Being The Other Woman: Who we are, what every woman should know and how to avoid us (22 page)

According to some anthropologist studies, natural selection in genetics favored men who were able to deceive women to have sex with them. And here is a big surprise: Studies show that young male college students admit to being deceptive and pretending to be kinder, trustworthy, and more sincere in order to talk women into doing the nasty. According to,
The
Female
Brain
, “Mothers often warn their daughters not to get to close too soon with a new boyfriend, and this advice may be wiser than they realize.” Brizendine explains, “The act of hugging or cuddling releases oxytocin in the brain, especially in females, and likely produces a tendency to trust the hugger. It also increases the likelihood that you will believe everything and anything he tells you.”
⁶

We walk ourselves mentally down the aisle because we hear the things that we want to hear and omit the ambiguity in things that do not jive with that image. Blake wrote, “
You
mean
a
great
deal
to
me.
I
do
not
plan
to
just
walk
through
your
life,
but
perhaps
to
stay
awhile.”
What I read in this note was that he planned to stay in my life forever. That is, I read “awhile” in a very, very romanticized way, even though what he really meant was only “awhile.” These things are said in such a way as to lead us to hear what we want to hear, just as I did. If the man decides he needs to end the affair, we cannot confront him and say he deceived us. He did not lie. He used ambiguity to speak to our hearts.

One of the items Blake and I purchased in Turkey was a piece of blue glass called the “evil eye.” Superstition has it that the eye will ward off those who are envious or wish evil upon you. Blake had the piece cemented into the tile design on his bathroom wall in his new home on the lake, where we spent most of our time. To me, this was symbolic of the life and memories we were building together. To him, I suppose, it was just a cool thing he picked up while traveling abroad. It would be interesting to learn how he explained it to Beth, who now has a constant reminder of our affair permanently affixed to her décor.

In every story I was told by the other women, the man promised or alluded to a future life with her. Even if he in fact said no when she asked him if he would ever leave his wife, he was quick to contradict himself with complaints against his wife and praise for his mistress. Every other woman I talked to came to believe that over time her lover would come to his senses and jump ship from the marriage. As Blake wrote to me,

“I
love
you
and
have
loved
you
from
the
moment
that
I
met
you.
I
felt
great
today
with
you.
I
have
felt
great
everywhere
with
you,
as
a
matter
of
fact.
I
can
make
this
work
if
you
want
it
to.
I
have
always
believed
that
we
have
a
future
together.
I
only
seem
to
laugh
when
I’m
with
you.”

A man having an affair is usually telling his affair partner how much he cares for her, and how unhappy his marriage is. If he is able to lie to his wife, he is able to lie to you. A dishonest person doesn’t suddenly become honest when having an affair. He will tell the truth when it suits him and he will lie when it suits him, too. He isn’t living by principals. If he marries his lover, there will be times when he is not happy. He isn’t capable of working through a relationship and creating a successful one when things are not easy.

In the beginning, the married man will always find a way to phone or meet up with his mistress. He makes excuses to his wife about why he is late or has to leave early. He creates errands or picks fights so he can get away. A person having an affair is on such an emotional high that his behaviors become similar to a person who has some form of addiction. They become very difficult to reason with. It’s as if half of their intelligence has evaporated.

When I interviewed other women, I found that it was almost always the married man who pursued the prospect of having an extra-curricular love-life. That is not to say that he wasn’t given a few obvious cues by the woman or that mutual attraction did exist, for it most certainly did. What I am saying is that once he was pretty sure his pursuit would reap the reward he wanted, he did take the major step of going after it.

The other woman dismisses her higher thoughts because she feels that she is in a paradise of sorts—that is, until she becomes too familiar and he comes to think that she is “not all that.” A time will come for the other woman when she has a bad day. Something upsets her at work or there is conflict with a friend or family member, there is trauma or tragedy. Whatever it is, she is upset and she immediately thinks of him as the one who will give her comfort and support. She needs him. She can think of no one else to share her feelings with. She picks up the phone and calls him. “Can’t talk now,” she hears. Click. Already suffering, she is now filled with hurt and resentment. Where do I fit into the equation? She asks herself. If I’m so great, where is he? Why didn’t he drop everything and come to me? She has always dropped everything to nurture and support him. She realizes that he can’t reciprocate.

As in any partnership, the newness of an affair will fade. Eventually, he is just himself, he’s not trying so hard to win her anymore, and she is no longer perfect in his eyes. As the relationship becomes more regular, the dynamics shift. She begins to feel the loneliness, rejection, and lack of self-esteem that accompany involvement with a married man, no matter how engrossed they are with each other. She begins to feel the pain of loving someone who is “owned” by someone else. Everything is his wife’s and nothing belongs to her. She begins to feel she is not enough, because he isn’t leaving his wife. Her focus turns inward and she seeks out all the things that are “wrong” with her. She tries to “fix herself,” to be better. She wants to bring back the feelings she once had that she was extraordinary. But all she can find are her negative qualities. She becomes so fixated on her negative attributes that she loses sight of her lover’s shortcomings and his selfishness.

