Being The Other Woman: Who we are, what every woman should know and how to avoid us (30 page)

Shane didn’t focus on all of the horrible things that I experienced with Blake that caused me to leave the relationship, instead he honed in on all I had tolerated. To Shane this said I must have really loved Blake a lot. I must have loved Blake
more
than I loved him. He often asked me what power Blake had over me. He obsessed over my past. So rather than enjoy a developing relationship with each other, Shane became insecure of what must have existed between Blake and I and it began to tear at our relationship quickly. Shane kept bringing up the topic of my past, and he and I began to argue more and more. I kept fighting to keep us together. I couldn’t bear to appear rejected again before the public who was so eager to judge me. Shane kept testing what I would put up with in order to prove to himself that I really cared. Essentially, causing me to endure an equal hell, if not greater, then I had with Blake. I had completely resolved that my relationship with Blake was a mistake, but there were times that I wondered in anger if it might not make sense to return to that relationship. After all, no one seemed to be releasing me from it and it was looking like there was a pretty good chance I’d be spending the rest of my life paying for the relationship with Blake anyway. His part in my life wouldn’t die, even well after it was dead to me.

As time went on, Shane kept our relationship very low key, only seeing me at his home and rarely doing things with me in public. I believed this was largely due to the constant interference by the public. I figured he thought it seemed easier to stay out of their view. Again, I was a secret, prolonging all that I had felt and suffered in an affair. On his more forgiving days, Shane would say, “It’s hard for me to understand because I don’t see it in you. I just can’t see you getting into that situation, so it sounds like a bunch of excuses to me. At the end of the day, you knew he was married going into it.” Essentially, by being honest about my past, I had guaranteed the disrespect of future partners and led them to believe that I would always put up with bullshit because I had done so once before. It was one of those famous vicious circles.

I was afraid that if I left Shane, it would only solidify the public belief and also my private one, which was I didn’t have what it took to create a long term relationship. I thought everyone would think I was one of those women who went from one bad thing to the next, but she herself was always the real problem. No one would believe my side of the story; I learned this from the face puncher. Since Shane was a pretty good story-teller himself, I knew he would blast me publicly, saying whatever fed his ego and he’d come out on top. After all, he already had a public ready to feed him examples he could use and gobble up anything he dished out.

That began a whole new set of issues. I’ll be damned, I said to myself, if another asshole comes out smelling like roses at my expense. At the same time, I held onto the belief that once Shane became confident of my love, he would become all of the things that I had originally thought he could be. I was locked into a battle to prove something, to whom I don’t know; maybe myself, Blake, Beth or the public in general. Whoever it was, I was fighting to the death. I could no longer remember what it was like to be shown love and affection, to have someone do thoughtful things for me, even to be an intimate friend. I went from one one-sided relationship right into another. Catering again to one man’s needs more than my own. Perhaps this was my own self-inflicted punishment for having an affair. I went from being a confident woman who didn’t care much about the opinions of others to being consumed by and hostage to them. I came to believe that unless I moved to another state to get away from my past that I would never survive. Remember the ratty cabin I’d hoped to find an idyllic existence in? I went from one “fixer upper” to an undeveloped prefab that came without the right instructions. Only it was missing the good guy who purely loved me for just being me and my bedfellow became my worst enemy.

Shane played soccer in a men’s league in the summer. I loved to go to the games, but my feelings of not being welcome kept me sitting alone in the stands and not making new friends with the other girlfriends, as I would have done before my affair with Blake. I had always been one of the popular girls, the girl with the right friends in the right places, the girl who moved in and out of social networks with ease. Suddenly, instead of being the vivacious, youthful Chatty Cathy, I was feeling insecure, unattractive, reclusive, and both the proverbial and literal girl alone in the stands.

What never left me was the feeling of discomfort whenever I was out. When I entered a room, I couldn’t help wonder who knows about my affair and who is talking about me behind my back. I had the ever-present feeling of being harshly judged and unwelcomed. When I met people, I no longer trusted them at face value as I had before. Before my affair, when others were kind to me, I always just assumed it was because they were nice people or that they liked me. I simply believed in and saw the best in people. I learned to believe that just because I had a delightful conversation with someone, it didn’t mean the conversation meant as much to the other person as it did me. I’ve always loved people and back in the day became a loyal friend quite easily—fighting loyal! Thus I am sensitive when someone turns against me, so my circle of friends became small and very select. Recovering from the affects of an affair leaves the other woman with a constant sense of skepticism. She is cognizant of the shell around her.

As had happened in my affair with Blake, when I couldn’t engage with my potential in-laws, Shane’s parents refused to meet me or open themselves to our relationship. His whole family believed what they were hearing about “that woman” Shane had fallen for. Family has always been extremely important to me. As the oldest of eight children, with enough nieces and nephews to fill a classroom, I find no greater joy than connecting with family. I have never imagined a future without a mother-in-law who would drink coffee with me or a father-in-law who loved me like a daughter. In my affair with Blake, that fantasy had been destroyed. It was something I eagerly welcomed when I met Shane. Shane was very close to his family and leaned heavily on them for all of life’s decisions. His dependence on them led to much tension between us, as he was caught in the middle with strong feelings for two parties who were opposed. He had to choose things such as which of us he would spend his birthday with. He had to keep secret the plans he had with either me or his family so no one would feel hurt or uninvited. They were constantly at him to depart from the trouble and baggage they perceived me to carry. I was constantly at him to talk them through things, to defend me and tell them who I really was against the ugly rumors. Instead, he used the discord to align with them when he was displeased with me, where he was sure to have an agreeing sounding board from those who were ill equipped to offer him good advice.

