Ask the "Other Woman"

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
61

I don’t see being the Other Woman as “knowingly and willfully” hurting someone. It’s not like she sets out with the express goal of wronging another woman. Mostly I think it’s just about weakness. It’s not like you want to hurt other people, even if it’s a person you don’t have any direct moral obligation to. But if you’re lonely and someone you have a strong physical and emotional connection with repeatedly tries to be with you, sometimes you end up indulging and then feel shit about it later - like with many other things in life. I’m sure a lot of us do stupid things in moments of weakness. Not a justification, just an explanation.

DivineCommediene, I was also the Other Woman at one point, although the couple in question were dating rather than married. You’re braver than I am, at any rate, in starting such a thread here.

62

See, I strongly disagree with this sentiment, and not just as it applies to this specific situation.

If I can reasonably expect that my action will hurt someone and I choose to do it anyway, I have acted knowingly and willfully. Whether the hurt was my primary intent when I acted is irrelevant.

Obviously extreme example: Drunk Driver didn’t mean to kill the other guy in a wreck. His primary intent was to get home from the bar.

Not trying to imply any equivalence between adultery and vehicular homicide. I was just trying to make a point about culpability for actions, regardless of intent.

63

It does kind of sound like the affair was born out of extreme lonliness as well as a desire to “heal” from what your first husband did to you. Maybe your husband’s affair hurt you more then you realized. And then when a cool married dude (with issues of his own) came along…BOOM!!!

64

I would hesitate to reduce the culpability of the Other Woman that much. Choosing to be with a man who you know is married is a choice done with the full knowledge of the damage he is causing his marriage. In a way, it seems an unloving act against him as much as against the wife. If you really care about someone, why would you want to screw up his marriage or encourage him to ethically compromise himself?

I think the ‘‘driver of the getaway car’’ is a good metaphor. You aren’t responsible for robbing the bank, but you facilitate the crime AND you benefit from the crime. You show through your actions that you care less about the corruption of the bank robber or about the people being robbed than you do about getting a cut of the loot. You have morally compromised yourself.

65

You do? Because I don’t.

We have a ‘contract’ with people in our society not to drive getaway cars. It’s called ‘the law’. The beautiful thing about the law is that it is an open book. Everyone has equal access to all the details.

A marriage is much more of a ‘private’ contract.

That is, two people make vows to eachother, outsiders can’t be convicted of ‘helping to hurt’ or ‘driving getaway cars’ because they have no clue what really goes on in the marriage.

The wife could be a cheater. The wife could be a sadistic nut case who pretends it is ok to have an open marriage at first, and then changes her mind so that she can condemn the husband. The wife could be the type that teases and taunts him with offers of sex, then withholds and double dog dares him to cheat. She can be a sweetheart that deserves nothing but the best of everything. Or she can be a nympho that sleeps around with every man she sees, and photographs it to torture her husband. No one outside of the marriage really knows what goes on between the husband and wife. That is why outsiders are not held responsible for helping husbands not hurt wives or helping wives not hurt husbands. Only the wife and the husband know who is really doing the hurting or being hurt.

66

Let’s say she’s a raving bitch who does all those things. I don’t see how that would make adultery an acceptable option. Most people tend to view a marriage contract as a contract of monogamy – not saying ALL people, just most–hold monogamy as part of the mainstream definition of a marriage contract. So knowing that fact, even if you know nothing else about the marriage, you can surmise that the statistical probability that cheating with a married man will hurt his marriage is pretty high. Assuming that your act will lead to damaging others is a pretty safe bet. Not a given, but very likely.

To me, if you have that knowledge, and you still chose to act, you’re making an irresponsible, ethically questionable choice. I get that we don’t all share the same sense of ethics, but MOST MARRIAGES in MOST CIRCUMSTANCES would be hurt by this choice. That’s good enough evidence for me.

I am curious to know how you view the role of the Other Woman in this drama. Do you not see her as having any responsibility at all? Because that’s the vibe I get from your response.

(For the record, I’ve never been involved in cheating or cheated on, though my best friend cheated on her fiancée and ended up marrying the Other Woman. My feelings about this aren’t really personal, and I do defer to those who have experience with this sort of thing.)

67

I think it’s kind of silly to try to work out a degree of blame to apply to all “other women”. Illicit relationships differ in their details as much as marriages do, so the variables are nigh infinite here.

My bottom line is that you can’t ruin someone else’s marriage. They have to do that for themselves.

68

Maybe it’s not an acceptable option. But all this ire should fall on him. Not the other woman.

69

That’s odd; I never promised anybody anything of the sort, so by your logic I must not be bound by that little agreement among the rest of you.