Even if the other woman does not have hopes of marrying her lover (though most confessed their belief that the man would commit to them), she is still affected by being put in the back seat. She will always be put aside if he has family obligations. She knows that if an important event occurs in her life at the same time as one in his family, her needs will never be met. She will never be number one in his life. His family will always come first.

Social settings lose their appeal. She watches him from afar, being unable to share the event as a couple. If the partnership is “out” and they have become public, she is also aware that her peers believe that he has not completely chosen her. She begins to feel conspicuous, judged, and scrutinized. She’s a public fool fighting an internal battle. Now she begins to complain, perhaps making demands on him while expressing her feelings of unfairness and hurt. He begins to feel pressure and either breaks off the relationship or offers promises or tokens meant to temporarily keep her happy. But soon his attempts to appease her become not enough. She is bitter, and another page in the story book turns.

They begin to fight. The relationship becomes tumultuous. She blames him for her high emotional state. She’s angry at his lack of movement, his lack of consideration for her feelings, his ingratitude for what she has sacrificed for him. At some point, she either accepts her fate and chooses to remain in the relationship as it is, or she moves on. Rarely does she ever get what she wants: his divorce. If he does divorce, it’s hardly ever satisfying for her. He uses her while he copes with the divorce. She is his comforter, ensuring that he is not alone. She’s his security blanket. He begins to date other women. When he is no longer afraid of the unknown, he doesn’t need her anymore. He leaves her. She is all the more broken and consumed with feelings of rejection and abandonment. She sees her foolish choices. And now, as a social outcast, she has no one to turn to. It is highly unlikely that the man will remain with his mistress, and even if he does stay with her, the relationship has become so fractured over time with hurt, bitterness, and mistrust that they are seldom able to survive together for a lifetime.

It is very common for a man to tell his wife, “She pursued me,” when an affair is discovered. I think there are several reasons why. First, and most obviously, he doesn’t want to jump from the pan into the fire by admitting to being the total dog. If he did, then he’d be admitting to searching out the woman and planning the deed of hurting his wife, he’d be admitting to being a lying, conniving sneak who could have been restrained and should have taken the time to ponder the consequence of his actions. If he says he was the pursued and not the pursuer, he receives a bit of grace for falling in a moment of weakness while the deviant woman broke him down. Second, saying he was pursued keeps his wife in the game by making him seem more attractive and wanted by others. Yes, this allows him to have an ego boost right in the middle of his wife’s near-death breakdown. It’s as if he is saying, “See? Other women want me. You do not appreciate me. You are not doing enough.” As he’s pointing to his wife’s fault for failing to see what the other woman has, he can maintain his own innocence in the affair. He is the victim. It’s an effective tactic. After her rage and despair have faded, she is left to beat herself up for all of the ways that she neglected him, took him for granted, and forgot to place his needs above all else. Since we women tend to be self-blamers who search for ways to make things our fault and ways to right where we feel we have wronged, she’ll pamper him. She’ll give him more of what he wants in effort to save the marriage.

More often than not, once the wife discovers the affair, the heavy wool is brutally pulled away from the eyes of the other woman. Sometimes the other woman actually precipitates the discovery. She believes the wife will get out of the way and allow her lover to run permanently into her arms. But to the other woman’s dismay, she is herself thrown carelessly onto the pavement, with her heart destroyed and her mind a whirlwind. He returns to his wife in a fight to save his marriage. Then the other woman is left to replay over and over in her mind all he said and promised, everything they shared, the passion, the depth of the love he proclaimed. She is in shock that he has cut her so easily and quickly returned to the loveless wife who held him captive. More devastating, the other woman usually has no one to turn to for comfort and support as she would after a “normal” breakup. When she turns to friends for comfort, she is only further destroyed when they ask her, “So what did you expect?” or say, “He was married, for God’s sake.” The implication is that there was never a real relationship and the other woman should not hurt. None of it is real. She is thus reminded of her foolishness and her self-esteem plummets, even though it was already planted in the sub terrain.

A man faced with choosing between his mistress and his wife is faced with distinguishing between ego and emotional honesty. Our egos tend to lead us astray. We women are usually more capable of humbling our narcissistic selves, whereas men don’t always recognize how much of their ego is really driving them. Thus he has a bit of a split personality when speaking to both the wife and the mistress. He means it when he says to his wife “I’ve made a mistake” and he also means it when he says, “I don’t know what to do, I don’t want to lose you” when speaking to the other woman. From the primitive perspective; his “attachment chemistry” and his testosterone drive to procreate are in direct conflict with one another. His long-term vs. Short-term mating desires produce two entirely different chemical reactions in his brain.