"A Type of Woman": Is the Other Woman Ever Worth Our Time?

What you are, Vivian, is a type of person. To be more specific, you are a type of woman. A tediously common type of a woman. Do you think I've not encountered your type before? Your sort will always be slinking around, playing your boring and vulgar little games, causing your boring and vulgar little problems. You are the type of woman who cannot be a friend to another woman, Vivian, because you will always be playing with toys that are not your own. A woman of your type often believes she is a person of significance because she can make trouble and spoil things for others. But she is neither important nor interesting.

~Elizabeth Gilbert, City of Girls

A whole lot of us ache for an interaction like the one above, in which we eviscerate the Other Woman, who is rendered speechless and humiliated. While I've heard of the occasional metaphorical murder, for the most part, few of us have either the opportunity or the verbal swordplay to dispense so beautifully with our sworn enemy. If any such evisceration occurs by us it is usually in the shower, when we're alone and entirely in our imagination.

 But maybe that's not such a bad thing. As satisfying as the above exchange seems, what would it have accomplished? To make clear that the Other Woman is of little consequence? I suspect many of them know that, on some level. To triumph over them? To demonstrate our moral superiority? Again, anyone with an iota of integrity already knows that they compromised theirs and the rest are devoid of a conscience. It won't matter a whit to them what we say. What it will do is put us in proximity to someone who has zero compunction about participating in our deception and our hurt. And the smartest thing we can do is keep those who want to actively harm us far from us and our family. 

It's tempting, I know. We think they'll have the answers we lack. We wonder if they'll apologize and, if so, if that will ease the ache in our hearts, even slightly. 

But I think it's a mistake. Not always but 97% of the time. Maybe 99%.

Cause let's look at what we know: This person knew we existed and chose to ignore that reality because it got in the way of what they wanted. This person knew we existed and couldn't empathize with the pain of being cheated on. This person knew we existed and said, simply, I don't care. (I make exception for those unwitting Other Women who genuinely didn't know we existed and if/when she found out, she broke it immediately.) 

Here's what else we know: This person is capable of delusion. Affairs are about fantasy. They are about believing that this person, who is already cheating on someone they promised not to cheat on, is honest and reliable. That the only thing standing in the way of happiness and lifelong commitment is this inconvenient wife who just won't get out of the way of true love. That this "good guy" just doesn't want to hurt his children. Just wants to wait until things settle down, until the kids are a bit older, until the wife's cancer treatments are over, until...until...until... I can almost feel sorry for them until I remember that they deserve scorn more than pity. 

And we know that, statistically, relationships that are started via infidelity have a sky-high 95% failure rate. Shocking, I know. [Insert eye-roll here.]

Of course, all this talk of the moral failings of Other Women remind us that these affairs had two people in them, and one of those people is our spouse. What of him?

Well, it underscores the need to demand total accountability, a true reckoning. It's not enough to mutter and "I'm sorry" then move on. There must be a deep excavation of how the affair happened, why it happened and how an unfaithful spouse can ensure he doesn't repeat the mistake. 

As for the Other Woman, that "type of woman"? Best to forget about her. "She is neither important nor interesting."

Warrior Post: What You Really Need to Know About the Other Woman

"Anonymous" posted her story on another part of this site in response to what she noticed was a lot of talk and concern and obsession with the Other Woman. Her words are poignant and painful but it's clear she's taken a clear-eyed look at her marriage and the role she played in the breakdown of it. As we make very very clear on this site, nobody is to blame for their husband's cheating. That's on him. And not all marriages that experience infidelity are "bad". But some are. And Anonymous took a forensic accounting of her own marriage and what had happened in it and then used that knowledge to understand her husband's affair and how the two of them could rebuild a marriage from the rubble. ~Elle

