Another Woman Series ♀♂♀

Around the time I was fooling around with taken men, I developed a nasty habit of petty theft. My sticky fingers found their way around grocery stores and shopping malls alike, tucking away cookies, bell peppers, blouses, and pore strips. There was an unplaceable thrill in taking something that was not rightly mine—and getting away with it.

I never stole as kid. I grew up in a Midwestern hometown of 4,000 people, a community that raised me to try and do the right thing more often than not. When the 24/7 Super Walmart first opened up, there was a pastry section that operated by the honor system. Since my friends and I didn’t drink in high school, we spent our time and our money in that megastore, dropping browned coins and crumpled singles into the collection box, never paying a penny less for a donut.

As someone who had also seen the other side of retail from working at my parents’ restaurant, I gritted my teeth at those who didn’t pay their fair share—like the group of teens who dined and dashed out the backdoor and the obese woman who dropped naked chicken wings into her purse. I remained adamant against stealing after graduating high school and leaving the town’s humble living far behind.

But somewhere down the line, I lost the once effortless habit of doing the right thing without reason or reward. A mix of entitlement, resentment, and desperation drove me to be the type of person my younger self could not empathize with, and likely, did not expect becoming.

***

My first time stealing was when I was 23 or 24.

It happened at a super-sized Asian grocery store that smelled of fish and vinegar. Shortly before heading to checkout, I pocketed a sleeve of chocolate cookies and sheet of animal stickers, the amount totaling to a little over $2. I paid for the rest of my groceries, hoping nothing weird would happen in a ritual I’d done a thousand times (sans the thievery part). My steals felt twice their size in my pocket. My neck started sweating. I tried to smile at the cashier, but not more than usual.

As long as I could walk from the register to the sliding doors without incident, I was in the clear. The cashier handed me my receipt, and it felt like this strenuous effort to look straight ahead at the exit and walk to my parking spot at a normal pace. Once inside my car, I texted my best friend that I stole and that I didn’t know why.

How do you feel, he asked. And I told him it was thrilling.

The first time crossing the line is the hardest. Everything after that, incrementally, becomes easier.

***

My illegal hobby disgusted one of the taken men. He scolded me on a particular afternoon hangout, or whatever you want to call the time we spent clothed.

“Stop stealing! That’s seriously so unattractive.”

“At least I’m not hurting anyone,” I said, modeling my newly acquired shirt in my bedroom mirror.

“It’s wrong.”

People tend to pass judgement on those who have different tastes in whom it’s okay to wrong. 

“It’s not like I’m stealing from a local shop. The minimum wage workers still get paid. You think the corporations are going to miss that money?”

I told him I handed cash to a homeless man after leaving the mall with my stolen goods, as if that would somehow redeem me. I rationalized that I was simply “redistributing the wealth.”

“Don’t you think that money is going to do more for him than some wealthy exec?” I said.

“I guess,” he said. “But still.”

The key to moral compatibility is not behaving a certain way, but acknowledging whether your actions are good or bad. This was something very small for me, but I gave him credit for knowing how wrong this was, how wrong we were. I can’t say we were good people, but at least we were self-aware.

***

I think back to those cheesy commercials that discouraged people from pirating movies:

You wouldn’t steal a handbag…you wouldn’t steal a car…

The truth is, some of us would. The truest measure of our morals is what we choose to do when we believe there will be no consequences. I question again and again what altered inside of me and made me okay with stealing. What made me okay with not only claiming something or someone that was not mine, but also disregarding someone else’s ownership? I don’t think it mattered whether it was a sugary baked good or a boyfriend—when I chose to take, I acted on principle.

I can’t offer an eloquent or reasonable explanation for why I willingly became another woman or a thief. I can only sum it up as a sentiment:

I don’t feel like paying the price today. I feel like getting what I want.

***

During the peak of my kleptomania, I actually returned to the exact clothing store I managed in my first job out of college. It was a dimly lit sales floor, where I spent countless hours folding fitted graphic Ts and polos into perfect quadrants, appeasing middle-aged mothers and their hopes of outfitting sons and daughters into teenage popularity.