I suppose it’s a matter of how deep you think the social contract goes. You seem to think our only obligations to other people are the law and what we as individuals have personally and explicitly promised them. I see it differently, that we have an obligation to each other to…well, in the lexicon of the Dope, not be a jerk. Doing stuff that is likely to hurt somebody else is being a jerk, even if that somebody else is also a jerk.

It doesn’t matter a tinker’s dam if she’s a withholding bitch and he ain’t had any since the Clinton administration–if he’s that miserable, he has the option of leaving. That’s what divorce is for, to give you the legal and ethical right to find a new partner when your marriage goes to shit.

And no, the wife in this sort of situation isn’t helping to hurt either partner in the affair by standing in their way-- the vast majority of the time the spouse doesn’t know it’s going on until much later, and besides it’s not like she’s keeping him in the marriage at gunpoint.

70

I *completely and totally agree *that the husband is not excused for his cheating, no matter how much of a bitch the wife is.

71

Hi DivineComedienne to get back to your original OP.

I don’t have any judgement call here, particularly as I have been the other guy in many situations. Even now within my circle of relationships, although I figure my girlfriends know I may have other “interests” am sure they absolutely don’t have an inkling of just how many other “other women” feature in my life.

But on the practical side I know with my married girlfriends when we get some time together I don’t wear aftershave - on their insistence! Gifts always have to be small, insignificant or perishable stuff. ( can’t let hubby see this stuff ) If its bigger then it has to stay in my apartment. I would never take one to a restaurant that I was regularly dining with another. This didn’t really present a problem because each of these girls occupy a different niche in my needs and desires from women. I tend to occupy different social venues with each.

I expect to have to accommodate last minute cancellations or changes to plans, I have had to make impromptu excuses to people that she knows when we have been out together and have bumped into.

I have found generally that women don’t leave their families, and by and large thats suits me.

My question to you is how do you deal with the practical aspect of your affairs. ( one blonde haired girlfriend of mine freaked out when she found a single long straight black hair in my shower.

Do you find illicit affairs addictive ( I know I do) I mean you get the best of the person without the rest of the crap that goes with them. Also would it bother you if you were just another “Other Woman?” ( Me as a guy not in the slightest.)

72

Another one for “I have little animosity for the other woman.”

I know a man who was caught fucking around on his old lady some months ago. The wife was understandably hurt, but when the wife told the other woman that she said “destroyed the family,” I was taken aback by that. No she didn’t. He did. I’m not going to deny a woman who has just been cheated on anger, and I won’t even deny her some irrational anger for a bit. But the sustained belief that the other woman has fuckall to do with anything makes no sense.

I don’t want to get into any song-and-dance about the ethics of being the other woman here. I think we can all agree that screwing someone else’s husband is a not-nice thing to do. Of course the other woman should say no to the affair, but what’s pertinent to the marriage is whether or not parties in the marriage say no. If one of them is not saying no, there is an issue in that marriage, and it has nothing to do with the other woman.

I can’t say why a man would have a relationship outside of his marriage. Perhaps out of sexual frustration or emotional neglect. Or maybe his wife has the best personality there is, and gives him A+ blow jobs, but the guy is just a filthy man-whore. Who knows? Either way, there is a shitty marriage.

The guy I know actively sought an affair with someone else. And yet the other woman destroyed the family? Should she feel bad? Maybe, but barely.

73

I am noticing that people keep zoning in on my statement that the wife might be a sadistic bitch. Before anyone tries to pretend that I mean a husband has a right to cheat because of that, I want to restress… The Husband Has No Excuse To Cheat. He has made vows, and he needs to keep them.

I am only making the point that we don’t know the inner workings of a marriage between two people, and that is why *outsiders *don’t have to be held accountable for spouses hurting eachother.

I am restating this, too, because I also don’t want to begrudge a wronged woman her anger. I just am confused (not surprised) at why everyone always lays so much blame on the other woman.

74

And we’re trying to explain that to you, you just seem to not be listening.

Once more, from the top, in Cat In the Hat sentences. Cheating on someone is a shitty thing to do. Doing shitty things to people is shitty. Helping someone do shitty things to people is shitty. People don’t like people who act shitty.

75

Ok.

76

I was cheated on by my ex-fiance many years ago. I was not particurly angry at the other woman–I was furious with him. She later did some pretty crappy things to me directly and that made me angry but that’s for the fact that she came to me purposely to cause pain. He’s the only one I blame for the affair. We had made promises to each other and he broke them. The other woman made no promises to me.