1. The OW debate seems to be showing up more and more on here, so I wanted to share a few things from my story.
   
   In therapy, my H and I had some brutally frank conversations. It took a while to get him to open up but when he did, it all came out. One of the “reasons” behind his A was our crumpling marriage. I couldn’t deny that. We were two people who co-existed in the same house with little connection at all. Days would go by without him having much to say and I just nagged and nagged like usual. It doesn’t excuse his actions but it’s the honest truth of what we were. I learned that my nagging was actually an attempt to get him to pay attention to me. Even bad attention was attention and I was yearning for that. I would constantly yell at him to give me an opinion on something but then I would just override anything he said and make the decision on my own anyways. He felt that I didn’t value him, his opinion or his input on anything so why would he bother to give it any more. One day in therapy, I was raging about the OW, how she seduced him and my husband cracked. He actually said to me “I did this to you! I DID! You think I’m so weak and feeble minded that I’m just nothing, that I could be so blindly tricked into doing this awful thing, that I wasn’t even capable of making this f&@king decision either?!” It really was a breakthrough for me when I realized how little I have made this man feel he was that he was grasping to even be acknowledged for doing something this awful. This was a decision that he made that I couldn’t override him on. I guess the whole bad attention is still attention thing was at play on his part as well.
   
   The other thing that stuck with me was him laughing about the OW seducing him. He told me how the OW had so many insecurities that she’d probably take it as a compliment if someone thought so much of her to have this hypnotic power over men. And that’s when I stopped giving her that power in my mind. She has nothing on me.
   
   I do believe many affairs start with two lonely people looking for something that is missing in their life. It’s not right, it’s so wrong and hurtful but I do think it boils down to that in many cases. The majority of happy men do not cheat. The majority of happy women do not cheat.  [ELLE'S NOTE: WHILE I AGREE WITH THIS IN SOME CASES, STATISTICS SHOW THAT THE MAJORITY OF MEN WHO CHEAT CONSIDER THEMSELVES "HAPPY" IN THEIR MARRIAGE. AFFAIRS ARE OFTEN AN ESCAPE FROM OTHER STRESSES, OR A CHANCE TO FEEL YOUNG AND SEXY AGAIN.] As much as it still hurts me, he found something in her even if it was just temporarily. And I blame him for that, just like he asked me to. He was right, he did this to me. I have forgiven him and we are moving towards being better together but I blame solely him. I can’t vilify this OW any more than I vilify him because he was the one who was supposed to cherish me and forsake others. He was the one I had built a life with. He had promised to be my partner in life. To forgive him and understand his flaws did make me think how she probably has her own demons that she’s struggling with. I do still have mean and nasty thoughts towards her but it’s fading every day and sometimes I hope she gets the help she needs so that she can have a second chance at life, too, just like I have given him. (And, then some days, I still wish she loses all her hair overnight, gains 100 pounds, gets horrible adult acne...!!!) 

   As others have posted, there is NO satisfaction in contacting her. There’s even less satisfaction in outing her to others. I say this from experience. You may think you’ll get some satisfaction but there’s none. Just none. It only makes you feel sadder. I exposed some before we started therapy. It only led to even more self-doubt and self-loathing on my part and a lot of gossip around town about how I was the crazy one. People may agree that you were wronged but they are very uncomfortable with a woman ranting and raving and pointing the finger! I heard more than a few “no wonder he cheated” comments which only fuelled my hysteria! One of my lowest moments in life was yelling at her 80-year-old parents about how their daughter was a whore and I hoped they were proud of her. If I could take that one action back, I would in a second. After I was hung up on by them, I just crumpled and wondered what I had come to. I felt I couldn’t hold my head up any higher than she could, I had handed her that power that I could be just as hurtful as her. And the shame I feel that my children know I did these things is another burden I bear. I teach them all the time that two wrongs don’t make a right, always keep your dignity… and it’s hard for me to not be embarrassed of my actions. I understand them, I have forgiven myself, I understand any one in our position lashing out but looking back, I just am not proud.

   For all these reasons, I say let it go with obsession with the OW. I’ve read some stories on here of BS who admitted they were an OW long ago and we still support them because of their pain! And we do that because we are good and compassionate people on here. Take your energy and focus on him. Focus on learning why he did what he did. You have to understand why HE did this in order to move forward. It doesn't matter why she did, it only matters why he participated. Focus on what you have done to hurt him. And then solely focus on you getting stronger as a couple. Don’t let thoughts of her continue to ruin any progress you are making as a couple. It's easier said than done but don’t let her continue to be a part of your marriage, she didn’t belong in it before and she doesn’t belong in it now either.