To everyone’s credit, years later we dropped our blazing guns, met the challenge head on, built a relationship and grew to love and adore each other. Some of Shane’s long-time friends never did come to accept me or open themselves to get to know me. Those friendships remained interference throughout the duration of our relationship. But other friends shared vacations with us, as well as other great experiences. They opened their hearts, for which I am grateful.

Though the past is understood and forgotten with Shane’s family and friends, and we built memories of wonderful times together, we would have been saved a lot of emotional hurts, anxiety, and tumult if the affair with Blake had never existed. In fact, the affair itself ensured that Shane and I never stood a chance of survival.

I was not the only one who endured these after affair hardships; Sasha also endured more than she could bear when she ended her affair. Because hers was slightly less public than mine and more easily left to rumors, she was able to either evade or lie. She quickly entered into a relationship with a man completely opposite of everything she had previously looked for. This was a man who was entirely irresponsible and mooched off her for more than a year. Living with a man who was sweet but in no way right for her, Sasha went into another bad situation. I couldn’t understand it, but my affair had not ended yet to be sure I would. I had no idea why she continued to put up with the guy. He had nothing to offer her. But as she struggled with the relationship and a whole new bag of issues, she was still perceived as a “gold digging whore” as a result of her affair with a successful man. Because the truth was never fully revealed, people made it a part-time job to seek discovery and fill in the missing pieces with their own tall tales. Sasha, who looked everywhere to find the right relationship for herself, one in which she could settle down and have a child, found herself in inescapable turmoil with each new partner. Everyone saw her as a woman she was not, and she was never able to open herself to complete honesty with her new lover. She was convinced he would reject her if she were to fess up the truth of her past. Eventually, she relocated to another state, where, I am happy to say, she did in fact find Mr. Wonderful and gave birth to a beautiful daughter. She can speak to me about her past with him sitting next to her, and I love him for loving her in spite of that past. Though this is a happy ending, Sasha does still feel sad that she had to leave her home town and large family in order to have peace. Sasha’s daughter will not be blessed with aunties, uncles, and grandma doting upon her regularly the way they do her cousins.

Another woman, Maria, had an affair with a business associate who assured her that his love was endless. Even while she was tossing her reputation and self-esteem away, she began to notice changes in him that made her think he might be being untrue to her as well as his wife. She began investigating (basically, she tapped into his voicemail), and when she confirmed her intuition, she blew up in a fit of rage and broke it off. To date, she is still reclusive and presents a hard exterior to the public that considers her crazy because of her investigation. She does not have a love life, let alone much of a social life. Her former lover, John, has continued to have affair after affair with other “disgraces.” While his peers call him a dirty dog, they continue to do business with him and invite him into their social clubs. He is still socially accepted.

Jackie, whose relationship with her family impressed me as being very close, became an outcaste as a result of her affair with Brian. She began dating him just after he separated from his wife after the wife informed him that she was leaving him for another man. Once Brian’s wife left him, however, she learned that her lover did not want her anymore, so, wanting to repair the marriage, she went back to Brian. But Brian vacillated between his wife and Jackie. He thought it was right for his children that he put some effort into keeping the marriage together. He kept Jackie on the side as the one he “really loved.” Brian’s wife, of course, told everyone who would listen what a whore and awful person Jackie was, and once even entered Jackie’s place of business to speak ill of her. This woman who had left her husband went as far as to befriend Jackie’s family, casting herself as the victim of this tangle of affairs. Jackie’s family rejected her because she didn’t immediately step out of the way so Brian could repair his marriage. At the same time, Brian was giving her a completely different story. And lest we forget, Jackie wasn’t the only one keeping him from working on his marriage. Eventually after the affair dragged her through hell, she ended it. But what she endured was no different from what any other woman endured in public judgment, abandonment by people she loved, and deep pain that she dealt with all by herself.

Barb, who had stuck things out with Troy until he finally left his wife and then, when she discovered him cheating on her, left him, rarely goes out in public. When I hear others speak of her, most people say she got what she deserved. She is an attractive woman, and so when she does go out, she is noticed, and people immediately fill the ears of any man who is attracted to her with rumored stories, and twisted gossip. They attack her from every angle, disparaging her mothering skills and speaking of her as if she doesn’t even love her own child. Barb’s life revolves around her son. She is an excellent mother. Since she ended her relationship with Troy, she has not exposed herself to the possibility of a new relationship. She is reclusive and spends her time working or being with her son, and nothing else. She is always alone.

It took years for Angela, but eventually she found herself with a new group of friends. She still hides from her old social groups, and she told me about her fears that her new group might hear the old rumors. She hopes she has created in her new life friends who will let her leave it all behind because they were not a part of that time in her life. She is as happy as she believes she can be, given the circumstances, but she still feels the ugliness when she runs into anyone who knew of her back then.

A great number of other women I’ve talked to have long since relocated to other states in hopes of starting over. One day I spoke to my friend Janet, whose husband had an affair. “Kelly is not welcome in our community,” she told me. “I don’t think that there is one single thing that she could do to change people’s opinion of her. People will never let go of her past. They’ll never forgive her. If she wants a clean slate, she needs to leave town.” Janet believes that Kelly has paid a much greater price than her husband, Ian, did. Whereas Kelly was hurt and remains ostracized, Janet and Ian receive community support.

The women I spoke to all feel angry, hurt, and cheated of time. They believe it is only natural for men to try to deceive them. “No one is trustworthy,” they say.

Today I am far more private and less of the socialite I used to be. A part of me misses the events, the parties, and the functions. I have always been one to say, “The more, the merrier.” Socializing has always given me energy and uplifted me. I love to be around groups of conversing people floating about in laughter and fun.