The store took an undeserved brunt of my resentment for not “making it” in the real world. It was a tangible aspect of my life I could pin my disappointment on.

In returning to a place where I felt I was wronged, stealing was my small way of revolting against the system, the corporate execs, and the unchallenged laws of society.

In the same spiteful vein, my vigilante ways also transcended to my pursuit of romantic justice. The dating scene had not served me well, had not produced a worthwhile partner when I had invested the time and energy of looking and hoping and hurting. The normal ways of finding intimacy weren’t working out, so I took matters into my own hands. I figured if I couldn’t foster a healthy and meaningful relationship by the rules, then selfishly, I had no reason to respect the rules.

I was in the Wild West, shooting game for entertainment rather than actual nourishment. It was unnecessary bloodshed of the heart, motivated by my resentment and flippant attitude toward love and monogamy. Sure, there were moments of authentic connection with some of the taken men, but I would be lying if I said I was not tempted by the novelty of the situation.

It felt empowering to be the wild card to screw up everyone else’s hand. The unpredictable game-changer, who by playing outside the rules, could trounce any preconceived strategy. I was destruction, or liberation, depending on how you looked at it. Wedding crashers get a bad rap, but maybe, some expressions of love should be interrupted. 

I wonder what would have happened if I was caught, red-handed and bare-bodied. I wonder if I was in such a state of disenchantment with my own life that I was waiting for an external force to disrupt it since I lacked the initiative to change it myself.

One of the most cowardly ways to live is to project your pain. I wanted to be less alone. When I couldn’t find that companionship in love, I found companionship in shared suffering. Somewhere out there, I knew a woman had it worse than me. In my eyes, a true loneliness was better than a false love.

If I could also disprove monogamy as a functional standard, then not only could I cheat the system, I could also break it. I could discredit the lifestyle I wanted so badly not to want anymore. I needed to see for myself the inner workings of a broken system, so I could come back with clear eyes and say, “You’re not missing out on anything, darling.”

***

I had one misstep in my stealing. Typically, I did a clean sweep of clothes for sensors while in the store—either in the dressing room or smoothing my hands over both sides while it was hanging on a crowded rack. Any tagged article was not worth the effort or risk to me. But after returning home one time, I realized I had overlooked a sensor on a cardigan. Luckily, it wasn’t one that activated the store alarms. Unluckily, it was filled with ink.

At first, I tried freezing it, with the intention of ripping the sensor off without a splatter. But I couldn’t pull it apart.

Then, I decided to burn it. I watched a few online tutorials about how you had to burn the sensor deep enough to release 3 metallic balls, which would free the pin while keeping the ink cavity intact.

I sat on my porch, lighter in one hand and sensor isolated in the other, a tail of fabric protruded from my fist like a magic trick. The lighter flicked on, the small flame reminiscent of distant cancer or a birthday cake. Burning always happens a lot slower than I expect. But once it catches, it happens in that predictable yet unstoppable way.

There is no such thing as a good person, only a person whose bad deeds we accept, with either ignorance or forgiveness. There are people who’ve resisted evil long enough to resemble goodness, and those who’ve never come close to feeling the heat and temptation. There are people who burn and roar right in front of us, and people whose goodness we defend only because we’re not the ones breathing their smoke.

The plastic sensor curled into itself, soft and dark. I wiped away the melted material with a napkin. Thick black smoke rose from my hands in the minutes I waited for the center to reveal itself. It all felt like a joke.

Me, crouching over a stolen (and smoking) cardigan on a porch with chipped paint. Me, wearing said cardigan to a day job where I played a professional who didn’t burn evidence from her crimes from the previous weekend. Me, being a version of myself that was both an exemplification of and exception to my true character.

I am still the kid who hates stealing, even when I steal. I am still the nonbeliever who has it out for love, even if I’ve finally found it.

***

Previous post ← Why My Real-life Boyfriend Feels Imaginary

Next post coming soon…

Another Woman Series ♀♂♀

My boyfriend and I were sitting on the patio of the best sushi bar in town, a refurbished bungalow with the front yard converted into a rock garden lounge. It was a 2-hour wait for the experience of being served a $10 bite of buttered snow crab sushi by a charismatic waitress named Stephanie. We killed some time by people watching.

