woman has lost her mind. She’s trying to mess with you, I told her I would be here, and she knows that we are together right now. She’s just trying to mess up our night.”
Other times when I heard him checking his voicemail, she would be saying something like, “Blake, I just found a generator for the motor home and there’s a coupon in the mail for thirty percent off.” Her voice sounded like everything was fine at home, like our relationship did not exist and they were moving forward with their marriage. I couldn’t figure it out. Hearing her made me furious. He and I were together so much, when did she have the time with him to be convinced that things were ok between them? How could she have come to that conclusion? How could she sound happy? The only explanation was that she
was
trying to mess with me.
Other times I spoke to her, I heard no emotion. It was almost as if I were a bee swarming her picnic table. No big deal. Something she tolerated that otherwise annoyed her. I told her things that he told me, such as their never having sex, and she just replied, “That’s not true.” But she never offered up anything to support what she believed was true. She never revealed that he was manipulating both of us. When he told me that she was only trying to get at me, it was easy to believe him. She never had an answer to my questions or said anything to expose him. His explanations made more sense.
I fought to maintain my sense of self even as I understood her hatred of me. In fact, I came to know intimate things about her and even developed an honest caring for her. Whenever I was thinking she was an ugly person, Blake shared a voicemail she had left him, knowing that we were together. I would listen to her cry and say things like, “Do you just want me to drive off a cliff and get out of your way?” I realized that she really was broken hearted, and almost every time I spoke to her, “I’m sorry,” was all that I could say. But I could never offer reason for why I couldn’t stop hurting her and thankfully, she never asked. All Blake had to do was walk away. But he refused to do so and said that he would rather be shot. His actions kept me in emotional turmoil and a constant state of confusion.
To me, Blake’s emotional state showed his desire to be here with me. But he would not formalize an end to the past. He would not divorce Beth. Soon I began to question myself. Was I making too much of a deal about a piece of paper? I had him. We shared everything. Is any relationship perfect? Perhaps this divorce limbo was the one imperfection of my relationship.
As the battle between two women who were both determined to come out victorious with her prize (Blake) in tow, I realized that both of Blake’s relationships added up to a “tripod.” All three legs were important to keeping the relationships together. When I pressured Blake to act on his decision to divorce Beth, thoughts of the past flooded his mind, and all he could think of were events of his fifteen-year history with her. Suddenly, all of her faults were forgotten, and all that he could see or recall were the beautiful things within her that had made him love her from the beginning. He became overwhelmed with guilt. He tried to make amends for the hurt he was causing her by doing more to help her in their home, staying home more often, and planning alone time together. He bought her gifts and took her on trips. This is when he started lying to me, most often using his children as his excuse.
The dynamics of our relationship changed. On one occasion, I received a phone call from my friend Tony, who said that Beth had been visiting one of his coworkers showing off her new wedding ring with its rather large stones. Freaked out, I immediately called Blake to check on this. He had stopped wearing his wedding ring some time ago and we were working on the whole division of assets thing. There must be some mistake, I told myself. She must be playing more of her games. He became pissed off that I would even buy the story from Tony and hung up on me, then later sent me an e-mail;
Beth’s
ring
,
was
biggie
sized
long
ago.
I
don’t
know
who
your
caller
is,
and
it
doesn’t
matter.
Diamonds
don’t
mean
shit.
What
does
seem
to
mean
something
is
her
ability
to
weather
this
storm
with
relative
ease.
It’s
hard
to
chill
when
I
have
based
my
whole
existence
on
something
that
the
other
person
doubts
from
me.
It’s
pretty
unsettling
and
I
feel
pretty
vulnerable
right
now.
Thanks
for
the
reassurance.