Happy Being The Other Woman

[EnigmaXOXO]

Nubian,

 

What exactly is your definition of "cheating"?

 

I'm just trying to understand things from your perspective and I'm just a little confused.

 

For instance, your boyfriend has another girlfriend that he sleeps with. And you BOTH know about each other. So far --- you're okay with that and don't consider it "cheating." I'm only assuming that it's because he's been open and honest about it.

 

But why then would having sex with someone you work with then be considered "cheating" if he was also upfront about wanting to do that? Is it because he has to have your permission and/or approval before including girl number three?

 

What exactly are the rules???

 

NOT trying to be sarcastic. I’m just trying to understand the fuzzy logic in hopes of learning something from an OW's point of view…

[isabella]

I just found out that the father of my child was with OW for the past 1 and a half a little before I was pregannat during and up until a month ago when I caught him

The major thing with my scenario is that the other women a was also in the dark, not as much as I though. But he told her I trapped him with the baby I was also suicidal made me out to be crazy he also told her we weren't together anymre meanwhile we bought a home were making wedding plans the whole nine yards....we all worked together too so she knew I ws pregnant...I totally hold most of the blame on my ex I mean he is the one who left me & his daughter certain nights to go sleep or be with her...she owes me nothing he does, he betrayed me.

 

But what I cannot understand is how this OW would be okay and be able to sleep at night knwoing hwat her relationship iwith him will do and the final result will be so negative. Regardless if she was in the dark sorta how was it okay with her to be with this man who was expecting a child and could do this to an unborn life my question is "WHY WOULD YOU WANT HIM STILL" I wouldn't. That would be enough to tell me he is no good. This OW is no longer with him anymore...for now at least...but II truly believe she was betrayed to an extent....she is smart though...I also believe she knows more then she leads on to know..I mean the whole company knew we were together stilll...

 

Th pain I feel today and tommorrow is undescribable...i thought my delivery was painful...but matters of the heart are the worst. If only the OW could feel this pain for 24 hrs I truly believe there wouldn't as many OW/OM in the picture. My pain is about what i have gone through and still need to go through...I feel surges of pain regarding my baby girl who didn't ask for any of this and now will not get what she had a right to have a mother & father together...and that is HIS fault... I consider my self intelligient to some level...I am not that woman who blames the OW...i consider that the easy way out...do I think highly of his OW "NO" do i think they are both amoral and no values YES.

 

At the end of the day I have concluded that the reason why so many people have affairs and so many relationships don't work out is due to selfishness. If we were all selfless in our relationships I guarantee all of you there wouldn't be this chatroom. If each person thought of their partners needs before our own needs we would all be fulfilled happy and loved.

 

Such an easy solution but highly unattainable I think!

 

__________________________

When God closes a door,

He opens a window!!

 

 

Isabella

[littleflowerpot]

Originally posted by isabella

At the end of the day I have concluded that the reason why so many people have affairs and so many relationships don't work out is due to selfishness. If we were all selfless in our relationships I guarantee all of you there wouldn't be this chatroom. If each person thought of their partners needs before our own needs we would all be fulfilled happy and loved.

 

Such an easy solution but highly unattainable I think!

 

__________________________

When God closes a door,

He opens a window!!

 

 

Isabella

 

i'm not so sure about this. for years i was the good girl. i was the dutiful wife. i was selfless. i bent over backwards and turned into a pretzel to consider his happiness. what i forgot in all of that was to love myself. my therapist has helped me to understand that if we each learned to love ourselves as we should, we are less likely to enter into or remain in relationships that hurt us (married or affairs).

 

ladies, we have to learn to love ourselves first.

[isabella]

LITTLEFLOWERPOT Wrote:

i'm not so sure about this. for years i was the good girl. i was the dutiful wife. i was selfless. i bent over backwards and turned into a pretzel to consider his happiness. what i forgot in all of that was to love myself. my therapist has helped me to understand that if we each learned to love ourselves as we should, we are less likely to enter into or remain in relationships that hurt us (married or affairs).

