What Anne Lamott Can Teach Us About Forgiving the Other Woman...and Ourselves

Writer Anne Lamott tells a story in her recent Dusk Night Dawn about the time she came face to the face with the Wife of the man she'd had drunken sexual encounters with before she got sober.

Lamott began by reaching out by mail. "I tried to make amends to her," she writes, "for having a drunken and sporadic affair with her husband."

Lamott did not expect forgiveness. She writes that she understood the damage she had caused to this Wife and, she says, her children. She wrote not expecting forgiveness, noting that "sober friends" suggested that whether or not the Wife could forgive "was her business."

It's advice I've given to Other Women who've come to this site looking for direction on whether they should contact the wives they've hurt. Only if you can do so without asking them for anything, including forgiveness, I've told them. Only if your intention is to acknowledge their pain and your role in it. 

Many can't do that. The same self-absorption, moral ambiguity and emotional immaturity that got them into an affair with a married man (who, incidentally, shared those characteristics) gets in the way. And so they reach out to us trying to explain themselves, to defend themselves, or to ask for some sort of absolution for the pain they've caused. In far too many cases, they're centering themselves and their experience. 

Lamott didn't do that.

The Wife responded by letter, telling Lamott that, as a Jew, she was compelled to forgive. She told Lamott that she had already forgiven her. "She hoped that I was able to stay sober and that, because my guilt had alienated me from humanity, God, and myself, over time I could forgive myself."

Lamott wept.

Lamott tells us she was, with time, able to forgive herself. That she wanted a life that was "lighter...with looser chains." 

Years later, she tells us, "the craziest thing happened."

Imagine. You come clean, thanks to the 12-steps and a small church community (and no small amount of determination). You write to the Wife you hurt, in part because the 12 steps require that you "make amends". You become a bestselling writer. And then, one day, in a class you're offering to aspiring writers, a woman shows up. The same women whose husband you had an affair with.

They hugged.

Yes.

They hugged.

Imagine. 

"You can't get there from where either of us was," writes Lamott. "This is no straight route."

I can vouch for that. While I have not hugged the OW in my situation, I have let her go. She never wrote me a letter. Never apologized. She never asked for my forgiveness though I, like the Wife of Lamott's affair partner, hope that my husband's OW got sober, gained an understanding of why she sought intimacy with other wive's husbands, and eventually forgave herself.

Because I believe that in true self-forgiveness there is more than just loosed chains, there is a refusal to again hurt others. Only when we can look directly at the ways in which we harmed others, and therefore hold ourselves accountable and do the necessary work through that pain, can we put ourselves on an alternate path.

This is no plea to Other Women to write letters to us Wives. For one thing, they're not likely the ones reading this.

It is, however, to remind all of us that forgiveness is possible. That a true apology can soften hearts. And that, whether or not the Other Woman asks for our forgiveness, it is still in our power to give it. That by extending compassion to others, even when they are at their least deserving, it reflects back to us and allows us to extend compassion to ourselves too. 

Lamott's story reads, to me, like a parable. It has been more than three decades since she cheated with this Wife's husband. Decades since she got sober. There has been much time for the messiness, for the pain to heal. For the story to become myth.

But it nonetheless shows us what's possible. It shows us how we can heal when we center ourselves and our experience. When we refuse to let the bad behaviour of others alter our own humanity, our own moral compass. When we see it as the product of damaged people, rather than looking at ourselves as damaged.

"The experience left me longing to be more like her, to evolve toward deeper goodness and courage...," writes Lamott.

To feel whole. To feel worthy. 

In the wake of infidelity, that is often our job too. Not to make them feel that way but to remind ourselves that we already are.

Open Letter to the Other Woman

Dear OW,

WTF?

Honestly, just what the f&$k were you thinking? You knew he was married. You knew he had children. You knew he slept beside me every night. And you knew that I knew nothing. Is that what made it so delicious? So tempting? That I appeared by his side at various events, utterly clueless to what was going on behind my back? Did you feel triumphant? That you'd beat me at something?
Okay, so I looked stupid, at least to you. Is the satisfaction of that worth sacrificing your own dignity? Because, really,  how can you have any dignity when you're pulling on your panties as he races out the door to be home in time for dinner? How can you have any dignity when you're alone – again – on a Saturday night while he's  watching Toy Story with his children and tucking them into bed?
And frankly, though I might have looked stupid, and perhaps pitiful, to you...and some less-than-compassionate others, I'll take stupid over sleazy and low and cruel any day of the week. No matter how awful it felt to be me when I found out, I'd still take that over being you. No matter that my eyes were practically swollen shut from crying, I could still look myself square in the mirror without shame.
Did you think it was simply a matter of time? That you would be appealing enough for him to walk away from the life he'd built? That all those fantasies you'd convinced yourself of – that I nagged, that I was lousy in bed, that I was boring and bitchy – were actually true? Did you really believe that any relationship based on deception would deliver you from your unhappiness?
My guess is, yes, you did. My guess is that very few Other Women honestly admit their role as an accomplice in the intentional hurting and decepition of another human being. Often another human being you don't know. Or barely know. Or perhaps, shockingly, know well. Instead, they sell themselves clichés. Something along the lines of "we're soulmates", "we couldn't help ourselves", "the chemistry was too powerful" or "you can't stop love." All of which, I suspect you recognize on some level, is total bullshit. All of which allows you to divorce your abhorrent actions from your intent. "We didn't mean to hurt anyone," you wail.
Oh. Yes. You. Did.
Because you knew. You knew that I was being hurt, even if I didn't yet know it. You knew I was being lied to. And betrayed. And you participated in that. Knowingly. Willingly. Perhaps even happily.
What's more, my children were being hurt. And though I don't expect you to take total responsibility for that (after all, HE was their father), you nonetheless contributed to the potential dissolution of their family.
And for what?
Was the sex that good? Were the feelings of superiority, if only for the brief time he was with you, so intoxicating that it made all the humiliating departures, all the embarrassment when you were caught, all the shame this no doubt triggered, worth it?
And if he left me for you? What would you have gained? Three emotionally damaged children every second weekend. A man who lies and cheats. A man who doesn't have the self-control to stop himself from doing something he knows to be wrong. To be hurtful. What a prize. Guess what? If he's not willing to become something better than that – he's all yours. At least until he meets another you sometime in the future and you become cast as the betrayed wife.
In our case, you were shocked when he, after being caught and given the choice between me or you, didn't hesitate. Not for a second. And, believe it or not, I felt sorry for you. Though I raged at you in my head, loathed the look of you, wanted to spit each time I said your name, and shower each time I imagined you two together, I nonetheless felt a sliver of pity for you. Because no-one does this unless they value themselves so little that they settle for another's scraps rather than demand respect and kindness. Or unless they're so delusional that they really believe that this is how true love manifests. Unless they've fallen for all that "star-crossed lovers" and "us against the world" crap.
It has been almost four years. December 11, 2006 - a date that's seared into my mental calendar. I have no idea where you are now. And though I still taste anger when I think back, I'm able to wish you, if not well, then at least better than what you had. If only to spare another woman the agony of finding out that you're sleeping with her husband.

Elle