Under the heat lamps, there was a group of women with cigarettes tucked between their fingers. They took turns photographing each other against the modern Japanese decor, juggling between them a community stash of iPhones and wine glasses. The wind carried the stench of smoke our way.

“I don’t miss it,” I told my him.
“What?”
“Being single.”

I explained to him how sometimes Girls Nights were quite the opposite when it came to single women. How dinner and drinks were a thinly-veiled guise to dress up and nonchalantly catch the wandering eyes of an intruding male, an ironic tribute to female empowerment that was trailed by the latent expectation of finding someone to put a hard stop to Girls Night, indefinitely or forever.

While some meet-ups are sincere, it’s clear to all girlfriends that there are generally two types of women who show up: those who are there to hang out and those who are there to hunt.

“You were a predator,” he teased.
“And now I don’t even have to look!” I smiled. “Already know I’m having sex tonight.”

He took my hand and led me inside the restaurant. We waited 20 minutes longer at the bar, where a server came around with complimentary appetizers on spoons. It was our first fancy date night in a while. We had to skip the previous week because I has house-ridden with the runs. Romantic, I know. My boyfriend spent the whole weekend delivering me chicken noodle soup and soda crackers, streaming movies with me in bed, and checking my temperature.

At the bottom of my first glass of wine on date night, I felt it again—the overwhelming sense of undeserved luck, gratitude, and fear.

Right in front of me was the person I didn’t expect to find: a singular source of mental, sexual, and emotional compatibility. Even crazier, we were on the same page and timeline of what we wanted out of our companionship: intimacy, meaning, support, and growth. Against all odds and personal reservations about monogamous relationships, I saw someone I could happily, voluntarily, and exclusively spend the rest of my life with.

What the actual fuck?

“You’re not going to cry again, are you?” He laughed and cradled my knees between his hands.
“No,” I said, looking up and out the window.
He leaned in and planted a kiss on my forehead.
“I love you,” I whispered.
“I know.”

Loving him feels like running. It’s kinetic. It’s refreshing. We have momentum.

Despite how energized I feel from from this second wind, this second chance at believing in love, I can’t help but feel every step forward is just bringing me closer to the end. No one can run forever. I fear the moment my body stops to catch a breath, just long enough to clear my mind, come to my senses, and realize my legs have stopped moving.

I’m in the monogamous relationship I didn’t believe existed 6 months ago.

In some ways, I still don’t believe it.

***

At the time of my involvement with taken men, their relationships had lasted anywhere from 2 years to a decade.

In comparison to my current relationship, the longest relationship I interrupted was 30 times longer.

30 times more good-bye kisses.
30 times more car ride conversations.
30 times more chicken soup deliveries and date nights.
30 times more reassurance in the solidity of the relationship.

I don’t know which realization was more defeating—that infidelity could happen years into a seemingly secure relationship, or that cheaters failed to show the remorse or resistance I expected.

In the movie Nymphomaniac, the protagonist talks about how easy it is to engage a romantic prospect:
“Make eye contact and smile.”

It felt exactly that way, and the ease of it amplified the cruelty. Beyond that, none of my interactions were a drunken, one-off mistake for the cheaters. Rather, the first contact was an open door, where I had their repeated (and proactive) consent afterward, even if nothing physical happened beyond incriminating text exchanges.

I feel sorry that my current boyfriend is up against the pessimism from my history. No matter how faithful and loving he proves himself to be, I haven’t been able to shake what I witnessed in my past life: men professing lust to one woman, and love to another.

It’s unrealistic to think my boyfriend and I are the glowing exception to common relationship pitfalls. What couple doesn’t think they are the special case? This doesn’t devalue the unique memories and time shared, but we don’t get to pick and choose the beautiful moments to build a case for “it could never happen to me.”

In reality, I just don’t know. Nobody ever does.

And the worst part is even if it’s good now, it doesn’t always stay that way.

I was the tip of the iceberg for those men, only a fraction of their romantic lives. Under the water, I believe they had deeper relationships I never had the chance to see, ones where they treated their long-term partners with kindness and intimacy and true compassion. I don’t believe any of them were bad men—they were all good men who did a very hurtful thing.

