On my face book page, "The Path to Peace-Recovery From Psychopathic Manipulation and Abuse" I openly discuss my role as the "other woman" in my last relationship with a psychopath that lasted ten years in duration.
My purpose of this note to the "other woman" specifically, is to share my experience with you and to put a dash of cold hard reality on a fantasy laden notion that things with him will "work". It is also to provide you with understanding, compassion and honesty while you process your situation, while you sit in suffering silence and pain, fearing the stigmatizing and smearing that will occur if you dare speak out or share your experience. It is my hope that this will help you to forego keeping the secret, if it is safe to do so.
I'll start by sharing my experience...
I met my now ex through his job in which he was my caseworker and I was his client for many years. We had a friendship for two years prior to any intimacy beginning. I was in an abusive marriage of twenty years, where I experienced physical and emotional abuse. My ex husband was alcoholic and severely drug addicted. He was violatile, outwardly aggressive. Passive was not he. I began to share my experiences with my "friend". Over time, he began to reveal that there was abuse in his own marriage by his wife. He was a licensed Pastor (not practicing), a worship leader and a board member at his church. He was married with two children.
I was vulnerable, with a multiple and chronic childhood sexual abuse history and suffering at the hands of my ex husband and his abuse. I was the mother of six. I was a christian and believed in being faithful, and trying to work the marriage, no matter what. I made many poor relationship choices as a result of the patterns that had evolved from my abuse history. I was not aware of this at the time.
My friend was a comfort to me and represented himself and appeared as totally opposite of the man I was married too: Calm, cool, collected and of the "faithful". I mistook all of this to mean he had emotional depth and spiritual maturity. I could not have miscalculated so severely.
When the affair started, it was the gift I needed to be strong enough to end my marriage, which, as predictable, was extremely dangerous to me and my children at the time. I was determined and stayed strong. Ironically, while my friend was "present" in a sense, he had a sort of aloof approach with me about this, that began to become confusing to me. This was one of the first red flags I would begin to see. I felt intuitively that he cared not about my suffering, but that I was expected to care about his. While I was able to escape my marriage, he chose not to get out of his. Although there were promises made as well as implications that this action would occur, indeed it did not until the end when his marriage ended. This fantasy of mine, that I held so dear, did not end happily. It ended as deviantly as it had started...
There are many, many details to this story that evolved over many years that I could write a book about, but I'll spare you such details.
What is important is what I have come to understand in the aftermath of it all, now being a year and a half out of the relationship and totally no contact.
This man had tales of woe that were so convincing it would be nigh impossible for even the healthiest woman not to wonder whether or not they were true. There is nothing more vulnerable to a woman than a man who professes abuse from his wife and then shares his tales of woe with you. What I did not realize at the time, was that my ex was a full blown psychopath and each story he told was a tremendous lie. ALL of it, was nothing but a lie. From friendship to end of relationship, the level of deviancy, deception and lying was astronomical. He went to great lengths to prove that his wife was abusive. He would call me and say nothing, yet put the phone up into the air, as his wife was screaming at him at the top of her lungs. I would listen to this until he abruptly hung up a few minutes later. These phone calls, although few, were heartbreaking to me.It never dawned on me that her actions were PROVOKED by his crazy making. What an absolute BITCH, I thought....
One other time, he brought over a shirt that she had purchased for him for Father's Day. It was cut to shreds, a pair of scissors his wife used to do it. She had become angry at him because he complained about the size of the shirt. An argument ensued and this was the result. Along with the shirt, he brought his tales of woe with him and I BELIEVED it.....all of that, was a lie too.....
This is how they set up the scenario of justification for their abuse and disrespect of you, their wives and themselves. It's how we justify our behavior too.
Why do we automatically believe the stories of woe these men tell?
Let me share with you a bit of reality here about you and about him.
Let's start with you. He builds you up to believe that you are special, he builds the intensity of his triangulation by sharing what an evil bitch his wife is. He tells you he is getting no sex. He tells you that he stays with her because he's obligated to his children. He tells you his tales of woe, while he takes her on vacation, spends every holiday with her and tosses you an occasional crumb from his back pocket, to keep you believing that he really does love you, want you and that someday this fantasy will turn into reality. This is what makes him incredibly dangerous. YOU are believing his tales of woe because your own narcissism is being exploited at his hands. YOU believe that somehow, you're going to heal him, you're imagining a white picket fence with children with him, or just the two of you being able to go out in public and "declare" your secret love for one another. You think he will parade you around in front of family and friends eventually.
YOU believe that you're just so special that whatever the wife is not providing, YOU WILL and ARE. You are "betraying the sista hood" by believing, without doubt, the stories about his wife, thus now you HATE her because you believe she has something that you want and you're not getting, HIM. Never mind that HE is not giving it TO YOU. She is easier to blame, then he. If we do that, we might have to let go of him and of the fantasy. We don't want to do that. This is very selfish. It's also distorted thinking, created from your own fantasy life and his lies and manipulations of you. Never mind that it is to HIS benefit to exploit both of you. Nine times out of ten, she is not an evil bitch. Have you stopped to question what she must be going through? That she is a human being with feelings, thoughts, trials of her own? That she loves this man TOO and whether or not she knows about you, she is being HIGHLY disrespected by him as well as are you. WHO is the common denominator as this destructive, deviant relationship plays out? You have him on a pedestal. You simply can't believe that he might be LYING, that he's a CHEAT. He MUST be capable of being faithful because he's still WITH HER and NOT WITH YOU, right and after all, you're so wonderful and you are the answer to all his prayers and all his wet dreams, right?