 

ladies, we have to learn to love ourselves first.

 

I agree with you 100%...you always have to love yourself & have inner happiness to ever make ayone else happy...what I meant is if each peron thought of their sig. other first we would all be better off..not too lose yourself for another person but to not be selfish...when your always selfish nothing good comes of it.

 

You siad that you bent backwards for your Hubby what happened r u together?

 

what I stated also works for your hubby....he also needs to be selfless regarding you, you give he takes he gives you take!

[Nubianangel]

Enigma,

 

The rules are this, because the two of us decided to enter this 'forbidden affair' and see each other despite his having a girlfriend, I think it should remain that way--the TWO of us (excluding his girlfriend of course). As the OW, I like to think that I offer or provide what his g/f doesn't either emotionally or physically and if he's looking for another OW then it's time for us to end it. I feel I can do no more for him. He doesn't necessarily NEED my permission or approval. He can do as he pleases but I will not be a part of it.

 

For instance, your boyfriend has another girlfriend that he sleeps with. And you BOTH know about each other. So far --- you're okay with that and don't consider it "cheating." I'm only assuming that it's because he's been open and honest about it.

 

I do consider what he's doing as "cheating" but on his girlfriend NOT me. He has professed his loyalty to me, his only OW and should he abandon that for another OW, I will consider that "cheating" because he claims I am the only OW in his life.

 

I'll be the first to admit, it doesn't make much sense but this is how a lot of us OW think. We like to believe that though they're married or taken they've come to us and we're the only OW they need. Delusional? Perhaps but that's my truth.

 

I know you don't agree with my situation but thank you for your tactful posts. You don't judge, you don't assume instead you ask, you try to understand and I have to admit you certainly encourage me to really consider what I'm doing.

[Nubianangel]

Think I should say something? I care about him enough that I would rather see her get help than continue the way they have been.

 

Kia-

I think that's a great idea. She needs to be checked out because as you said the vaginal wall can stretch to accomodate almost anything, especially a large member.

Assure him that the penis he was blessed with may not be the culprit.

[littleflowerpot]

Originally posted by isabella

LITTLEFLOWERPOT Wrote:

i'm not so sure about this. for years i was the good girl. i was the dutiful wife. i was selfless. i bent over backwards and turned into a pretzel to consider his happiness. what i forgot in all of that was to love myself. my therapist has helped me to understand that if we each learned to love ourselves as we should, we are less likely to enter into or remain in relationships that hurt us (married or affairs).

 

ladies, we have to learn to love ourselves first.

 

I agree with you 100%...you always have to love yourself & have inner happiness to ever make ayone else happy...what I meant is if each peron thought of their sig. other first we would all be better off..not too lose yourself for another person but to not be selfish...when your always selfish nothing good comes of it.

 

You siad that you bent backwards for your Hubby what happened r u together?

 

what I stated also works for your hubby....he also needs to be selfless regarding you, you give he takes he gives you take!

 

no, we are not together. i'm happy we are not together. he treated me worse than he ever treated his dog.

 

i did bend over backwards for him at the detriment to myself. he cheated on my continuously, he abused me and he neglected me. i've also most recently been the ow (he's not married but in a long-term relationship) and i'm now extracating myself from that. i realize what has hurt me most in both these relationships were not as much the men themselves as it was my not loving myself.

[kiababy]

Amazing how much in common we OW have.....I was married to a friggin a**hole too. He was controlling and 'cheated' with his addiction to porn and phone sex. I don't think he had time to step out with other women because he was too busy following me everywhere!!! (I was totally innocent of any wrongdoing).

 

My MM says I'm his 'favourite porn star' - how can I not love that? Even though the circumstances are TOTALLY WRONG, the contrast between how he treats me and how my ex treated me is like night and day.

[littleflowerpot]

it's interesting you remark on the differences between your ex and your mm. when my attached man and i first became friends, he was as different as night and day to my two other serious ex's. although he's technically not a mm, i'll call him that to make it easier - my friendship with the mm became very close and we were best friends before it ever became romantic. physically, he was not my type so our relationship did not begin based on physical attraction. i first started to care about him when i saw how different he was as a person to the other two men in my life. my mm is gentle and even-tempered. he's calm and has never been outwardly disprespectful. in short, he was everything to me that the other two men were not.