***

I watched the latest episode of This is Us, and bawled my eyes out (as usual). No spoilers here, but I will say an ongoing theme in the show is the human conundrum of love and loss. The best scenes show how the privilege of loving someone dearly is often coupled with the pain and fear of losing them.

It feels like I simultaneously hold two conflicting views:

• In one reality, I’m in an amazing monogamous relationship with a new guy in my life.
• In the other reality, I am grounded in how I’ve experienced infidelity from the other side. As beautiful as love can feel and appear when protected by naiveté, it’s not favorable to bet against the forbidden chemistry of two people. I remember exactly how easy it was for a committed partner to stray and go back to what I believe was still a meaningful love. A boomerang, leaving as forcefully as it returned.

I understand people are different. The past doesn’t predict the future, so it isn’t fair to let a few bad apples to spoil the bunch. But after eating so much rotten fruit, I’ve conditioned myself to expect the worm when the juice tastes too sweet.

The most alert prey is one who can think like a predator.

From my experience as another woman, I feel like my relationship is under constant threat, not by any reasonable measure, but by how opportunity and attraction naturally manifests.

It’s in our biology. Granted, we have self-control and the ability to resist temptation—this in no way excuses cheating or implies people are predisposed to infidelity—but it’s reasonable to recognize opportunity is everywhere, even if you don’t pursue it. You can find potential in your cashier, your coworker, and pretty much any stranger you encounter throughout the day.

Make eye contact and smile.

It takes one look, one conversation, and the slightest response. The small signals that brought me excitement as another woman are now the very things that makes me distrust smooth-sailing monogamy. You can call poetic justice served ice cold.

I don’t want to die, but I know my life will end one day.
As depressing as it sounds, I feel the same way about love.

Sometimes, we don’t appreciate what we have until it’s in danger, similar to how a terminal diagnosis sparks a new vigor for life.

Life and love have much in common.
It happens fast.
It ends too soon.
And it always feels a bit unfair.

The untimely end of either shouldn’t take away from how great they can both be. If anything, the uncertainty should give us an urgency to live and love in the moment as much as we can, while we still can.

Another Woman Series ♀♂♀

Our first time going all the way was outdoors, under the moon with the earth against my back.

A dog barked at us from afar, but it felt like wolves in my head—the howl of a distant danger, a single woodwind playing in minor.

We shook the dirt off our clothes and walked along the street to somewhere more like normal life. Headlights painted us white for seconds before releasing us back into the night. We were hand-in-hand when I called him out.

“After tonight, you’re going to go back to your life, the birthdays and holidays and anniversaries, like none of this ever happened.”

I hated how he could have his cake and eat it under the table, too. Society entertains two versions of reality: the one on social media and the one that actually exists.

***

I was involved with a handful of other men as another woman. I felt like I had discovered a portal to a hyper realistic dating scene—one where rampant infidelity plagued relationships and I was one of the few who was granted access to this Unpleasant Truths club.

My negativity reached a point where I believed every couple who had been dating longer than a few years was guilty of infidelity at one time or another. I played a twisted game in my head, where I gauged the people in the relationship and guessed which one had once cheated or was currently cheating. If there were so many incidents from my personal sample size, then I could only imagine how many others there were.

I felt so certain about this infidelity epidemic that if someone didn’t think their partner was capable of that kind of betrayal, then I assumed they were the ones being fooled. The wool was so far over their eyes it covered the rest of their body, and it felt warm and fuzzy and something a lot like love.

And it wasn’t just men who had wandering eyes and bodies. I was at a birthday dinner among extended friends, where two of the women spoke casually about slip-ups in their relationships—make out sessions in foreign zip codes that didn’t mean anything, just a set of lips that never came to light.

Without an ounce of faith left, I believed there were only two kinds of people in relationships: the cheaters and the blissfully unaware. I couldn’t decide who I felt sorry for, or who I’d rather be.

As another woman, I had a unique vantage point where I could see how a relationship was portrayed online vs. how it really was.

I was sick of seeing photos of #relationshipgoals and #wcw, when not long ago, I knew for a fact these men had different priorities in the flesh.

