Being The Other Woman: Who we are, what every woman should know and how to avoid us (27 page)

Pam’s married man left his wife for her, and she stood beside him during all the brutal court battles, through the grief, anger, and hostility blasted at her by his wife, and through the difficulties of building a relationship with his children despite the influence of their mother. Knowing that he was enduring a tremendous amount of stress, she struggled to keep an element of happiness in her lover’s life. She held onto her own sanity by a thread. Once things settled down and a steady flow of normality came into their lives, he no longer needed her as his crutch. He left her to try the single life he had missed for so long.

Tonya married Geoff five years after his repeated promises to leave his wife. She planned the large wedding she had dreamt of since she was a child. To her disappointment, only a small number of those invited, attended.

Tonya, a mother of two small children, was forced to begin a career after her first husband passed away. Geoff owned the company which hired her. Geoff offered sympathy and gave her more work in his office to help her financially. Their work together turned into hours upon hours of time spent alone with one another, and a deeply rooted friendship developed between them. Tonya’s warm presence drew more consumers to Geoff’s company and she became an intricate part of his success.

Tonya is half Geoff’s age, intelligent and attractive. Not one year into their marriage, however, Tonya, sensitive to the signs of infidelity, became alert to subtle changes. Eventually, she discovered his attraction to prostitutes and caught him red handed.

Tonya was very open in sharing her story with me. Years of waiting for him to leave his wife as promised, had made her bitter and mistrustful. Her patient waiting for his promise to be fulfilled yielded a reality that was far from what she had dreamed. Geoff also agreed to speak with me about his marriage to Tonya, but when I asked him directly about his behavior, he denied any wrong doing. He then admitted to some of what Tonya said, but denied that actual cheating had happened. After our brief conversation ended, he dropped a wad of cash on my lap as contribution toward a charity I was involved in, and left.

Angela and James also married after a three-year affair. As real life set in, and James showed that he hadn’t changed, Angela, too, became filled with mistrust. She regularly drank away her depression. In the end, she found AA, another man, and had her own affair. She left James with half of the half of the assets he had left from his previous divorce.

Tory and Jessica married after their two year affair. They had a child and continued to live the fast life they had shared from the beginning. Friends called them the “lovey dovey couple,” as they seemed to always be so into one another and hopelessly in love. Until one evening, Jessica lost track of Tory during a Fourth of July party. She found him in the woods with one of her friends. They are now attempting an amicable separation and custody agreement while Tory secretly creeps out with a whole new girl.

Stephanie married Kyle after an eight-year affair. When she became pregnant two years later, Kyle tried to convince her to abort the child, saying that he already had two and “this was not the deal.” Abortion was much against Stephanie’s religious upbringing. She struggled with his heavy insistence, but in the end refused. Imagine her surprise when he informed her only a short time later that his ex-wife was pregnant with his child and keeping it, too. Stephanie now raises his child alone as Kyle continues to go back and forth between two women and still cannot make a choice.

I knew another woman, Arlene, who had spent years of her life feeling sad because her children were angry at her for abandoning their father and marrying Ted, his former business partner, who had also been married. “I know they’re still angry,” she said to me, “but what can I do? I’ve had twenty great years with Ted.” It seemed to me that this was one case for a successful affair turned into a marriage. Ted seemed to pour his life into Arlene and her youngest son. I did notice, however, that Arlene drank a lot, and her son shared with me his belief that she was an alcoholic. But she was always smiling, and Ted seemed to not be bothered by a thing. Arlene died in her early sixties of cancer. What shocked her children more than her remarriage or death was that no sooner was her casket lowered than Ted immediately informed her children never to contact him again and went about the business of making amends to his former family.

Lisa has been married to her lover for almost fourteen years. They met while working together—she was his assistant. She kept her job as his assistant for the next ten years until they had a child. She did not stay at home with her child. Instead, she began to focus on growing their business endeavors, and then she went on to establish and run a separate business she and her husband created together while he maintained and ran the original company. Shortly after she went to run the second office, and was no longer up his ass all of the time, he began a new relationship.

Nick and Cindy were both married to others and left their spouses to be together. To the outside world, they appear to have it all. They own a successful business, have children in whose lives they are actively involved, and hold regular social shindigs at one or another of their various homes. But Nick fills his time with work and hobbies that keep him away from the home as much as possible. When he’s absent too long, Cindy arrives at whatever location he is reported to be at, creates a scene, and leaves their crying and confused children with him. Cindy has confided in me that she has regular emotional breakdowns and has several prescriptions for anti-depressants. Nick confided that he has had several flings since they married.