Anatomy of An Affair

Long-time readers of this blog know that Cheryl Strayed's Tiny Beautiful Things, which is a compilation of her incredible run as Dear Sugar on The Rumpus, is one of my favorite things in the world. Dear Sugar is now back...on radio. And the most recent episode, a celebration of Valentine's Day, features a letter from a woman who reconnected with her high school boyfriend.
It began with a phone call from him...and evolved into daily texts and calls and a meeting (no sex, though, she swears!).
Our heartbroken letter writer wondered, now that her first love's wife found their correspondence and he stopped all contact, whether her "emotional affair" was actually cheating. She also wondered whether she should stay with her husband, for whom she no longer felt any passion though she loved him and had a good life with him.
The "Sugars" – Cheryl Strayed and co-host Steve Almond – were their usual compassionate, warm-hearted, wise selves.
But what was particularly interesting for we Betrayeds was how typical the trajectory of this emotional affair was. Everything about it was cliché. And viewed through the lens of detachment, it can be helpful for us to see just how little our spouses' affairs had to do with us.

She's Vulnerable
Her former love reached out to her when she was about 50. Her kids had left home. She and her husband had a nice, if predictable life. Her career was...fine. Her marriage was...fine. But mid-life is when so many of us begin to wonder if this is all there is. Marriage can, if we haven't worked hard on it, seem a little...stale. Where's the passion? we wonder. Is this all there is?

Enter Distraction
Her first love represented passion and excitement. He reminded her of who she used to be – young, sexy, fascinating. They reconnected and shared their new selves. As Steve Almond says, they shared their stories, which is a more intimate betrayal than sex. So now you've got this alchemy happening. Someone at a crossroads, trying to figure out where to go with her life, meets up with someone who distracts her from those big, scary questions. He makes her feel young again. Like all things are possible.

It Escalates
The phone call becomes regular texting and more calls. They arrange to meet up. They do and it feels wonderful to be with someone who, they believe, really knows them Really gets them. Sure there's a spouse at home but he/she hasn't paid attention to them in years. Doesn't even seem to notice that they're having this secret relationship. Besides, nobody's getting hurt. Right? They don't have sex but the atmosphere is charged. Electric with possibility. How can routine home life compete with that? It can't.

D-Day
The wife finds the texts. She insists that her husband make a choice. Either he loses his marriage and family or he re-commits. He chooses to re-commit telling his former love that his wife found the texts and it's over. We don't hear on the show how this played out...but we're living how this played out.

The Married OW Wonders What's Next for Her
She writes a letter to a radio show that offers advice. That advice includes: Yes, emotional affairs are cheating. They're as devastating (sometimes more!) than sexual affairs. And then the Sugars tell her that there's no escape from life's big questions. We can distract ourselves (look! somebody likes me just the way I am!). We can ignore what's right under our noses (a spouse who loves us. A spouse who's likely feeling as disconnected and lonely and confused as we are. Or who will listen to us as we outline just how disconnected and lonely and confused we are). But there's just no way around coming to terms with who we are, what we want out of our lives, what we want from our relationships, and how we want to spend the rest of our days. They urge her to tell her husband about what she did (thank-you Sugars for advocating for deep, painful honesty over deception and a much shallower connection!) and see if they can reconnect based on the love they continue to feel for each other. They recommend that she do some deep soul-searching of her own to determine what she wants from her life. They remind her that long-time love will never have the intensity or passion of new (and forbidden) love but that it brings rewards of its own.

The End
We don't know what letter-writer decides to do. But we have been given a glimpse into the affair itself. It's so clear that circumstances converged that allowed both former love and letter-writer to reconnect in their secret friendship, convincing themselves all along that what they were doing was okay. Instead of self-examination (who am I now that my kids have left home? how do I create meaning in my life? how do I maintain passion in a 25-year-old marriage?), they opted for fantasy. They created their own world in which responsibilities, disappointments, real life was held at bay. A world in which their spouses were kinda erased.
It had to end. But, unfortunately, not before other hearts were broken.

Five More Ways We Hurt Ourselves After Our Husband's Affair

C'mon...you're smarter than that!