 

although in retrospect i can now understand that our relationship is not healthy, he was by far the healthiest man that i had ever loved or that had ever loved me. i'd always been attracted to "bad boys" and he is the polar opposite. he has never used drugs - never even tried weed - he doesn't drink. he is very close to his family. he is outwardly loving and warm. he was everything i wished i had for myself but was too stupid and young to realize. of course, i know now that he has his faults as well but he was a great improvement on the relationships of my past. now i see that he has hurt me but in a different way than the others.

 

it's all so very confusing and complicated.

[kiababy]

I guess here is where our stories diverge.....I was married to who I THOUGHT was a 'good boy', well my mother liked him anyway (more than she liked me as it turned out).

 

I had been raised by strict parents, my mother is very religious and I never experimented with anything....not until I had my daughter at age 20 but that's a different story.

 

I had an instant attraction to my MM because he is gorgeous, happy-go-lucky, laid back, always smiling and has a great sense of humour. He's also extremely affectionate which is something my ex was not. He is the epitome of a bad boy however - party boy, drinks a lot and does weed. I don't do any of those things.

 

Your relationship with your AM ( attached man?) sounds like it was a whole lot healthier than mine is. You had mutual respect and had established a friendship first.

 

My relationship started out as purely physical attraction, but we did eventually develop a kind of bond. I guess we just manipulate each other into giving the attention we so desperately crave. And keep testing the boundaries...pushing the envelope.

 

Confusing and complicated don't even describe all of the dynamics of an OW/MM (or AM) relationship!!!

 

You said you've been to a therapist? Is it helping? I started with one but I stopped going because I got bored by all the endless delving into my childhood. I have zero patience and wanted him to 'fix' my immediate problems. In retrospect I should have hung in there.

[littleflowerpot]

"You said you've been to a therapist? Is it helping? I started with one but I stopped going because I got bored by all the endless delving into my childhood. I have zero patience and wanted him to 'fix' my immediate problems. In retrospect I should have hung in there."

 

yes, i've been in therapy for three months now. i credit it with saving my life because i literally wanted to die.

 

i'd tried therapy a few times before but never seriously. i didn't want to believe i needed it. i had the wrong ideas about it. i don't know if you, like me, had a hurtful childhood but my therapist and i do delve a lot into my childhood because honestly that's where it all began. my greatest hurdle is my great fear of abandonment and as a child i was abandoned emotionally and i was neglected. it has shaped all my relationships ever since. so, for me, i need to get to the root of what has hurt me and still causes me to hurt myself.

 

yeah, therapy has saved my life. it has helped me to get to know me a little better. i know i won't survive another devastating loss such as the end of the relationship with my AM again so i have to learn how to not get into a hurtful relationship like it again.

[kiababy]

Yeah same here. Hurtful childhood. My parents were too busy hating each other to bother with me, an only child. My mother always used to say "You're just like your father" so that pretty much let me know what she thought of me. She confirmed it years later when she took my ex husband's side in the divorce. She actually sat at the table with HIM in court during our divorce proceedings. Evil b**ch.

 

I couldn't deal with the therapy because I hate reliving my childhood so much. When I was little I used to run away and hide when my parents would start screaming and hitting each other. One time my mother was telling someone - I think it was one of her sisters, in front of me - "I want to drive a knife into him, not to kill him, just to cripple him".

[kiababy]

....this is the same woman who used to tell me - Bible in hand, that I was evil and was going to be 'destroyed'. It didn't ruin my faith or respect for God - my sons have a Bible study every week - it just made me shut her out of my life as a 'toxic person'.

