This piece is about that subset of affairs where a dissatisfied spouse whose needs aren’t being met tries to reach their husband or wife, sometimes for years, only to encounter a person who doesn’t want to hear it and isn’t willing to change or get help. Other subsets of affairs exist.
Everyone knows the “Other Woman” is just a hateful, mean, evil homewrecker with no empathy for anyone at all. She is selfish. Heartless. Cruel.
Except for many I’ve run across managing my publication on infidelity for some five years on Medium.
Not all “other” parties, I will say that. I have run across a third-party narcissist or two. But most “other” women or men know there’s a spouse and kids who stand to be hurt.
We agonize about it. It weighs on us.
It’s true that the other woman (or man) is the repository for all the complaints the cheating husband (or wife) has about the spouse. Listen to enough of that and you can get angry at anyone. Especially if you’re not astute enough to read between the lines and see what gripes the cheated-on spouse may have and observe to see if these might be grounded in reality.
But, in the end? The affair partner has to decide whose side they’re on: the cheating partner’s, or the spouse’s. And what the affair partner is often confronted with is a demoralized spouse who feels cut out, unwanted, and unloved.
That’s the sad bit. We meet these sad, sad guys who are just pining away for love.
So. what do we do? We answer that call.
We love them.
Not so long after, they decide this was tawdry, because, you know, it’s s-e-x (and nobody is supposed to care about that if kids are in the picture and the wife doesn’t want to have sex anymore). Because the kids are crying because you’re not their mother, and meanwhile the mother is refusing counseling and is acting like The Frozen Ice Queen.
(Yes, this is a real scenario. If you don’t believe me, look up a channel on YouTube called Dad Starting Over.)
We “others” go with what we were initially told.
“I just want someone to love me.”
So, we do.
Then, the move-out happens, someone in the family gets sick, and the cheater, belatedly, realizes that what they really wanted was to put the pedal to the metal and sacrifice absolutely everything for their wife and family. They get that little nookie out of their system, and then they decide it’s illicit. They are bad for wanting it, or for needing a relationship that actually feels like a relationship.
Many believe the cheating spouse is getting along just fine in his marriage, and is just bullshitting the affair partner for all the side sex he can get.
Then again, some of us “others” have heard stories you just can’t make up.
Personally, this “other woman” couldn’t accept being dumped, because I was all caught up in my Dream Of How It Could Be.
But also because: He was so sad and in so much pain for so long.
I got wrapped up in his suffering, and I remembered it for him even as he distanced himself from it.
They don’t care about sex as much in their late fifties and their sixties ... especially when an entire society chastises them for it.
They hold to the mission society gives men: Once the ring is on and there’s a baby crying in the crib, they are to provide happiness and security for the wife and kids at all costs. They are bad people if they do not.
The honeymoon phase with the affair partner wears off, falling victim to all the lies and planning it requires and the mistress’s aggrieved desire for more.
Presto! The cheater doesn’t need a relationship anymore! All they want is that their family be happy.
And that is the Mid-Separation Perspective Flip.
Nobody, but nobody, sees this coming in the blissful beginning of an affair.
This is when the cheater rewrites history. The affair partner imagined it all and everything is her fault. She will not leave him alone. She started it all. She took him away from his kids. All the “illicit” desire moves onto her, and he has none of it left. He needs to disown it so he can go back to the spouse who cannot, or does not want to, change.
I read all these pieces about how you’re supposed to get rid of any and all traces of your ex. Now, I’m glad I didn’t, because when I’m tempted to believe I just made it all up and I imagined his feelings, his sadness, his loneliness, his forlorn-ness, I can go back to the stuff I have hard copies of, and see the rewrite of history.
At the beginning of the affair, if the cheater had stayed in that sexless marriage, didn’t reach out to that other woman, didn’t reach back, didn’t have an affair …
He actually was really, really miserable. And Wife didn’t give a shit. He had the affair because the pain was unbearable, and he either didn’t have access to other tools to handle it or was afraid of those tools.
At the end of the affair, the Other Person becomes the sole repository of that, so the cheater can dump that part of themselves into us and forget that part ever existed.
They’re having trouble leaving the marriage. If they say they want to leave the marriage, but then they start foot-dragging, this is how it’s going to end up.
Do. Not. Bite.
You, the “other” woman or man, Will Pay The Price.
If I were you, I’d just open dating apps and start dating. You didn’t practice witchcraft and take over his or her will.
They will believe this later.
It wasn’t so.
And here’s the other thing:
If he’d stayed? She’d still be The Ice Queen, and he’d wish he’d left.
These people have a fundamental inability to be happy and since they’re in a situation that can’t work out — the close relationship and the family life won’t be found in the same person — they won’t be happy either way.
I heard one sad story of a cheater who took up with a mistress once his wife was diagnosed with a chronic wasting disease and his marriage changed forever. Basically, here was a selfish rich guy who just couldn’t let go of his dreams for His Retirement. He’d counted on his dream relationship in his dream city, living it up with all this money.
But she got sick.
He couldn’t abandon his hedonistic fantasy and just take care of her. So he sought a mistress to replace the missing romance and sex, and tried to split his life between two different houses in two different cities. In one life, he could still be the dutiful husband everyone expected and he expected of himself, and in the other he could still live the life he wanted.
He ended up “winning” and the wife moved (he traded that for dumping the mistress) … but he’s going to be stuck in Texas with a sick wife and no help and no family close by. How’s he supposed to Live That Life with a wife slowly dying who needs more and more care? When he can’t just accept that life had other plans, and he’s going to have to Give That Up since he can’t stand the idea of divorcing and everyone hating him?
The reality of their lives (and their wives) bites people like this in the butt. They need to accept reality, and part of that reality is their own need for happiness — but they punish themselves.
They are not supposed to need happiness. They are not supposed to need love and companionship. Not when there are kids, a spouse, and an extended family who will be upset.
After all, doesn’t the wife, the whole family, and everyone in society agree? She doesn’t want sex anymore! Suck it up, you pervert! Old married people aren’t supposed to want to have sex!
We can see the true dilemma in the spouse who didn’t plan to get sick. But what about the physically healthy spouse confronted with the reality of her own touchless, sexless, affectionless behavior, who refuses to change in the face of her spouse’s pleas for help?
But the Mid-Separation Perspective Flip people do not believe they deserve happiness. Looking at their backgrounds, most of these people grew up feeling like worms, so they’re going to choose servility and bury themselves every time.
They have to lay their “bad” desires for a full relationship with someone on us, the “other” men and women. Then we become the “bad” people so the cheater can go back to the family and be “good.”
The desires for sex and love are put onto the third-party scapegoat, who runs away with the “bad” desires into the desert, where those “bad” desires, attached as they are to the bad person, are never seen again.
Affair partners think they can save a person like this and coax them back to respect for everyone’s needs, including their own, and actually make them happy. Affair partners miss the flaws, seeing only a good person who actually does deserve happiness.
Unfortunately, the cheaters believe they have to forego happiness in order to be good people, and so does the rest of society.
This is how ninety-nine percent of affairs end up. Unless, of course, the cheated-on spouse who’s been neglectful (in those cases where someone has) decides to buckle down and work on themselves and their marriage.
Don’t fall victim to the Mid-Separation Perception Flip and become someone else’s sacrificial scapegoat.
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