I see many women in these relationships now with a history of abuse, but many of them exclusively with a sexual childhood abuse history. As adults, our perceptions about men and about love are skewed. Many times, we believe that sex is love. To a pathological man like this, sex is a weapon and a tool to get what he wants. His wife is nothing more than window dressing for his ego, and you can be sure that if he is disrespecting and abusing you, your mere presence in his life and his ability to be "okay" with this and justify it, is abuse of SHE too.
When I left my relationship, my ex was divorced. I outed him to his wife at the end. She was having an affair of her own at the end of the marriage that he found out about and admonished her for while he was still with me. I was outraged. Outraged for the first time, FOR HER, because he was lying to her, making her feel guilty for accessing love elsewhere when he had been abusing her severely the entire marriage. My eyes could no longer be closed and the hatred and jealousy I had felt about her was withering away. I began to feel great grief for the pain and hurt I caused her, as well as believing his stories without question. But it was not over for me just yet......
She was done and it mattered not and yet even with all I knew, I still wanted my fantasy and I refused to let go of it. Can you guess what the outcome of this was?
We dated briefly after his divorce when I found out he was cheating on me too. This ended the relationship permanently. The way it ended and the things he was doing prior to the end that were stealth, unnecessary and sneaky, were nothing less than what he was and had been doing the entire marriage. Presently, my ex has remarried for the third time. Just prior to this marriage, I found out he was still out trolling for women. It gives you an idea about just how "committed" and "faithful" this man can be or will ever be. He won't be. These men often have images and status that gives you the impression that they are what they say they are and are enduring what they say they are. It is smoke and mirrors, a mirage. It is IMPRESSION MANAGEMENT for your eyes and the rest of the world. When my ex divorce was final, so in his mind, was the needed triangulation he had going with me. Time for some fresh meat. A new triangulation. Same pattern, same scenario, same set up, but with different victims this time.
There is a similar pattern in operation with most of these men that our fantasy laden ideas readily miss: that just because he's cheating with you, means he is not a cheater, is an exception to the rule and would never cheat on YOU, should you be together. Why would you WANT to be with a man who cheats on his wife? Why take that kind of risk?
His wife is not a psycho bitch. She is being used and objectified just as you are. We overlook his character and his behaviors because we want so badly to believe in our fantasy, and to believe his lies. What about our own character in these situations. My moral compass was thrown out the window for a pathologically disordered man.
When you begin to see these patterns, relationship patterns, you patterns, HIM patterns, you will see that change is necessary. That your OWN character flaws need remedy. That you were not loved by this man, but USED by him. When the other woman begins to demand respect out of him, after allowing him to cross her boundaries and in fact, showing that she IS NOT respectable, he will disappear! Magically! He will RUN. He doesn't want a commitment with you, but you see he doesn't want a REAL commitment with his wife EITHER because he is emotionally unavailable, emotionally abusive and likely he is trolling for other women and you are NOT the only one. Rare is it a man who goes back and really "works" his marriage, he merely goes back home and kisses ass until he thinks she is "hooked" again and then the entire process of triangulation unfolds with someone else he lures in.
A man who cheats is not a strong man committed to anything. He is a coward who wants his needs met by exploiting others. And this is how he does it.
He will never change, he will never love you, be with you. You must question WHY you would want to be with someone like this and how you believe his behavior is going to change when he is showing you that it clearly will not. THINK about the process of change and how long it truly takes. Is this man capable of that? He is not. HE IS NOT.
Your healing now, is what is important. What fantasy were you holding onto, what DREAM that you had with his man and why. Do you have an abuse history? Patterns in choosing abusive or unavailable men who cannot love you, nor meet your relationship needs?
Why do you think you deserve less than a man who is FREE to love you?
He has probably blamed you for the relationship's existence. Don't take on ALL of this slime, this projection of shame. He isn't taking it on himself, BELIEVE ME. It takes TWO. NOT JUST YOU.
Own what you need to own, but do not take on his, although he will want you too. DON"T. This prevents you from healing.
Healing is very difficult when you are also faced with a possible smear campaign, his deviancy exposed to you in what feels as his hatred of you after professing love for a long time, public scrutiny and condemnation. Try as hard as you can, not to take this on. In our narcissistic society, in affair situations, HE is the HERO, SHE is the SLUT. Look at that notion with eyes of reality. The very people blaming you, probably have the very same skeletons in their own closets that need exposing. Marriage in this society anymore means absolutely nothing, yet those participating in it who are unhappy, will cheat before they ever let go of their narcissistic images of a happy family when it is so far from the truth, but we are not talking about people who are walking in truth are we? They are truth SAYERS not truth DOERS.
But if you are out now, YOU ARE walking in truth. It is never too late to do this. Learn to be alone and grieve this relationship. It is one of the most painful to grieve and more often than not, there is a lot of abuse to heal from. Take this as an opportunity to heal yourself, any old wounds, learn to love, like and care about yourself, create new and strong boundaries, so that this never happens again.
It is very painful to let go of what you thought it was going to be or what it was at all. I understand this. But you must try.
You can change, even while he is unable too. This requires hard work and effort. You can get your dignity, self respect and self love back immediately by getting out and staying out.
He may try to suck you back in. Don't go. It isn't about you. It's all about him. He will repeat the cycle, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, he does it to HARM both of you and to have his cake and eat it too.
Right now, if you're the other woman or have been, you need down time for you, it's all about YOU now and your healing.
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