[Mr Spock]

People have affairs because they want to, and they can. Those are the two major factors. If a man wants to have sex with someone who isn't his wife, but can't handle cheating, then he won't. I've seen men like this. It is my firm belief that if a relationship has suffered a long term affair, then it's pretty much over. There is nothing noble about sticking around to show your kids what pigs men can be. And the same goes for the other shoe-no point in sticking around if your wife can't be faithful!!

 

To Isabella/Singleinthecity-I'm sorry the men you gave your hearts and trust to turned out to be such big losers!! There are men out there who won't cheat, or at least won't keep a long running affair on the side!! I've learned alot. I don't think I would ever do this again-not for the hurt it might cause others but because of the hurt it's caused ME. I am only starting to heal because I have decided that I deserve to be angry-not lovelorn-and that I need to play the victim to get over this. Otherwise, I'll be moping and sad for ages.

[EnigmaXOXO]

LittleFlowerPot writes:…my therapist and i do delve a lot into my childhood because honestly that's where it all began.…

 

…therapy has saved my life. it has helped me to get to know me a little better.

 

Spock Writes: I've learned alot. I don't think I would ever do this again-not for the hurt it might cause others but because of the hurt it's caused ME.

 

Yes! Yes! Yes!

 

FINALLY…this thread is starting to move in a more positive direction.

 

So have any of you ladies come to any resolutions yet as to "how" to avoid selecting bad relationship partners in the future? What would you do different the next time around?

 

I'd also be curious to learn how you might describe your ideal partner and/or relationship…and what things you would still be willing to compromise on, or sacrifice, for the sake of having a second person in your life? Would you ever be okay going it alone for a while, for however long it takes, until the right guy comes along?

 

Please believe me. YOU CAN have it all!...You just have to figure out what exactly that IS first, then find the patience and perseverance to stick to your guns and pursue it. No one is ever "stuck" in their past. Each new day is another opportunity to start over again and re-invent ourselves and our lives the way we want it to be.

 

You've only failed when you've given up trying.

[littleflowerpot]

Originally posted by kiababy

Yeah same here. Hurtful childhood. My parents were too busy hating each other to bother with me, an only child. My mother always used to say "You're just like your father" so that pretty much let me know what she thought of me. She confirmed it years later when she took my ex husband's side in the divorce. She actually sat at the table with HIM in court during our divorce proceedings. Evil b**ch.

 

I couldn't deal with the therapy because I hate reliving my childhood so much. When I was little I used to run away and hide when my parents would start screaming and hitting each other. One time my mother was telling someone - I think it was one of her sisters, in front of me - "I want to drive a knife into him, not to kill him, just to cripple him".

 

my hurtful childhood is exactly why i need therapy. for years, i tried to push my feelings under and to cope as best as i knew how. the problem with that is that eventually it will catch up to you and you just might crash. the only way i can heal from it is to deal directly with it and to allow myself to remember and feel it. only then can i move on.

[Mr Spock]

My childhood wasn't hurtful-does this mean I'm just naive?? I know I was fooling myself when I thought I could have "fun" without emotional attachment, but did this guy see a sucker coming or what? My own mind wants to believe what he tells me but all of you, ALL of you, and all of my friends are saying "no, he's a bastard that knew what he was doing"

 

Sigh.

[kiababy]

I rarely ever even think about my childhood. I guess it comes out in the way I'm acting now...but I don't consciously think about any of it...not even the fact that my father had an affair for years with a younger woman who he married later on. That one failed too, I was glad, I couldn't stand her.

 

I can't and don't deal with emotional pain. I just move on to the next thing and put it out of my mind. That's why I don't form attachments with others - my children being the only exception. If I break up with my MM the pain will be unbearable as I can't imagine him not being in my life.......

[kiababy]

Spock, you were not a 'sucker'. You did say it started as a friendship - you used to talk a lot and you made him laugh. He got a bad case of the guilts and changed his mind and it sucks big time....but you're not stupid and you're not a sucker.

[Nubianangel]

I can't and don't deal with emotional pain. I just move on to the next thing and put it out of my mind. That's why I don't form attachments with others - my children being the only exception. If I break up with my MM the pain will be unbearable as I can't imagine him not being in my life.......

