Former Mistress Reveals 5 Painful Truths About Being 'The Other Woman'
The other woman speaks.
MaleWitch | Canva If you’re reading this, you may be a mistress in love with someone who’s attached, engaged, or married. Once you’re in that kind of situation, what do you do? Many times, once you realize you care about someone who returns those same feelings, you start painting beautiful pictures in your mind of the future you want and go stampeding in that direction.
You think you know your situation and those other two people in this love triangle, and you convince yourself that you're the best choice he could make. You believe if this guy chooses you, things will work out beautifully for everyone. But, there are some painful truths about being a mistress that someone in this situation should consider.
Here are 5 painful truths about being the other woman, from a mistress who's been there:
1. Sometimes, people lie to get what they want
No matter how sincere your married affair partner seems, double-check what you are being told. Don’t discount this distinct and ugly possibility.
Find out as much as you can about their marital situation, because that will help you make wise decisions. You can’t always consider a cheating spouse your best source of information, so make sure whatever he tells you passes the smell test.
2. Find out as much as you can about both of their childhoods
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This information greatly clarifies your role in the situation. For instance, when I first got involved with my guy, I knew I could trust what he told me about his wife for two reasons.
One, I’d known him for 17 years and I knew he was no liar and he’d been unhappily married for as long as I’d known him. He's not the only one — statistics from the Pew Research Center states that 14% of marriages are unhappy.
Two, what he told me was so wild there was no way he could have made it up. We spent half our conversations trying to puzzle out something his wife had said or done.
But I'd been raised by a mother with borderline personality disorder, and I'd done enough reading about relationships and damage from family-of-origin issues. So the instant I heard, "My mother was an alcoholic," I knew a lot more about the situation. If you hear about a childhood in which well-known emotional issues, such as alcoholism, were present, check out some books and start reading.
3. Nothing about an affair is what it looks like on the surface
Everyone involved in an affair has their own unresolved issues, perspective, and own story. There's a reason you are attracted to this particular man that probably began at home when you were young. His attraction to both you and to his wife is rooted in his childhood, and her contribution to their problems, whatever it is, originated long ago, too.
I started out feeling as mystified by his wife’s behavior as my affair partner was. I thought she must not love him and was using him. I couldn't see any other explanation, and thinking about this fueled my anger toward her.
I believed he was being abused in his marriage and felt horrible about himself. And believing that made me feel justified in stepping in. Then I stumbled on a book by Pia Mellody called Facing Love Addiction. My guy and I met only some of the criteria Mellody sets out in that book, but when it came to the criteria for being a "love avoider," his wife seemed to meet every single one.
Mellody says people who fit this relationship pattern typically had a demanding, smothering parent in their childhood home. Some of what my guy was telling me now made sense to me in a whole new way. Then I also found it in her horoscope.
When he told me one more thing she said, it clicked, and I realized all three people in this triangle had been damaged in childhood: me, this man, and his wife. It wasn't that she didn't love him or that she was willfully hurting him.
4. All three people are wounded and deserving of compassion
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Once I could see his wife this way, I didn't feel as entitled to have things go the way I wanted. If they could address their problems and heal as husband and wife, that was the way it should go, no matter how badly I felt about losing him.
They had decades together, as well as children and grandchildren. On the other hand, if she couldn't confront her problems and kept treating him callously and disrespectfully in the marriage, I could see it wouldn't only be right, but crucial that he get himself out of there. But it was his prerogative to decide what was best for him, not mine.
5. You damage the other person’s marriage just by being there
You might think once your married guy bolts back to his wife, you'll never hear from him again and he'll forget all about you, as though you never existed. This often isn't the case.
Yes, you may never hear from the guy again, but if you had a good relationship and he gave you up to return to his troubled marriage, he's likely to continue to have strong feelings for you. And combined with the emotional fallout from the affair between him and his spouse, those feelings will get in the way of fixing their marriage, even if you never see him again.
When you get involved in an affair with a married man, you're entering a frayed relationship between two damaged people, breaking all three of your hearts, and making reconciliation between the two of them harder than it would have been already. According to research from the Institute for Family Studies, 20% of married men admit to having affairs. In my case, astrology predicted I would hear from him one more time, and a year ago, I did.
If you truly love this man, why choose to hurt him more than he already is? Being the other woman may start out looking like a one-way ticket to your dream life (once you’ve managed to elbow that meanie of a wife out of the way, that is). But it isn't. Being the other woman is a wake-up call.
P. D. Reader edits and writes for the Medium publication Unfaithful: Perspectives on the Third Party Relationship and is the author of Struggling In or With An Affair? A Guidebook.