'I was the other woman. Here’s what I want you to know.'

Being "the other woman".

It’s not a position we’re typically sympathetic to.

When it comes to cheating, it’s still seen as black and white. The cheater is always a narcissist. Their unsuspecting partner is always a faultless victim. And "the other" is always a devilish siren and seductress.

In some cases, this is perhaps not so far from the truth. 

But when I found myself in a position of the other, I had the tribulation of seeing these situations from a different vantage point.

Watch: Coercive control is a deliberate pattern of abuse. Post continues after video.

While cheating can have variations of the genders perpetrating and experiencing, my story is about a husband, a wife, and me as the other woman (a 25-year-old at the time).

I know this admission will be met with harsh conclusions on my character, morals, and general integrity. I agree people should be held accountable for their actions and in some cases, in the words of John Major, "Society needs to condemn a little more and understand a little less."

However, while we often describe affairs as steamy, raunchy, and exciting... my experience is that they are anything but. Some better adjectives might be traumatic, devastating, and humiliating for all parties involved. 

I ask that you suspend judgement and listen to a side of the story so often neglected. The reality is that in some cases, love triangles exist where all three participants are both victims and perpetrators to varying degrees. 

This is not for the sake of sympathy, but rather to highlight the insidious act that is cheating, which obliterates the lives of all involved, no matter which role you play. 

My partner, 11 years my senior, had been going through a traumatic divorce. For a year, he had tried to leave his pernicious marriage, and she had threatened him with suicide. 

I dutifully filled the role of the patient, supportive, and stoic girlfriend who was there to help my love out of an abusive marriage.  

I was told she was completely aware of our relationship. And so, every time we were together, I had to leave knowing he was going home to someone who was holding him hostage in his own life.

I couldn’t complain or question because, "If we didn’t have trust, we didn’t have anything".

When I asked questions, this was the response I’d get, along with the guilt of not "understanding what he’s going through", and "why couldn’t I just wait - he wasn’t ready... yet".

My reality became that I was a crazy, impatient and selfish partner as my love went through one of the biggest life changes a person can go through - divorce. And so I waited, always putting his needs (and moods) ahead of my own. 

When it got too much, he’d leave me in an emotional heap, only to come back a few weeks or sometimes just days later with a "plan" of how he was finally going to leave. The rollercoaster continued. For 16 months, it continued.

By April the following year, he’d done it. He had his own apartment, he’d met my parents, he even showed me the signed divorce papers. We saw each other more and more. Everything changed, just like he’d promised.

Except that it hadn’t. 

One night, a missed call from an unknown number led me to the voicemail of his wife’s mobile. While at first I was guarded, expecting her to be unhinged and manipulative; over the coming days, the truth came out. 

The divorce papers were fake. 

They were very much still married - house-hunting even. 

They were living apart to "date again" in an attempt to rekindle a love-filled but sexless marriage. 

She had no idea about me, of course, until a tip-off. She did not have a life-threatening heart condition, nor had she been threatening suicide. She had in fact encouraged him to leave if he was no longer happy. 

He wanted to stay. He loved her.

His wife was patient with me. She answered my many, many questions. I’ll never forget that through my apologies she said: "It’s not you who made a promise to me. It’s not you who owed me anything".

The one truth was that he did love me too. He just loved her more - a pill that’s hard to swallow when society sees the other as a villain, not a victim. 

Fourteen years of history, however troubled, couldn’t compete with the passion and compatibility we shared. 

I gave her all the proof she needed to help her in the courts, and then we parted ways.

The question I’m always asked is, "How did you not know?" 

Part of me strongly suspected, which is why I felt like I was going mad; but the gaslighting and guilt-tripping is a tried and tested method, and it’s very, very effective, as is the intermittent reinforcement of leaving and coming back randomly. Plus, you just never believe that the person you love will fake legal documents.

Among the obvious feelings of guilt, humiliation, foolishness and utter betrayal, I had the tender realisation that the love story that had consumed me for so long was nothing more than a symptom in someone else’s marriage. 

I wasn’t even the main character in my love story - I was the plot twist. The most important thing to me, was just escapism in someone else’s sad life.

Listen to Sealed Section, where Chantelle answers three anonymous questions from listeners who are cheating or being cheated on. Post continues below.

What the folklore of The Mistress cannot acknowledge is the love that can exist outside of a crumbling marriage. We always see affairs as a sexual escapade, rather than a romantic one. But I didn’t grieve for over a year because I was prurient - I was completely and utterly heartbroken. 

In these situations, love, support, and sympathy rightfully surrounded the wife. But as the other... how can you ask for the same when what you lost wasn’t even rightfully yours? How can anyone empathise when your actions, willing or not, destroyed another relationship?

There were no books that I could find, no internet forums, no articles that talked about the mistress in the fallout. The only mildly relatable character I could find was Amelia in The Terminal who spoke about having a partner who you can never share milestones with.

I’ve since read Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends. While some moments were relatable (realising he’d save his wife from a burning house before his mistress), the overall acceptance of an open-marriage negated the chance to properly explore the true damage of infidelity.

Ironically, the one person I wanted to turn to in the aftermath, the only person I felt who could possibly understand was the person who had betrayed me. I turned to him for comfort and tried to find the answers I desperately needed to hear – that he did love me, that his marriage had been a mistake and he regretted everything, that things would be different now the truth was out. 

But he only ever expressed regret for ruining his marriage, and therefore, regret of me, of us. He'd never say so in so many words, wanting to keep me just close enough as one of the last people in his life who hadn’t denounced him.

Retrospectively with a few more years of life and maturity under my belt, and with the benefit of hindsight, the situation was so obviously noxious. But it was so well before I was unwittingly added to their marriage.

I should have removed myself from being in that position, yes, and told him to find me if/when he was ready. Better yet, I should not have ever made it my mission to "save" him from a marriage that was rotting from the inside out. That was his job, not mine.

I believed for a long time that his actions were just the product of an ill-matched pair who slowly wore each other down but were too co-dependent to leave. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t... but two years after the event, I found he spoke of his new girl with the same tentative commitment as I recognise he had treated me.

"It’s not nothing," he explained, "but it’s not entirely something either."

That was the last time I spoke to him - I’d heard enough.

I got the answers I’d been looking for without him saying much at all.

The author of this story is known to Mamamia but has chosen to remain anonymous for privacy reasons.

Feature Image: Getty.

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