A couple of years ago I wrote a post called Five Ways We Hurt Ourselves After Our Husband's Affair. That post became the most popular post on this site, with more than double the page views of Five Steps to Healing a Marriage After an Affair, Letter to a Cheating Husband, and Seven Lies We Believe After a Spouse's Affair.
What I find interesting and wonderful is that the most popular post on this site is about we women seeking to heal ourselves. It's about us taking responsibility for what we can control, which is ourselves. It's about self-empowerment. It's about taking this horrible experience and recognizing how we're hurting ourselves...then changing our story.
Sadly I still get many comments from betrayed wives visiting this site that detail the ways in which they continue to hurt themselves. So I've added to my previous list. I'm sure I've still missed a few so please share your thoughts in the comments. Even better, tell us how you stopped hurting yourself – and began to heal.

#1: Letting him dictate the terms of reconciliation
He wants to determine whether or not you get couples counselling? He wants you to respect his "privacy"? He wants to continue to work with the OW? Uh...no. No way. Not a chance.
We sometimes get so blindsided and crippled by a spouse's affair that we forget to respect ourselves. We forget that we can't control whether he continues to cheat. We forget that we can't stop him from leaving us by simply being total doormats and letting him trod all over us. We forget that we matter.
This isn't about saving a marriage, this is about saving YOU. Marriages can survive all sorts of abuse and disrespect. But that's not what we want. We want, ultimately, a marriage that is stronger for the storms it has weathered, not simply hanging together through co-dependence, willful blindness, and fear.
This new paradigm begins when it is made clear that you, as the injured party, get to dictate the terms of reconciliation. You' get to set boundaries and ensure an atmosphere of emotional safety in order to reconcile. (He gets to call you out if you're unleashing your inner Kim Jong Un.)
•This begins with No Contact with the OW.
•No Contact might also include friends who were complicit in the affair.
•Total access to any and all electronics, social media accounts, passwords.
•Total accountability. Your new MO is "trust...but verify." He needs to be transparent about where he is and who he's with at all times.
•Counselling. Any guy who offers up the "but I don't need to go to a head-doctor" defence definitely needs to go to a head-doctor.

#2: Blaming ourselves
You are NOT the reason he cheated. Repeat that to yourself to absorb the full truth of that.
You are in no way to blame for his choice to cheat. That is 100% on him. If your marriage kinda sucked when he cheated, then absolutely take ownership for your part in that. But he had the choice to talk to you about it like a grown-up or run away from it and cheat, thereby making any problems in your marriage about a bajillion times worse.
As for blaming ourselves for any one of the "sins" our culture tells us leads our husbands to cheat – we were too focussed on the kids, we gained weight, we experienced depression, we got old – that is bullshit too.
Your husband cheated because he sought escape over reality. He sought avoidance over confrontation. He chose to betray you over saying 'no' to himself.

#3: Competing with the OW
How many of us suddenly feel cast into this competition with the Other Woman (or Women)? We desperately need to know whether she was prettier than we are. Younger? More successful? Better in bed? Skinnier? And on and on, while we keep a mental tally of whether she's ahead or whether we are.
Thing is, as I point out above, we're not to blame for his cheating. If all it takes is a younger, prettier woman, then we're all doomed. But that's not what affairs are generally about.
What the OW offers is nothing we want. It's sex without intimacy, it's a relationship played out in the shadows. The OW offers convenience. She offers fantasy. She is like a fun-house mirror, reflecting back everything our cheating spouse wants to see about  himself: He's sexy! Charming! Smart! It's the reason why so many OW are thrown completely under the bus the minute the affair comes to light and the offending spouse has to face up to what he's done.
This isn't a contest and making it one will only lead to misery, even if you think you're "winning".

#4: Ignoring our own needs
We feel on thin ice post-betrayal. Our spouse feels like a stranger. We don't trust ourselves, let alone anybody else. And yet somehow, within that, we need to acknowledge and respect our own needs. It can feel impossible, in part because we feel impossibly needy. We might need to be held while we sob for hours. We might need as much space as possible while we weep in solitude. We might need friends around us, we might need them to leave us alone. We might need extra help with housework, childcare, getting out of bed.
Honor those needs. Buy honoring your needs, you're honoring yourself. You're telling yourself that you matter. That you have value. That you are not defined by the worst thing that has happened to you. You are infinitely deeper than that.

