I have been in an Other Woman situation. The situation where you find something out, a text, a conversation, a rumor and it’s right. The moment where the floor drops away and you feel like you are the last to know, when it seems like everyone is looking at you with pity. I’ve actually been in it a lot over the years (not so much recently).
I remember the first time I found out, the floor falling away and my denial and shock invading my rational mind. I didn’t even want to believe it and so for a moment I thought this must not be what I read. But then it happens again and again and each time I can remember that feeling so well, that moment when your world seems shattered and your heart falls to the floor. I never thought it would happen again, until it happened again of course. It feels pretty awful because suddenly nothing makes sense. The person you’re with is different, you feel worthless and your relationship feels like a sham.
When I was younger I directly blamed the other woman, berating, hating. Because I saw our relationship as okay until someone else nosed their way in, disrupting our balance and happiness. But that wasn’t what happened. Our relationship wasn’t balance or happy, because if it was, there probably would be no Other woman. But blaming someone else, not the partner, was easier, it meant that it was a mistake and the fault of that noisy meddling individual, not the one right in front, the one who says that they will change and that this is the last time.
Stemming from this misplaced blame was an illusion I thought they had shattered: our happy home. But in reality I was the one living under the illusion that we even had a home to start with. The other woman didn’t disrupt anything, didn’t shatter anything that wasn’t already broken. Thankfully I learned my mistake pretty fast and realized this, but I always hear people in the same situation. It takes a lot to break an illusion, especially one of our own fabrication. They are tough and built of stern denial. It is easier to believe that it is someone else’s fault than to admit that the person who promise to love us betrayed us and may not be the person we thought. We were wrong. We were betrayed and duped. Our hurt fuels our anger and our misplaced blame. Trying to help us, but instead fooling us even further and playing into an age old competition. Laying the blame at everyone else’s feet than the perpetrator.