Read Being The Other Woman: Who we are, what every woman should know and how to avoid us Online
Authors: Micalle A. Culver
If he can save himself the hassle of divorce and still sleep with other women, why wouldn’t he? If he does finally leave, he doesn’t change and repeats the relationship with the next woman. Serial cheaters leave bitter women behind, women who hung in there time and again only to be repeatedly devastated. Heartbroken “girlfriends” who ignored every bit of common sense suffer damaging blows to their self-esteem and their reputations. They suffer rejection and hurt because they chose to love someone who did not honor or appreciate them. These men received love and returned only pain.
A friend who is a therapist once said to me, “I want you to do something you have never done before. The next time you commit the large act of being human and say or do something stupid, hurt someone unintentionally, make a fool of yourself, or whatever it is that isn’t perfect, I want you to say a word you have never uttered.” With this, she leaned in close to my ear and whispered. ~ “
Oops!
”
Since then I have always attempted to handle my mistakes with a smiling “oopsy poopsy.” People find humor in honesty, and a sort of bond is made in groups who feel released from the confines of perfection.
Being the other woman will never receive smiles, laughter or acceptance. Even if you’ve made the choice to walk away, rectify your error, and ask for forgiveness of any fashion, immediately or years later, you may as well carry a flag the size of a sail exclaiming “Town Slut.”
I recall reading in one of those books on affairs that blanketed my bedroom floor during my relationship with Blake, that those who are engaged in an affair believe themselves to be in secret and invisible to the eyes of those around them. In reality, most are suspicious of the affairs occurrence almost immediately. Unfortunately, I read this only after discovering it to be true. Once stamped as The Other Woman, her entire social life changes. Rumors and gossip swarm, worse than any day experienced in high school. You find yourself in a world you never imagined existed, the only world you are truly welcome in.
Yes, in fact, the eyes do open upon eating the forbidden fruit. Other mistresses who knew I was once one of them began to confide their stories and experiences to me. They were seeking answers, direction, support and understanding. But, the stories I heard sickened me and nearly destroyed my ability to believe in love at all. I couldn’t believe how ruthless and pathological some of these married men were. The stories they told their wives and lovers were whispered to them by the devil himself. I couldn’t wrap my mind around the depth of their trickery, their blatant disregard to the emotional damage they were causing. I started to think that it was impossible to detect their deceit. I started to think deceit was part of every male’s DNA. I came to believe that it was not a matter of
if
a man would stray but
when
. Having such a brutal experience of my own to relate to, I began to see all men as the same. Now I am wiser, I thought. The veil has been pulled from my eyes. I became skeptical and bitter. When you think that all men are cheaters, liars, and assholes, you don’t bother screening for a good one. Rather you focus on being alert to it happening, essentially attracting yourself to bad situations which only reaffirm the belief; all men are cheaters, liars and assholes.
While in the midst of my affair and after it ended, friends frequently reported to me rumors they’d hear about me from the lips of individuals whose names I did not even recognize. Going on a date only ensured that the man I was with would be approached with disparaging information as to the individual he had innocently stumbled upon. The desire others had to negatively penetrate my life was astounding.
Being the other woman thickens your skin. You make a conscious decision to choose love over public scrutiny. What is unexpected is that when we let our past go, others do not. Nosy gossips seek raw meat like vultures. Looking for something to make their life more interesting, they invade your entire world. You are a representative of the greatest evil married women fear, and fear activates their radar.
Women who are, or have been, the other woman will lack social comfort. If I shared a wonderful conversation with a woman on one occasion and in the future she seemed brief, I assumed she learned my history. It feels as though, because you loved one man who wore a gold band, you are perceived to want them all. Whether it was real or imagined, when I entered a room, I saw women make a point to cling to their significant other and give me looks as if to say, “That’s right, bitch. He’s mine and don’t you dare touch him.” When I was introduced to a man’s wife or girlfriend, it seemed she would speak at ridiculous length about their perfect lives together, making sure that I was fully aware of their partnership. Husbands who knew me on a personal or business level and shared a comfortable relationship with me appeared to visibly sweat under the collars if I stopped to chat for a moment in public if their spouses were near. I felt I could see the hidden thoughts of those in my presence at all times. Feigning happiness was a very difficult task and many nights I cried myself to sleep in the abyss of rejected emotions.