#5: Letting our culture of "once a cheater..." determine our next step
Ah yes...my particular bête noire. I have taken some heat from another betrayed wife (who shall remain nameless and linkless) for selling fantasy in the form of reconciliation. An yet, statistically most couples dealing with infidelity remain married. That, in itself, is not cause for celebration because there will undoubtedly be those in that group who choose the rug-sweeping method of reconciliation. What IS cause for celebration is that, with a truly remorseful spouse willing to learn from his excruciating choice and a betrayed wife willing to extend compassion and respect to the person who hurt her (as well as herself), a re-created marriage is not only possible, it's probable.
Sadly too many betrayed wives follow the script handed to them by pop culture and cynics: the "once a cheater..." script, the "kick him to the curb" cynicism.
I'm no Pollyanna. Rebuilding a marriage after betrayal is a long, hard road. But so is divorce. You get to make the choice about what path to take based on what's right for YOU. Nobody else has to do the work. Nobody else reaps the benefits (or regrets). You decide. To hell with what everybody else thinks.

Where Does the Hate Go?

Amy recently posted on this page asking a really powerful question: Where, she asked, does the hate go? She wrote that it has been 2 1/2 years since she found out about her husband's affair. In many ways, she says, life is good. Her marriage feels strong. Her husband has worked hard to deserve his second chance. But, she said, in the early days of facing betrayal she poured so much of her anger and pain into hating the Other Woman. And now that hatred burns as fiercely as ever. It's eating her up from the inside.
Hatred is powerful stuff. It poisons us, while doing little to the object of our hatred. It casts a shadow over everything in our lives. There's little room for a broad range of feelings when hate takes up so much space.
However, in the early days of discovering a spouse's affair, hate can serve a purpose. I'd far rather see a betrayed wife filled with hatred for her spouse and the OW, than a betrayed wife who's being understanding or blaming herself. Hatred is outrage. It's a way of saying you can NOT do this to me. I do NOT deserve this. It's a way of saying No way, no how. It's setting boundaries. I will not put up with this any longer.
So yes…in small doses at a certain time, I'm a big fan of hatred in the form of outrage.
But then it serves us no longer. It turns toxic. It keeps us locked in a past that we need to move on from.
It keeps us tethered to a person who, honestly, isn't important.
I know it sounds crazy. How can someone who slept with your husband and helped unleash the destruction that became your life not be important? Because she's not. There are plenty of posts here, here and here about the Other Woman, in which I…ummm…express some of my own thoughts about the role these toxic people play. Weird thing is…I don't hate these women. They make me sigh out loud. They sometimes make me laugh. They make me roll my eyes. They exasperate me with their teen novel philosophies about love and life and destiny. Or they frustrate me with their "enlightened" bullshit about archaic institutions like marriage and "if you set something free…" lunacy. But I don't hate them. I don't even hate THE Other Woman in my life (though I hope she doesn't test this by showing up at my front door).
How did I get here?
By deciding I wasn't going to give her that much energy. By refusing to give up valuable real estate in my brain to her. By finally understanding that she wasn't the problem. She had never been the problem. She was willing and available. That was it.
And it was knowing, really knowing, that no matter how awful it felt to be me, I wouldn't have wanted to be her. I knew she hated herself. Not for what she'd done (she lacked the insight), but I understood that only someone who hated herself would allow herself to get involved with a married man who offered up nothing but misery.
I know lots of Other Women convince themselves that our husbands are their "soul mates". They spin fairy tales about how our husbands are misunderstood, or trapped. The convince themselves that they "couldn't help" themselves. Love, they say, is like that. (And let's be honest, our husbands are often active participants in these stories.)
We, of course, know that's bullshit. You simply don't get involved in the deliberate deception of another person unless you're capable of ethical gymnastics together with a deep belief that you don't deserve better.
The guys who stay with their wives and fight their way out of the hell that is post-betrayal marriage are caught in their own self-loathing.
In other words, these people hate themselves enough that we don't need to pile it on further.
So…where does our hate go? It slowly dissipates, as long as we don't feed its fire. It's smothered by compassion, for ourselves and our husbands and, with time, her. When we can recognize that our spouse's affair and his affair partner really had nothing to do with us. They're just two messed up people who lost their self-respect (along with their pants and any sense of decency).
The hate goes when you refuse to give it a home. When you will no longer be an incubator for an emotion that is turning you into exactly who you don't want to be. Her.