Being The Other Woman: Who we are, what every woman should know and how to avoid us (20 page)

After a moment’s thought, I called back and asked the man if he was her husband. He said yes. I told him why I was calling. He said he, too, had been suspicious of his wife’s behavior of late. I told him that I believed that she was with my fiancé right then. He said she had told him she was going to a soccer game. (There was a soccer field near Brock’s apartment.) “She isn’t at a soccer game,” I said, and I gave him Brock’s address. Not thinking twice, I sped toward Brock’s building to catch the fireworks. I arrived in time to see a rather small man knocking on Brock’s door. (Oops—Brock was tall and well built and had a wee bit of a temper. I had not thought of this potential outcome.) When Brock opened the door, I heard the man swearing that he could hear his wife’s voice inside. Brock angrily swung the door wide open and asked, “Is this your wife?” The woman with Brock wasn’t the man’s wife. She was screwing around with the man who lived above Brock. But there was a girl there, and that was the end of that. For both relationships, I suspect.

When you live with a man, it would seem that finding things would be fairly simple. It is when you are not living together that discovering things becomes more complicated. Women snoop. It’s a fact that I (and most of my honest girlfriends) admit freely. If you don’t snoop, you have been conditioned. However, a man can learn to be careful to never allow the opportunity for snooping. For example, Shane never left me alone in his office or at home much, and he always kept his cell phone close to his body on vibrate or silent. Unfortunately for him, I learned the password to his voicemail. If a man seems to be guarding everything in his life, then he probably has something to hide. It’s that simple. I never felt suspicious or needed to snoop on a man when his body language was honest and he showed no signs of hiding important things from me.

If you really want to know if something is going on, it’s easy to get the evidence. But don’t bother looking if you are going to talk yourself out of believing what you find in front of your face. You’ll only drive yourself insane. Beth stumbled across Blake’s online phone bill and was able to see not only who and when he was calling, but from what town inside of the state or elsewhere. My number had to be on that bill two hundred times with calls of long duration. When she confronted him, he just started calling my office’s main line and asking them to transfer his call to wherever I was. He also started calling from other business phones. Finally, we just broke down and got him his own phone so I could reach him whenever I wanted to. Beth was later informed of our “love line.” She also became aware of our communication via his private Hotmail account, and she continued to check his cell phone and Yahoo! account for evidence. When she found nothing in the places she knew she wouldn’t, she convinced herself that the affair had ended. But nothing had changed. We continued to spend nights together regularly at his lake home, but never once did she show up to find out why he wouldn’t answer her calls. The lesson here? If you really don’t want to know, don’t look.

I am
not
advocating snooping through a good guy’s stuff. That’s mistrustful behavior where it is not warranted. It’s a huge waste of valuable energy and the difference between being smart or crazy. Everyone deserves to have their privacy, but when something’s going on and you know it, the rules change. When he’s feeding you bald-faced lies that affect your life in an extreme way, sometimes the only way to find out what’s going on is by digging. Call me nuts! You may be appalled at my admitting to snooping, but I will say this:
Every
time
I’ve
felt
the
overwhelming
need
to
get
to
the
bottom
of
things,
I
was
right
. Most of us can spot a cheat a mile away. It’s when he’s so close that he’s in our bed that we miss it.

Chapter 15
 

The Convincing Stage
 

In the beginning, the relationship between the married man and the other woman is most commonly admiration or an innocent, light flirtation. If they are coworkers, a friendship develops in the pressure-free atmosphere of fun or teamwork. Soon he discloses his marriage problems, and voices his complaints and weaknesses. His starvation for emotional and physical contact is exposed as he vents. He needs someone to confide in. Once he realizes his confidant has admiration for him or he feels a connection with her
,
things begin to develop quickly and seemingly out of either of their control. The other woman starts to feel the sensations of a schoolgirl crush. His wife is the weight. The other woman is the hot air balloon. It was e-mails like the following that I received from Blake as he and I began.

I
feel
absolutely
comfortable
with
our
relationship.
I
think
that
it
is
wonderful
and
I
want
you
to
feel
comfortable
with
it
too.
I
trust
you
100%
and
want
you
to
expect
the
same
from
me.
I
want
to
spend
as
much
time
with
you
as
possible.
I
enjoy
every
moment
with
you
and
I
adore
your
children.
I
just
want
you
to
know
that
I
support
you.
I
am
dedicated
to
you.
You
obviously
don’t
know
how
into
you
I
am.
I
cherish
our
relationship
and
would
not
jeopardize
it
for
anything.
I
want
us
to
develop
some
business
together.
I
know
we
could
and
it
would
be
fun.
I
want
you
to
make
the
choice
on
what
you
want
to
do.
If
you
and
I
team
up,
we
would
do
well.
I
want
what
is
best
for
you
and
your
girls.
That
is
your
decision.
You
should
always
be
all
that
you
can
be.
I
have
been
most
impressed
with
all
that
you
have
been.

According to an article written by Stephany Alexander (see
www.womensavers.com
), the reasons men cheat are:

Because he had the option. Citing the old saying “men are only as faithful as their options.”