No matter how picturesque the occasions were, I dismissed them all: postcard snapshots of weekend getaways, festive holiday gatherings, candlelit dinners, and doe-eyed pets caught in the middle of pseudo-family portraits. Just another scrapbook moment for the Bullshit Shrine of Monogamy.

Yet, I was voluntarily digesting this perfectly plated crap on social media. And it was both baffling and understandable. Like how I’m aware of how McDonald’s chicken nuggets are made, but I still eat them.

I would like and double-tap couple pictures to show solidarity with friends who weren’t apart of the Unpleasant Truths club yet—either from ignorance or from tearing up their notice when it arrived unsolicited in the mail.

It’s not a fun thing to admit: that the person who is suppose to be your #1, your support system, and your most trusted companion could not afford you the most basic form of respect: honesty.

I wanted to be positive. I wanted to have hope. But how could I possibly believe in monogamy and loyalty in relationships, when I knew what it looked like from the unedited side?

Every time I saw a picture of someone I was involved with in a sappy couples photo, I felt like Kristen Wiig in the bridal shower meltdown scene in Bridesmaids, where she launches into an epic rant with the words:

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

She storms into the backyard and punches a hole through a 4-foot heart-shaped cookie, wrestling the giant baked good until it falls off its easel and crumbles on top of her.

That is how I felt about social media as a false reinforcement in relationships.

I imagined another reality, one where I could easily bridge the discrepancy between perception and truth.

Step 1: Click on the comment box below the offending photo.

Step 2: Type “You cheated on her with me. #honestygoals”

Step 3: Repeat with every man who thought a picture could solve his problems.

***

When I was done being angry at Instagram, for making me feel ugly or unwanted or alone, I reflected on why I chose to enable such a heartbreaking violation of trust.

I wondered if my involvement as another woman had more to do with actually being with someone or dismantling an ideal of romance—one I secretly longed for, but couldn’t actualize: a long-term relationship with a person who cared about me, and wanted to be with me exclusively.

I wondered if I could be so small of a person that I would intentionally ruin for others what I couldn’t find myself. It was easier to live without beautiful love if I assumed the couples I envied probably didn’t have it either. It was easier to cope with loneliness if I convinced myself a happy and healthy relationship did not and could not truly exist.

Maybe monogamy was just a product of superficial demand, created and marketed to us like a trendy commodity, one the masses never truly owned yet bragged about having anyway.

Empty yet enlightened, I kept seeing these men who, on some level, did love other women to the best of their ability. They documented and polished those moments for the world to see, and adjusted the saturation and warmth to fit the mood. I felt these relationships grow in my hands with the haptic feedback of every like I gave.

Outside my phone screen, I lived the photos men chose not to post.

The dark drives to my apartment.

The grainy noise of being quiet behind thin walls.

The low resolution nights of blurring her to focus on me.

***

Previous post ← The Moment Cheating Actually Happens

Next post → Why My Real-life Boyfriend Feels Imaginary

Another Woman Series ♀♂♀

We were on my bed the first time his girlfriend called.

“Should I answer?” he asked, his phone vibrating on my blue sheets.

“Would you normally?”

He picked up, and welcomed a beloved stranger into my bedroom. His voice was even, the way familiar souls fall back into conversation over the phone rather than start anew with plastic formality.

She asked what he was doing, and he gave an answer as forgettable as our afternoon chewing on greasy sandwiches at the bar, staring at sports I never watched alone but enjoyed beside him. It’s eerie watching someone lie. You reflect on all the times they seemed so honest and normal to you.

She repeated her questions. Once for him to answer, twice to convince herself. Cheating is only explosive in its initiation and reveal. Otherwise, it’s a very calm and passive process.

I climbed on top of him and straddled his thighs as he spoke. It was brazen and inappropriate and one of his favorite things about me.

I kissed his neck and his words reverberated in my head, as if I were part of the conversation, too.

“I’ll see you later,” he reassured her. “I love you.”

She murmured it back and he hung up.

Alone again—her voice an echo of ignored advice—we confirmed everything I imagined she worried about. The stuff of nightmares when you finally let someone in. The feeling of knowing and loving everything about someone, and ignoring the doubt of any of that being true.