Each and every woman I have encountered who has shared with me the truth of an affair in her life has also faced the “scandalous bitch” charge from those who knew she once was the other woman. Each one who moved on with a new partner suffered the hurt of being with a man who openly or privately questioned her character and sincerity because she could “do that.”
Once, I attended a barbeque at the home of some new friends. I met a woman who had an affair more than eight years ago. When this woman entered the room, a man approached me just to tell me what a “conniving bitch” she was and how she “caused his buddy a ton of troubles” as a result of having an affair with the man, who “almost left his wife for her.” I had to wonder what the buddy’s part in all this was and why, eight years later, she was still the solitary conniving bitch of a two party saga? “I was an idiot,” she shared with me. “I believed we’d be together. When it ended, though, I felt relief. I was free, no longer hiding an ugly secret. I could now love in public,” she said. “But instead, I suffered extreme embarrassment and no freedom from the opinions of others. It has taken many years to heal from the after affects of my affair.”
The other woman is always given the entire blame for the affair. I’m not saying the other woman is blameless by any stretch of the imagination. I’m simply saying the habit of being harder on any part a woman takes in cheating is quite peculiar, especially given the fact that it takes two to tango.
Ending my affair with Blake far from ended the suffering and drama. This was aided by the small town populated with 300,000 in which we live and the constant chance of Blake’s presence. For many years following our break up, if I should see him in a public place and say hello, or even be within a mile of him on the same road, rumors resurfaced instantly that we were an item again. Our social network was suspicious of clandestine activity between us long after our affair ended.
Though time has caused much of the era to be forgotten, it still surfaces every now and again. On a small scale, others still associate me to him. In the last year, I received a call from an acquaintance who planned to bid in a charity auction on a donated week’s stay in Blake’s new home in Aruba. Assuming that I had spent a substantial amount of time in the home, this man wanted to know if the minimum bid was worth it. There are more frequent occasions where I receive phone calls from people who wish to do business with Blake and phone me to gain strategic advantage or get my advice on how to use his services. Others phone who are knee-deep in business with him and hope I’ll serve as a buffer to save them from their poor decisions or indebtedness to him. These are the least of my worries, but the constant reminders that people have not forgotten my past connection with Blake.
On a much more grand scale, however, was the interference I received when I attempted to move on with my life the first few years after our affair ended. Especially when I hit the dating scene again. No sooner did I go on a date with a prospective interest and he was inevitably “warned” about me. Once I dated a man who was bombarded so heavily by a group of men warning him of my intent to harm him, that he became so paranoid and insecure for what I might do to break his heart. He began to see things that did not exist. One evening, while this man and I were enjoying a glass of wine together at a local restaurant, my attorney entered and greeted me with a hug and peck on the cheek. In the minute it took me to ask my associate how his life had been treating him, my date abandoned me. I had to take a cab back to his home to retrieve my car. When I arrived, he jumped in my passenger seat and, in a fit of hysteria, said I had kissed my attorney before his eyes and began to sock himself right in the face while making suicidal type comments.
Obviously, this was not a stable situation and so as level headed as possible, I demanded his exit of my vehicle and I left. I shared this occurrence only with my friend Sasha and my attorney whom I was accused of kissing, for the sake of venting. Then I went on with my life. It was later reported to me that my date had informed several mutual acquaintances that I had “gone crazy,” and that was why he had stopped dating me. This story was largely believed because after all… . I am “that girl.”
It seems that falling in love with the forbidden (that is, a married man) makes you a psychotic woman who wants to harm and break the heart of every man you dare have dinner with. As I quickly learned, once you have become the other woman, anyone can say anything about you and it is believed. Don’t bother trying to set the record straight. If you were ever in your life the other woman, you are forever a conniving, manipulative liar.