 

I am the same way but I've noticed that when I do form attachments it's very hard for me to let go. I'm almost dependent on that individual and the thought of losing that them or letting go is, as you said, unbearable. I noticed that was one of the many symptoms of love addiction. I have now come to accept that I suffer from this addiction and I am now looking within to discover how to fight this.

 

Unbelievable, isn't it?

[kiababy]

I knew you'd come around sweetie!!!!! I have nothing negative to say about you, I know what a rough road this is; I've chosen to go down the same road, but acknowledging the inner emotions behind it all really helps with perspective. You're not a bad person, you're a product of a hard upbringing that twists our perceptions and makes it EASIER for us to make the wrong choice. This doesn't remove our feelings for these men, it just makes things so much clearer.

[DAYANDNIGHT]

im glad that this very interesting forum has brought u all together seems as if there are new friends " Congragulations" but i see each one of ur points of views and i know im one of those ow and im going to stand up for what i think and i know that there are going to be ow/om no matter what thats just how messed up this world is, we can sit here and blame ow as myself for being with the mm but sometimes when things like that happen in the relationship it actually makes it better sometimes, it makes it stronger, no body likes to b cheated on i know i didnt but it did happen so f it i moved on i continued my life and didnt plan it but found myself having an affair w a mm , and im still very much in love, dont knock it til utried it, lol , maybe woman should take more care of their men or b more involved with them cus u might see it as just a piece of ass but if hes risking getting caught its cus he cares and he is getting what his wife and taking care of , so accept it cus its never gonna chang. thats the way it is .........ill be heaing more about this............but 4 now peace out.......

[Debster]

dayandnight,

 

I too stand up for what I think, so here it is:

 

we can sit here and blame ow as myself for being with the mm but sometimes when things like that happen in the relationship it actually makes it better sometimes, it makes it stronger,

 

Puhleez, are you trying to rationalize your being with a MM as a do-gooder way of making his relationship with his wife stronger? C'mon, you can't actually think that.

 

no body likes to b cheated on i know i didnt but it did happen so f it i moved on i continued my life and didnt plan it but found myself having an affair w a mm , and im still very much in love, dont knock it til utried it, lol ,

 

I beg to differ, I don't think you moved on and continued your life. You haven't even begun to deal with the fact that you were cheated on. That's probably why you have conflicting posts in this forum. IMO, you have issues with being cheated on AND you have issues with being the OW (even though you deny it). I think because of being cheated on - your self esteem was shot and that is why you are willing to be an OW. I can understand how that could happen, but I can't believe you are not even acknowledging the possibility.

 

maybe woman should take more care of their men or b more involved with them cus u might see it as just a piece of ass but if hes risking getting caught its cus he cares and he is getting what his wife and taking care of , so accept it cus its never gonna chang.

 

Geez, once again the wife gets blamed for her husband's infidelity. Are you actually believing the crap that comes out of your MM's mouth? You know he is a liar - he is lieing to his wife. You know he breaks promises - he broke his vows. Clearly the guy is not a pillar of the community. But yet, even knowing all that - you believe everything he says as sacred. Where is the logic?

 

You comment about obviously he cares because he is risking getting caught made me laugh. Don't you know a weak, horny man thinks with his dick? It has nothing to do with caring, it has to do with getting his rocks off. If he cared about you he would get out of the marriage and decide to be with you. And yes, a MM who cheats is weak because he won't shi% or get off the pot with his marriage and horny because he lacks enough self control to keep his dick in his pants.

 

You are definitely getting a prize. I can understand why you are so happy.

[Mr Spock]

I was with my MM because I wanted him. I subsequently fell in love with him, or at least convinced myself I did. The partner can not be blamed for cheating, they can only be blamed for one half of the communication breakdown that causes the affair-however, I believe in my case she was even LESS to blame because he was a dog out looking for sex-nothing else. I look back on the past 6-7 months, and I can pinpoint times where he was very affectionate to me, caring-planning a night together-but I choose not to dwell on that because why bother? I don't want anything to do with him anymore.