77

That’s an awfully selfless thought, but most of us humans aren’t that noble when we are caught in a moment of weakness.

Like DianaG said, it’s impossible to put some broad standard of judgement when it comes to the culpability of the other woman. I love how people around here like to cast stones when it comes to this topic. Nice to know that being a saint comes so easily to some of us.

78

As a matter of fact, is IS extremely easy not to sleep with other people’s spouses. Let’s not act like those who do it are sympathetic victims of circumstance. Yes, the married partner is more to blame, but a person who knowingly sleeps with a married person knows the damage that person is inflicting on someone else and doesn’t care. It’s not an admirable thing to do. It doesn’t deserve any sympathy or respect or understanding, and society’s moral judgements of such people are justified.

79

I didn’t read the whole thread, but here are my thoughts. I have some strong feelings about this, given some personal history, as a child of a nasty divorce involving infidelity, and as a spouse (who has been told by well meaning people that I should be “grateful” it was just a one night stand and not a full blown affair).

Maybe this is all to give you some distance and reduce your portion of responsibility in all this, but I find your use of phrases like “I didn’t think I would ever find myself as the OW in the first place” disingenuous at best. You didn’t wake up from a coma one day and find out you were fucking another woman’s husband. You knew he was married when you did it. This is not a situation you “find yourself in”. This is a situation you created (not without help, but still.)

By NO means am I excusing the man in this–IMO, he shoulders the vast majority of the blame. But you are not blameless in this. Whether the marriage was heaven or hell is irrelevant. Characterizing the wife as a bitch does not negate the immorality of the infidelity (nor does characterizing the wife as completely innocent of the marital issues deepen the immorality).

Short of a mutually agreed upon “open” marriage (which is another thread in itself), the state of the marriage doesn’t matter. Oh, the cast of characters will say it matters a great deal, as they rationalize the fact that their desire for short term physical/emotional gratification trumped any social boundary, or the needs of the UN-involved spouse.
But that doesn’t go down well with other people, so passive voice is used and excuses are found. “I was lonely.” “Their marriage was just a shell, anyway.” “She understood me better than anyone I’d ever met.” “I couldn’t get enough of him; my world wasn’t complete without him.” etc etc etc, ad nauseam. I’m glad to see you label it as selfish, because that is what it is–no more, no less.
I most sincerely hope that this man’s wife remains oblivious to your affair. One thing you may not have considered (and I’m sure Mr Man never did): your affair is over, sure. But if she ever finds out, it’s just starting for her. And it may last her lifetime. (this holds true for men who have been cheated on as well).
I don’t think the OP is horrible person, but I think she did a horrible thing. It is not up to me or any of us to decide if she is repentant enough–that’s between her and her conscience. I do have a question, though.

How on earth, having done this, do you now go forth into other relationships, perhaps even into marriage? Is there some place in the back of your mind that whispers, “I am not immune–I could be the one who is cheated on…”?

80

I wasn’t going to post in this thread. I thought it would bring up too many hurtful things that are best dead and buried.

My father had a girlfriend. My mother knew. I was about eleven when the affair started.

My folks never had the best marriage. In fact, they were fighting as long as I could remember, mostly about my dad’s family, and the usual stupid day to day stuff. But the girlfriend? That took the battles to a whole new level. I won’t say everything was my father’s fault. My mom drank, and I know she wouldn’t let my dad come near her. But still, in some sick way, I think my dad loved the fighting. He would openly taunt my mom with his girlfriend, and he never even considered leaving us.

And neither would my mom leave him. I think most of it was money. My mom and I both knew he would be a deadbeat dad if he left, and we’d have to fight, and fight HARD for every penny. The laws weren’t so strict back then. If paycheck garnishment was around then, we didn’t know about it. Mom only worked part time office jobs, and no way could she support the both of us. Divorce was sometimes brought up, but it just hovered in the background until the next blow up. Plus, I was loud and adamant that I didn’t want them to divorce. I suppose any kid would be.

I’ll refrain from describing my dad’s girlfriend, and yes I did know her. Several times she came to our house to demand that my dad should leave my mom for her. I saw it all happen. No one cared what I saw or how I felt, really.

I’m afraid I have no questions for the OP. I know all too well what adultery can do.

Now, I’m 47, unmarried with no children. I avoid personal relationships like the plague, in no small part due to what I went through.

But I say to you out there, man or woman. If you find out that your new boyfriend/girlfriend is married with a family, please, if you have any decency, drop him or her immediately. Have no further contact. Erradicate them from your life.

If you enter into a romance with a married person with your eyes open, knowing full well that the person is married, and especially if children are involved, you have no decency in you.