***

It wasn’t always like this between us. There was a time when we were just friends, and I thought I could protect him from himself.

We were out with a group of friends once when he drank too much and spent the rest of the night trying to pinch my ass. I drove him home after last call.

We arrived at his address, and he loitered in my passenger’s seat, hoping I’d give him a reason to stay. Heavy and swaying, he leaned over the console to try his luck.

“I’ve always liked you, Connie,” he said, his breath muddied with the stench of beer.

“I know.”

Men always think they have to admit their attraction, as if we didn’t already know. Most times, we know long before they do.

“It’s always fun when we hang out,” he said. He lurched forward and I dodged his lips, flattening myself against my car door.

“We do have fun,” I said, pushing him back into his seat. “But you don’t want to do this. You have a girlfriend.”

He agreed and argued all at once. He had enough alcohol in his system to act on his desires and claim plausible deniability later.

Back then, it was him trying to kiss me, and me lying on his behalf.

“You’re going to regret this,” I said. I nudged him toward the door with a smile. “Good night.”

The next morning, he thanked me for not letting anything happen. I was so drunk, he told me. I do really care about her.

I spent the day feeling good about myself. It was a wholesome high, the kind you get from leaving a generous tip or picking up litter on the sidewalk. I felt noble for being a “relationship savior”—a woman who held something pure and fragile in her hands and chose to defend it. Call it a case of superhero syndrome, but I had spared a defenseless civilian from the worst kind of heartbreak.

Or maybe I was the super villain, milking a monologue dedicated to my own greatness, my only redemption being the mercy I showed someone I had endangered in the first place.

***

I was 22 or 23 when my love life turned to shit. Or rather, my outlook on love.

I felt foolish for investing time, hope, and heart into other people.

I felt burned from caring too deeply.

And most of all, I felt jaded.

I was in a state of disbelief that relationships could work in my favor, that all the effort of dating could possibly ferment into something tasty and intoxicating, instead of the usual regret and sour emptiness the morning after.

The superhero syndrome started to fade and I realized the city didn’t need saving—I did.

I had no place ripping off my freshly-ironed work clothes to reveal a righteous identity, because I simply didn’t have one. I was just an average civilian, looking out for my own in a city of outright chaos and heart crimes and injustice.

I stopped resisting.

He approached me again on a separate occasion, one where he was more sober and I was more angry at the world, and it finally happened. We continued seeing each other on those terms: tipsy and pissed and needing to touch each other. He would fight with his girlfriend and come find me. I would fail to form any worthwhile connection and send him a text.

Like clockwork, we would massage this twisted partnership from pleasure to pain and back again. As incremental and as compounding as time, our attachment grew from sex to something more threatening—a craving for one another, even after our bodies had nothing left to offer.

“I don’t like when you hang out with other guys,” he once told me. I was applying face cream before bed. It was one of the few nights he could stay over without raising suspicion.

“You’re kidding me, right?”

“I know you can do what you want, but I guess I still get jealous.”

“You legit have a girlfriend. I am single.”

He would always apologize after that. For putting me in that situation. For making me feel that way. For making me think we could un-fuck the past and be something normal. It was comforting to think someone else was to blame here. That being on the receiving end of I’m sorry redeemed me somehow, when I knew exactly what I signed up for.

***

Looking back now, I’ve stopped quantifying loyalty on a scale of execution, which assumes the act of being physical with someone else—whether it’s a touch or kiss or more—determines a relationship’s shift from “intact” to “broken.”

A more accurate measure of loyalty would judge someone’s intent, rather than their actions.

It’s easy to pinpoint when a person physically strays, but it’s much harder to determine how long it took the body to catch up to the mind.

Had I agreed to my friend’s advances the first time instead of the second, would it really have changed the value of his loyalty initially, or lack thereof? What’s the significance of a monogamous relationship when the restraining factor is a lack of opportunity instead of the self-discipline of those involved? If the consent of another woman, or third party, is the only thing protecting the sanctity of a monogamous relationship, then there was never a true promise of exclusivity.

