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

***

Next post → The Moment Cheating Actually Happens