Lessons from the ‘Other Woman’
For as long as I can remember, I’m the girl people flirt with but never date. Even though I exude none of the characteristics needed to be a ‘good’ side piece. I am not non-committal or easygoing. I want much more than a quick fuck. But I’ve spent years settling for the attention of men in relationships. We all know the other woman is rarely chosen. Yet, I somehow keep finding myself in message threads with men with partners, complimenting my intellect and physical features.
I also thought I was all the stereotypes: Emotionally damaged, a girl with daddy issues, needy, a bitch. In holding this fear, I thought, deep down, it meant I was responsible for men cheating on their partners with me. But here’s the thing, there is nothing any woman does that makes a man cheat. Just like there is nothing she can do to keep him from cheating if that’s what he’s set out to do. It’s his decision. This is not on us; it’s on them.
Never once did I convince these men that sexting with me wouldn’t harm their relationship. They went looking for a distraction outside the confines of their partnership and I entertained it. Not because I’m weak or enjoy causing harm to other women, but because it’s all I thought I was worth. I no longer claim responsibility for their actions. All I take ownership of is limiting the love and respect I hold for myself and allowing these men to take up space in my mind rent-free.
I know better, I know I do
Here’s what I know. I recently spent countless hours cultivating a make-believe relationship with someone who has a partner. He’s reached out to me before. Also, while in the same relationship he’s in. I don’t know this woman – I thought about trying to find her and let her know what he’s been doing, but social media has limits even my ten plus years of stalking seems to have lost to. I did tell his best friend. She took my side, but that clearly isn’t the point.
I’ve been in therapy long enough to find his reaching out to be unappealing as opposed to thoughtful. Him contacting me has nothing to do with me. It isn’t a sign of how he can’t get me out of his head. It’s just a clear indicator that he can’t be trusted and that there is nothing he can do or say now to prove to me he wouldn’t do this exact same thing to me if we were to develop a romantic relationship.
I have all this wisdom to spew thanks to my many hours of caring for myself emotionally. I know better, I know I do. Yet there’s still a small part of me that thought, but what if I am the exception? Despite many, many, many bad (or enjoyable, depending on your movie preferences) rom-coms speaking to this exact issue, I still think my life might be a Hallmark movie. What I’m grateful for is getting my head above water and using that block button for all that it’s worth. Except, I was left feeling dirty. I’d ended up here, again. I traded my self-respect for attention, again.
Does this make me a whore?
I’m lucky that I have female friends who have sat in the “does this make me a whore?” lifeboat with me and none of us, not a single one, is a whore. It is so much easier to see this as the truth when it’s not me I’m trying to prove it to. We didn’t go looking for unavailable men and even if we did, so what? We still were never the ones in the relationship. It’s not as though we believed ourselves to be ‘better’ than their current partner or wife etc. We didn’t talk poorly about those women or look forward to them getting dumped. We simply fell for the one they share a bed with. Yet, if and when they inevitably find out, we are slut-shamed while the man is often forgiven.
I sometimes wonder about all the progress women could have achieved sooner had we not excluded one another or taken these men’s side. You see it all the time. Society depicting women removing their hoops before showing a bitch she means business. It’s like men know we need to be pitted against one another, so they stand a chance at surviving.
None of this is to say I’m a saint, but I do know that most humans seek connection and women are constantly fed these miraculous stories about finding their one true love. You know the tales; I was his wedding planner (also a rom-com) and our eyes locked over the cake tasting and we’ve been madly in love ever since. Or, I’ll use a less fabricated example, my mom was a randomly selected passenger to be upgraded to first class on her way home from her engagement party. Her fiancé had stayed back for reasons that ten-year-old me didn’t bother to ask. The passenger my mom was seated next to become her husband not a year later. After that one plane ride, my mom called off her engagement. He broke up with his grad school girlfriend and there you have it. A Hallmark movie waiting to be made.
I’m human and humans seek connection
How could I not be hopeful? However, in relation to this experience of blurring the line of appropriate conduct with a person in a relationship, I am not a victim of circumstance and this seems to keep happening to me. Right before this dude reached back out to me, a married friend of mine spent days messaging me all about his marital problems and our zodiac connection. Again, block. But a part of me still feared that I might be seeking out unavailable men.
How could I call myself a feminist if I was actively screwing over another woman via my phone screen? That question kept me up at night. But here’s what I’ve learned, over and over, I’m human and the majority of humans seek connection. The potential for mutual attraction is exhilarating and yes, I can choose to shut down advances made by non-applicable individuals and I’ve learned, little by slow, how to do so. But it’s been difficult to switch out my behaviors for healthier and more self-respecting ones not because I’m ‘fucked in the head’ but because self-esteem is a challenging thing to hold, rejection is not something I am a fan of divvying out or receiving, and attention is intoxicating.
I said it last month and I’ll probably keep saying it. I am just a person marinating in two decades worth of therapy, trying to figure it out, I do not have the answers. But I do believe in sharing my hard-earned lessons. Because maybe, just maybe, you are currently giving someone the time of day who does not deserve you, or maybe you are trying to forgive them for the texts you found not all that long ago.
Pretend I’m on a rooftop, screaming this at the top of my lungs, because I truly am – Love. Does. Not. Hurt.
We do not intentionally hurt the ones we love
A woman I adore more than most flavors of ice cream told me this truth years ago and it’s taken me a lot of practice to believe her, but I know it’s true. We do not intentionally hurt the ones we love. If we are, then it’s not love. I was fed that bullshit statement about how love and hate live beside one another. Honey, that’s a load of crap. I spent my whole life hurting my father and allowing him to hurt me. That isn’t love and it took crawling my way out of an abusive relationship, with a cast and all, for me to realize that harm should never exist within the confines of love, not deliberate harm.
Of course, we can say or do things that cause someone pain accidentally, unintentionally and we can apologize for them. But if we’re in a fight and we choose to say that one thing, that cuts like a knife, right to the bone, statement, that isn’t passion or getting caught up in the heat of the moment, that’s cruelty. I could share the very real statement about how if they are cheating, there may never be a way for trust to be rebuilt, or there could be. Everyone is different. But if you are hurting and they are the cause, I believe there is so much more joy for you out there. There was for me.
I have not felt a healthy love that stays, but I have found and learned to care for myself and I no longer allow people to take pieces of me, even if I forget it from time to time.
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Written by Tori Muzyk
Illustrated by Francesca Mariama