In my case, the cheating didn’t occur when I formally had his body beneath mine. It happened when I had his attention, his willingness, and his intent.

***

“I think you should change my name in your phone,” I said. I kept thinking about how her voice sounded through the speaker, the hollowness of her pauses.

“She wouldn’t go through my phone,” he said.

“You don’t know that.”

“What should I change it to? Domino’s?”

“Why would Domino’s text you….”

“I don’t know. What do I use then?”

“Pick a generic guy’s name. If she goes through your phone, she’ll be looking for a girl’s name.”

He tapped on my contact information. With a few drags of his finger, I no longer existed.

And it was like we were back in my car again—parked and in the way of life in motion around us.

Him leaning in, leaving his sour breath and essence on my interior.

Me, wafting the evidence of our moment out the window, erasing myself, still trying to protect him.

***

Previous post ← Another Woman: A Series About My Role in Infidelity

Next post → How Social Media Saved Your Relationship And Ruined My Outlook On Love

Another Woman Series ♀♂♀

Home wrecker. Side chick. Mistress.

A rose by any other name will bear the same thorns. When you add an unannounced third party, the situation changes—for better or worse. Compared to 66 Days of No Sex, this series documents not a future of restraint, but a history of indulgence.

This is my experience as the other woman.

From singular lapses of judgement to the repeated and calculated violations of exclusivity, I’m sharing my perspective of disrupted relationships from the inside. I’ll write about broader realizations from experiencing it firsthand and include scattered thoughts I haven’t sorted so nicely yet (and may never).

I’ve titled this “Another Woman” instead of “The Other Woman” because it’s counterintuitive to think of my love life as secondary to someone else’s. I’m fascinated by the idea of “otherness” in relationships—it’s like I’m an out-of-place chapter in a couple’s fairytale, an amendment to another woman’s happily ever after. Or maybe the couple is the one making an appearance in my storybook.

What’s crazy is my story doesn’t necessarily make their final draft. The fairytale can still be printed in black and white, omitting detrimental details as if the affair never occurred. Sometimes, I worry that not talking about certain things deludes us into thinking they don’t happen.

Why I am writing this

• To give a voice to the silent participant. We hear stories from all other spectrums—the heartbreakers and the heartbroken, brooding and blissful singles, disgruntled and happy couples—but rarely does someone in my shoes willingly step into the limelight (without first being broadcast on national news for an affair with the POTUS). This side of the story stays under wraps for obvious reasons: damage to one’s reputation, shame, guilt, and even loyalty to the cheater. But it’s necessary to tell every side of the story, especially when the stakes are a generation’s understanding of modern love and commitment, in ideology and in practice.

• To challenge society’s perception and fetishization of monogamy. I question whether there is more than one path to romantic fulfillment and life-long companionship. Mutual monogamy can be a beautiful thing, but it shouldn’t be the only socially accepted practice. Especially when not everyone is capable of or interested in exclusive relationships. Especially when our actions indicate otherwise. Especially when a cookie-cutter prescription to dating could hold some people back from a truly satisfying way of living and loving.

• To reframe the complicated dynamic of relationships. I have a word-vomit list of lofty factors I want to address, including the role of timing, self-interest, emotional and physical involvement, discretion vs. public recognition, temptation and opportunity, and much more.

• To spur conversation and reflection on a personal level. If this series can encourage self-reflection or spark an honest discussion between two people about intentions and expectations in dating and companionship, then I will have accomplished what I wanted.

Why I am NOT writing this

• To clear my name. This is about revelation, not redemption.

• To apologize for what I did. It would be insincere of me to claim remorse, or to say I’ve undergone a moral transformation since the first incident. It’s a process, and not necessarily one of progress.

• To out someone’s infidelity specifically. Real names will not be used, and identities will not be confirmed or denied.

My obligation as a writer is to share pieces of my reality, even if the truth may not present me in a flattering light and especially if the truth may not otherwise be known. I find that purpose to be greater than my personal reputation.

I want to thank you for reading up to this point, for giving this endeavor a chance and your time, and for allowing me a platform to share a vulnerable part of my life.

“The thing you are most

afraid to write

Write that.”

-Nayyirah Waheed

***

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