Scott left his wife for Tammy a year into their affair, but Tammy was never able to enjoy being his partner. She was always seen as a bad person, and Scott’s mother always referred to her as “the home wrecker” and kept her out of family gatherings. Scott’s children were also coaxed by his ex-wife to say hurtful things to Tammy. She and Scott had a son together and she spent ten years in this painful relationship. He cheated on her numerous times, but she never left him. She didn’t want people to think she had received what was due to her. Her close friends never understood why she stayed, or even why she had allowed herself to get involved with him to begin with. Shortly after their son was born, Scott moved in with a new girlfriend, LeAnn, who continuously engages in hostile arguments with Tammy during child drop-off and pick-up. LeAnn taunts her by saying she deserves whatever she gets because she was Scott’s mistress who caused his former wife so much misery. Nine months after Scott’s first wife died an early death of cancer, I received a letter from Tammy:

I
cried
with
disbelief
when
I
read
the
article
in
the
newspaper,
then
twenty
minutes
later
it
hit
me!
Oh
my
God!
All
of
the
years
she
and
I
fought,
and
for
what?
A
man
that
screwed
us
both.
He
wasn’t
worth
it,
that’s
for
sure.
I
think
of
this
story
and
it’s
kind
of
funny
because
I
was
the
other
woman
and
got
all
of
the
shit,
and
now
LeAnn
harasses
me
and
feels
the
same
things.
LeAnn
feels
the
same
way
that
I
did
about
Kary.
Now
I
am
Scott’s
ex
and
going
through
the
very
same
thing.
I
felt
the
same
about
Scott’s
wife.
It’s
ridiculous
in
the
end.

While researching the outcome of relationships where the husband has left his wife for the other woman I found consistently that each woman had similar emotions in the end.

In summary, all spoke of difficulties integrating themselves into his life with extended family. Most were not accepted by his parents or friends and all were left to bare the blame of his failed marriage. Many felt hurt and responsible for the pain their affair caused the husband, who suffered over children who refused to communicate with their father because of his new spouse. They talked about how heart wrenching it was to watch their lover experience torture in his decision to leave, and that it was brutal to watch the man you love suffer. They spoke of tension in the new marriage as a result of emotional problems directly linked to the first failed marriage. I found time and again comments made by the new spouse such as “I don’t know that I will ever be able to forgive myself for the pain that I caused his first wife.” They believe they will never be able to get over hurting other people. They spoke of ruined reputations and being treated as if it were she who chased him and ruined his marriage, as if he had no blame for the affair. Unrelenting ridicule and blame from society. Lying will always overshadow everything else as far as other people are concerned, no matter how long you are together, they say. And never in their wildest dreams would they have guessed the magnitude of misery they would be made to endure.

These other women-turned-wives seem to side with psychological warnings after they have married their affair partner. They say that they realize now that they had idealized the relationship and felt ecstasy in a love without the burdens of responsibility. They know now that they were living in a constant daydream because keeping their relationship a secret lead to further romanticizing it, because in the absence of being able to talk about it, all they could do was think about it. Originally, they believed their affair partner to encapsulate everything they ever wanted and then after marriage to their affair partner, their reasons for appreciating the relationship fizzled out. These new wives struggled with finding balance in maintaining a sense of self while trying to avoid feelings of being indebted to him for the rest of their lives for what he endured to be with them. They had adopted feelings that they unduly owed him and found no equality in the relationship.

In divorces where young children were involved, mistress/wives spoke of the contact they were forced to have with a woman (the former wife) who blames the new wife for ruining her life. Saying that the former wife now has a good part of the rest of their lives to affect the other woman. As one woman put it “there will be times when you feel like every hound in hell is nipping at your heels.”

A point that I have often tried to make to men is that every woman is some father’s little girl. What would they want their daughters to experience? What are the guys who stray teaching their children? It’s no secret that girls often marry men who resemble Daddy, and so I asked Blake if our situation was what he wanted for his daughters. Women who tolerate serial affairs have daughters who learn to tolerate them. Daughters can learn to gravitate toward men who behave like their father. Cheating men teach their children to deceive. Their sons learn to devalue women. Blake agreed; he would never want someone like himself for his daughters.

Sadly enough, children are often stuck in the center of the tug of war of infidelity, especially when the husband leaves his wife for the other woman. The anger between the parties runs so deep that neither husband nor wife can see beyond red. They don’t realize who is really getting hurt. Their hatred has long-term effects on their children.