I met another man at an event and shared a fabulous first connection. When he asked to see me again, I excitedly gave him my phone number. We had lunch soon after, plus some phone conversations in which we planned a date after his return from an out-of-town sporting event. But I never heard from him again. Was it something I said? I wondered. I had not caught that. I thought that our lunch had gone fabulously. Or was it something he had heard about me? Eventually I ran into him and had a wind of gut. I asked him why I had not heard from him. He was very forward in letting me know that it was a result of rumors he heard, from “this incestuous little gossiping town.” He had opted not to risk an involvement with me.
Soon enough, I got wise. The next time I met a new Prince Charming thinking of sweeping me off my feet, I began to disclose right up front what he was up against. They took it as a bit of a macho challenge. This worked to my favor (at least I thought so), and I entered into a long term relationship. Shane was quickly and dutifully warned, just like the others, as were his parents and several of his close and long time friends. They were told tales about my life. Some stories were true, but others were horribly twisted and most were outright bullshit.
Nonetheless, each of Shane’s friends and acquaintances began to caution him so greatly that he himself began to question if I were who I seemed. He began to constantly berate me about having been involved with a married man in the past and constantly telling me how poorly I was thought of by others. Our dates soon turned into interrogation sessions. He wanted the “real facts” pertaining to this or that story he’d been told by someone. He doubted things I had honestly and privately shared with him. His constant and prompt disclosure of nasty things he was hearing about me nearly caused me a mental breakdown. I began to dread our daily lunches. Instead of devouring blackened halibut, I’d be swallowing tears and attempting to avoid public viewing of the black waterfall flowing from my eyes. I tired quickly of crying in defense and soon did the typical woman thing: I sought therapy to figure out how to fix
myself
of the negativity he was constantly dishing me about my character.
In my therapy, I did find epiphanies sprinkled in between a few of my $150 sessions. They are as follows:
1) Don’t throw your pearls before swine. In other words, don’t give the best of what you’ve got to pigs who roll around in mud.
2) Women don’t always have relationships with men who resemble their father. They can also have them with those who resemble the parent they have the most unresolved issues with. Sorry, Mom, but this now explains to me why the men I’ve always dated are so damn emotional and stubborn and also let me know apparently we have a few issues to resolve.
3) Finally—and this should be obvious—why would you want to spend your life with a man who does not uplift you? If someone makes you feel bad, it’s your choice to keep letting them. The
only
reason to share a life with someone is to
share
authentic
love
. Love is about support when you haven’t the strength to stand, encouragement when standing in the sea of self doubt, and sharing your life with someone who adds vitality. I handled my therapist’s advice about my relationship. However, as most women do, I decided that I knew better than my therapist. It was my relationship, and she just didn’t get it. I convinced myself that if I fixed myself,
he
would get better. Have you ever noticed that when there are relationship problems, it’s usually women who seek therapy? This says a lot about the responsibility we women take for the state of our relationships.
The real problem was that I felt that I could not get away from being made to feel bad about myself. I was in a cycle of trying to prove that I was trustworthy and that everything inside me was not malicious and evil. Shane became “they” to me, and through him I tried to mend what I had destroyed in my life. Because personal defense was ineffective, I hoped that he would, out of love for me, defend the character he knew. Instead, he was drawn to the gossip and thought it was his duty to tell me about it—daily. His reaction both perpetuated my old problems of being made to feel I was unlovable and created new ones. It confirmed to my psyche that I wasn’t worthy of being treated with sensitivity. When he claimed that he didn’t believe that I cared for him (just as Blake had said) it made me think I must not be doing enough to express my love. Despite complements I had received in past relationships with regard to the way I express and show love, when Shane and Blake said this, it encouraged me to work harder at surrendering myself to them. I was led to believe that there
was
something wrong with me, since two men had now said this same thing. It was something wrong with
me
, which caused these men to feel insecure.