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Why Do They Do It, and Should We Care?

30 November 2008 756 views No Comment

Hi again, We are going to be bringing up the topic of “the other woman” in this post as well as the next one. These posts will contain two very different but very valid points of view. One point of view (me) will be of someone who not only was at one time the “other woman” but sympathizes with them, and the other point (S. McDowell) will be of someone who has really been victimized by the “other woman” and has a very good reason for maybe feeling that they all need to be sterilized. I’ll let S. tell her own story, so I’d better get on with it. I’ll start with my parents.

My parents divorced when I was 10 years old because my father was caught cheating with another woman. After my father left, a lot of people started coming to my mother and telling her about all of these other affairs my father had been having over the years of their marriage. My father never wore a wedding ring because he said that it was uncomfortable, but as it turned out, he used it as a tool for dating. That’s right, he DATED these women who had no idea he had a wife or kids. He was taking them out and treating them to gifts and refused to spend money for his children to get school clothes. I resent my father very deeply for the way he pushed us aside and made us feel as unwanted as he did. “But S.C., ” you may be asking. “If you think your dad is a giant douchebag for cheating, then why do you sympathize with cheaters?” That’s a super question for those of you awake enough to ask.

Well there are a lot of things about my upbringing that make me very weary of being a hypocrite. Everybody can be a hypocrite from time to time, but I’m talking gigantic-butthole-judgemental-”I’m so much better than you are”-hypocrite. I’m related to A LOT of those and I always kind of hated them. I have always tried really hard to make myself see both sides of a story and not automatically think the worst of a person because I’ve seen it done by people I love in VERY unfair manners. I’ve got a great example of people being judgemental when they have no flipping clue. My husband and I. Yup. You see, I’m a bit of a hard ass and I can tend to be controlling. I’m not a super sweet person on the surface and I can rub some more traditional people the wrong way because I refuse to take even the slightest submissive role in my life. My husband is a very meek and likable guy. He never speaks out and he never has any conflicts unless someone else starts it. A lot of people, (most of my family and his family included) feel sorry for my husband because they see me as a nag who controls him. That’s completely not true. He’s an adult and makes his own decisions. The point I’m trying to make is that nobody knows the inner workings of a relationship except for the two people directly involved. It would be very easy for me to look at the relationships of the people around me and make simple judgements, but I try very hard not to do that. Same thing with cheaters. I want to see both sides before I start lighting my torch for the witch-hunt.

I once knew a man who had been married to his wife for 25 years. They had 3 grown kids and on the outside, he and his wife seemed to have a very comfortable relationship. A week before their actual 25th anniversary, he left his wife for another woman. The easy thing to do was to judge him as a terrible terrible man who was just a dirty scag. However, his wife had been keeping herself busy with extracurricular activities and hardly ever made time for him. Not an excuse to cheat, right? How about if this had been going on for almost their whole marriage? A woman came along, a woman his same age and they clicked. He should have left his wife before cheating if his marriage was that bad, but I cannot bring myself to believe he was a villain. He was human and he was weak. It happens to all of us.

Where I grew up, cheating was something you heard about all the time. It seemed like everybody cheated. The “other woman” was always a topic of conversation in the hen house. Sometimes I KNEW the “other woman” being talked about. No, I was never a member of some skanky slut sorority, but for someone to go with a taken guy was not an odd thing in my inner circle. I did it twice. I was not a predator seeking these guys out. One guy talked me into it and the other guy had been my friend since we were 5 years old and he wanted someone to talk to. Both surprised me. My best friend did it A LOT. It was a self esteem thing for her. She was heavy-set and she used sex as a way to make herself feel good about herself and there were a lot of guys in relationships all too willing to take advantage of her situation. Were we right? No, and we weren’t any better off for it. I have no defenses for my friend, but for myself, I never set out to get a guy who was already with someone. I liked the perks of not actually having to be in a relationship, but I wasn’t trying to hurt anybody. What else? HI FOLKS! I WAS 16 YEARS OLD! I wasn’t breaking up any future marriages. I was young and having a carefree puberty.

I just have to make myself question motive before I start pointing my finger. I’ve been cheated on once and I got over it really quickly. It wasn’t very traumatic because we were only kind of serious. The worst part was that she was young. Like ILLEGAL young. I bounced back really quickly. Perhaps I’m so sympathetic because I’ve never really been on the receiving end. But I know one thing, if my husband cheated on me with a stranger, it would be HIS fault. If he cheated on me with someone I knew, I’d go Jerry Springer on them, but with a stranger, he’s the one who would be held accountable. I’ve also got crappy self esteem and I would want him to tell me what I did to make him go to someone else. What did I do to make him wander? I just really don’t see a point in finding out the “other woman” and confronting her, especially if she’s a stranger. She doesn’t know me and doesn’t owe me anything. I wouldn’t want to take her out to dinner or anything, but I wouldn’t want to confront her. Admittedly, I’d hate what she did, but she herself would still just be a stranger and really just a symptom of something wrong with my relationship. I’m not idealistic enough to believe that women could ever share any sort of comradery like that where there is enough respect for the gender to not go after a taken man. Look at all these stupid dating shows like “The Bachelor” and “Rock of Love.” Ok, I know that these women are not necessarily the top of the barrel when it comes to classy chicks, but they fight and fight over these total schlubs.

Deep down, I’m just a pessimist. I wouldn’t call myself a realist because my first reaction is to think bad things and I have to make myself try to understand. “The other woman” is what it is. It’s not a new phenomena. There have been mistresses for as long as monogamy has been around…so forever! But should we automatically put a scarlet letter on these women and make them the town jezebel? I don’t think so. I think there should be an attempt to try to remember that some (SOME! Not all, some of these women really are terrible) of these women are weak and vulnerable and they use sex for the wrong reasons and are really confused. Now I’ll leave it to S. McDowell to tell her story and she can relay why she thinks Nathaniel Hawthorne needs to be studied by all wronged women. And she’s right.