It boosts his ego. There is nothing like the thrill of the chase for men on the hunt. When they are rewarded for their efforts, their ego swells even larger.

He and his wife have grown apart. Maybe they do not have the connection or as much in common as he thought.

He and his wife argue a lot. He wants to get away from someone who is overly critical or argumentative.

He’s falling out of love. Sometimes men become so comfortable in a relationship they don’t know how to get out.

The sex life between husband and wife sucks. He has an uninterested partner or isn’t getting enough to fulfill him.

To get revenge. If he feels he has been cheated, he uses the same to get back.

A relationship with a new woman is different and exciting.

To see if they can get away with it. “What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.”

Because his wife has allowed it in the past. If she has forgiven a cheating man a couple of times, they are more than likely to cheat again because they know if they plead enough she will forgive him.

We other women are usually only given four of these reasons. The man tells us that a connection no longer exists between him and his wife. Something is missing in their marriage. She is either too busy for him, having interests that seem selfish and exclude him, or she never wants to participate in anything with him, having no energy or drive to do things he is interested in. She is too wrapped up in their children, her career, her hobbies, her friends, her family to give him the attention he feels he needs. So he feels emotionally neglected and rejected. He feels that his needs are not worth her effort. He has been starved for time that involves just the two of them in an atmosphere of lighthearted fun, but he has given up by now because he has been neglected for such a long time. He is over it, he says, and is just existing.

When I interviewed Julie, I learned that Jim complained to her about his wife, saying she kept a dirty home, never made dinner, and was always off socializing. He suggested that his wife was having an affair and described her as a selfish person. Julie told me that he often appeared dejected when speaking of his home life and said he had awakened from the dead when he met her. To her, he looked like a lonely man on his way to divorce court. One day she asked him if he would ever leave his wife. He said no. They had young children, and his finances would be affected. But then Jim kept recanting by thinking out loud, speaking about how he would divide assets. One day he asked Julie how she felt about step-parenting. He talked about places he hoped they would travel to with his children. He told her how she was like his mother, suggesting how well they would get along, and he also compared notes on each others taste in decorating, creating the image in her mind of them having a home together.

He tells you that his wife constantly nags at him, which makes him hypercritical of her and of the smallest things in their marriage. He describes their home life as “miserable” and filled with constant bickering that drags him down. Or their marriage has fallen away to nothing; he and his wife are roommates or strangers with nothing to share. He makes her sound completely petty like, a whining bitch or a lazy bore with no interest in her husband. Although he “loves her”—after all, they have spent so many years together, have history together, and (of course) there are the children—he is no longer “in love with her.” But he doesn’t know how to leave. There are so many complications involved, so many fears (and so many excuses), but in the deepest parts of his heart, he seems to want to free himself from the trap of his marriage. He just doesn’t know how.

When I interviewed Brandy, she told me that Jason shared much of the dissatisfaction in his marriage with her, but also said that he had no intention of leaving his wife. Brandy thought that, had she met him at a different time when he was available, they would have really had something. He wanted to be able to play the field and have a good time without losing the security he found in his wife. He told Brandy that he had deep feelings for her and that she was special to his heart. He wanted them to commit to meet someplace on the globe every year for the rest of their lives to ensure they always maintained their romantic love for one another. At the same time, however, he would then mention the idea of permanently relocating to her area and always financially supporting his wife to make up for the years she had given him while he shared the rest of his life with Brandy.

Last but not least, the wife doesn’t like to have sex. Many men claim that they sleep in separate rooms or long ago got tired of her rejecting his advances. He’s tired of begging for it. She acts like love making is a chore, and when he does get that blue moon piece, it’s as if she wants to hurry up and get it over with. She doesn’t seem “into it,” he says; “there’s no passion.” Therefore he has no physical attraction to her anymore, either, because the fun of doing it with her has long since ended. In
The
Female
Brain
, Brizendine says, “If she doesn’t want to have sex, it can signal a waning of attraction or perhaps another man. In other words, the fading of love.” Brizendine explains, “It’s just like what happens with a woman and verbal communication. If her partner stops talking to her or responding emotionally, she thinks that he disapproves of her, that she’s done something wrong, or that he doesn’t love her anymore.”
⁵

Jennifer’s married man told her that his wife didn’t want to have sex. He told her that he was going to leave his wife, but wanted to keep their relationship a secret until then because he didn’t want it “to be about another woman.” He asked her to be patient while he determined the “right way to leave” and helped his wife accept that their marriage was in shambles.

I once had a young neighbor who visited me one Sunday after she returned home from church. She was really frustrated. Knowing of my fascination with the study of religion, she wanted to know if there was a place in the Bible that said that she HAD to have sex with her husband. (There is.) “He bugs me and bugs me,” she complained, “and I don’t like to! Sometimes I just go ahead so he’ll leave me alone for a little while. I just roll over and lay there until he’s done.” She had better keep his ass glued to the pew, I thought. But this is the story I always hear in my mind when I listen to men complaining about their wives not wanting to have sex with them.

Let the husband render to his wife the affection due to her, and likewise also the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. And likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another except with consent for a time, that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer and come together again so that Satan does not tempt you because of your lack of self control.