Being The Other Woman: Who we are, what every woman should know and how to avoid us (7 page)

My former husband was an alcoholic. I stayed miserably married to him far longer than I should have because I knew that my leaving would devastate him. It is a hard thing to get around, and so I understood. Probably to my own downfall I understood emotional pain, and I did not want to make Beth miserable any longer. I wanted no part in additional pain, heartbreak or divorce. I did not want to hurt Blake’s children or rob them of their right to a two-parent home. I had experienced being cheated on myself and wished it on no one. I was willing to get out of the way, especially if he had doubts, but he begged me not to leave him and fought vivaciously to keep me in his life which kept me in a constant state of emotional and mental turmoil.

Finally, I suggested to Blake that he take some time to himself to really think through what his heart was telling him. Go away someplace alone, I told him, away from guilt, sadness, etc., away from others who were pushing their opinions on him. I believed that if he were able to just be alone with his thoughts, the answer would be clear. I wanted him to realize that the grass was not necessarily greener on the other side, that every relationship takes work, and that I was not without faults of my own. I did not want the pressure of being thought his life saver. I wanted him to be sure that he was leaving because he was no longer happy in his marriage, that he believed in his heart that he could never be happy in his marriage, that he had no desire to put effort into making his marriage work. I told him he needed to be certain that he was out of his marriage not because he had created a grandiose vision of something better without problems or argument but because he was sure that he did not feel he owed it to his wife and children to work on the marriage. I wanted him to be sure that he wanted to leave, regardless as to if I would be there waiting in the wings or not.

Blake agreed that getting away would be good for him. He said he was going alone to his condo at the ski resort for a few days.

Blake spent several days in seclusion and we kept our contact minimal. I received a call from him one afternoon where he sounded desperate. He asked me to drive down and see him. He had things he needed to talk to me about, feelings that he had come to realize. He also had a serious topic to discuss. Fearful and hopeful at the same time, I drove to his condo.

When I arrived, Blake set in front of me a contract that Beth had prepared for him to sign. It seemed that Beth had also been spending time reading self-help books on affairs and had come across a book that suggested separating under agreed-upon terms and in writing. It seemed absurd to me that she would put any faith in his agreeing to a contract that ordered him to stay away from me, when their very marriage license which he also signed did not cause him restraint. One condition of Beth’s contract was that Blake would refuse to see me. Another was that he would not live in their lake home (which she referred to as our “love nest”) during their separation. I told Blake that I didn’t have a problem with any of the terms to the contract, except for the condition barring his children from seeing him unless she was present. I felt that was blackmail. If he were to really have time to think and feel out the life of a divorced man, I thought, then he should experience it realistically, which included having full responsibility for his children while they were with him.

Blake was not pleased with my response to the contract. He was hoping that I would protest the whole thing. Then he said he refused to sign it, as he would not lie to her and lead her to believe that I was not still in the picture. With that, he threw the paper away, and said that he did not need anymore time away from me. What he needed was time away from her. We continued to discuss the contract for several days until Blake had the brilliant idea of requesting a contract from
me
specifying our expectations and needs from each other. He thought that our relationship was the one that was starting to slip because of all the mess surrounding us and that we needed to clarify and define things to each other. So I prepared a short contract that asked him to create a visitation agreement with Beth concerning his children. I did not stipulate a no-contact clause for either Beth or I, but I thought it would be better if he spent his evenings alone in thought so he could determine the direction he wanted for his future. At Blake’s request, I agreed to place my faith and trust in the here and now, promised to be confident regarding our relationship (my insecurity of the situation bothered him) and agreed not to discuss our relationship with friends or family members who he felt influenced and affected my thinking and my emotional state. Though he said he agreed to my contract, he never did hand me a signed copy. I can only assume he did the same with Beth’s. Still, the contract between Blake and Beth gave us more uninterrupted time together because he now lived full-time in another home that was a much easier commute for me than the lake house she had banned us from.

This may sound odd, but my instincts with Blake were very intense and accurate. While he was spending his time alone, one night I suddenly had the sensation that he was not in the state. I just knew that he was not nearby I could feel it. I sent him an e-mail saying, “Hope you’re enjoying your trip,” and a little while later, my phone started ringing repeatedly. I knew then that my instinct was correct. I was so devastated that he’d travel without telling me that I couldn’t find it in me to answer the phone. He left me several voicemails “confessing” that Beth had booked him a trip to San Francisco to get away and think. She had then decided to go herself, he said, changing her motivation into a post-anniversary trip so she could make things right and work on their marriage. He said he didn’t know what to do. He’d been afraid to tell me because he knew I would be upset. It wasn’t his plan, he protested; she’d just shown up.

He was right, of course. I was upset. I refused to speak to him. I was of the opinion that he had made a choice, and I was determined to hold him to it. If he was not going to have the balls to stand by his choice of one or the other, then one of us was going to have to take control of our lives. I could not be the “other woman” forever. I could not continue to disgrace myself like this. I could not live with the guilt and the embarrassment. I could not hurt another person in this way anymore. I had allowed myself to accept less than I deserve, and now I was disgusted with myself for becoming an “on-the-side tramp.” I had lost my self-respect. After telling me that he did not love her as he used to, he had left me to take a “repair-the-marriage” trip with his wife. He had told me that he wanted to spend his life with me, that he had made a commitment to me during the time he had been alone with his thoughts. I concluded that he was lying, that he had made a choice he wasn’t telling me the truth about. I was devastated. And I was forced to accept the facts he had shown by his actions.

My refusal to take his calls only landed him right smack in my office lobby, begging for an opportunity to be heard. Fearing we were drawing attention, I took him to the building atrium and sat with him while he tried to explain away his trip to San Francisco. He told me he had not made up his mind to be with Beth. That was not what he wanted. He had been tricked. She was trying to come between us. She was putting forth great effort to make me go away and he argued that I was letting her win. He began to paint her as a deviant; my love now became a challenge to win him away from a woman who did not love him but just hated to lose anything, I thought it was all just her ego. Beth was the villain.

At that point, he took out a pen and wrote out a contract to me:

From
this
date
forward,
he wrote,
I
promise
to
always
speak
the
entire
truth,
no
matter
what
the
truth
may
be
or
how
reluctant
I
am
to
tell
it
for
whatever
reason.
Not
only
will
I
tell
the
entire
truth,
but
if
additional
or
supplemental
information
becomes
known,
the
whole
truth
will
from
this
time
forward
include
this
additional
information.”

He promised that he would see an attorney, and he said he wanted me there with him so I would know he was being proactive in what he was telling me. He also promised that he would never take a vacation with Beth again and that he would separate from her within an allotted time. The minor delay was due to his masterminding the details of his plans to dissolve the marriage by finding ways to work around many financial complications, so that she could not ruin him financially or destroy his relationship with his children. Our big concern was Beth holding a power of attorney to all of his business dealings. He needed to remove that concern. He told me he believed that by dealing gently with her, he could forestall potential disaster. “Trust me, I know how to handle things in my marriage,” he said. “This is going to work.”

He wanted to “get away from all of this,” he said. He wanted us to take another vacation together. The last month had been hell on both of us, and he wanted us to decompress and be happy together like we had been before. He bought tickets to Aruba and the Dominican Republic, with a one day stay over in Puerto Rico, with the idea that we would have a three-stop tradition following on from our trip to Europe. He wanted us to get our magic back, to save what was slipping from our fingers. “I need this,” he said. “We need this. You’ll see. Let’s just go be us and have fun,” he begged.

So I went, but this time my thoughts were far from being a non-saint as they had been when leaving to Rome, they were on my love for a man who clearly did
not
want me out of his life. This vacation together was about holding on to my last ounce of hope that I had truly found the love of my life, my hope that he truly had found his love. I couldn’t remember why I had thought about giving that up! I just wanted to be alone where we could lose ourselves in each other again.

We went together to meet with an attorney, a woman reputed to be a tigress, a few days before leaving for this vacation. She prepared him for what was to come: a 60/40 asset division and joint custody. While counseling him, she told him how Beth would be responding to the divorce because he was leaving her for “that whore.” We sat there listening to the attorney give us examples of what to expect from Beth as she use the “whore” innuendo to the point of an obvious emotional attachment to our situation. It was apparent to us that she too shared the belief that Beth had about me being a whore. We paid her $375 per hour fee to insult me; Blake gave her his income and asset documentation and then told her we would contact her upon our return. We were both unsure of her ability to represent him to her fullest capacity, as we suspected this case might be a personal issue with her that she had negatively prejudged.

Common sense flies out the door in situations like ours. The other woman hears frequent warnings, like “Once a cheater, always a cheater,” “You’ll be in her shoes as soon as a younger model appears,” and “He’ll just keep trading in the car.” The other woman grapples with facts that contradict her lover’s actions.

It’s like preparing for a hurricane. We batten down the hatches and close ourselves off from the outside. We board up our windows and imprison ourselves, all the while believing we are protecting ourselves from what should be a temporary storm. Our hope is that we will emerge and restart our lives in an unchanged environment. As the storm nears and the warnings sound, we cling to our loved one, believing that all that matters is what is here in our shelter. Vulnerable and unable to control what’s happening outside, we pour out our hearts to one another and try to say everything we want each other to remember. But we are unable to predict precisely where the storm will hit, and so we are left with nothing but hope. We close our eyes, and as the wind starts to beat against our sanctuary, we cannot ignore it. We are being attacked. Such is the war within the heart and soul of the other woman. As the weather forecasters predict the fate of the house on the shore, so do those who judge us predict what will inevitably happen to us. What they predict, of course, is disaster. But we numb ourselves to their warnings. We fight to prove them wrong. Victory is now our only choice.