Is The “Other Woman” Always A “Home-Wrecker”?
And why we won’t really hold men more accountable…
Whenever it comes out that a woman had a relationship with a man who is either married or in a committed long-term relationship, the woman is almost always labeled as a homewrecker and other more explicit terms.
The man? We make up excuses for the man. We will say that she chased him. We will say that that’s just what men do. We will say that he is sorry and he is working hard to make things right. And women forgive more often than men do too.
On the other hand, if a woman cheats, we label the woman as the cheater, as the person who ruined the relationship, who betrayed her partner. The man she cheated with? Once again, we make up excuses for man.
We don’t consider how men lie. How men can be home-wreckers too. We don’t consider the fact that men can pursue women they shouldn’t, willingly and knowingly chasing someone they shouldn’t, someone who is unavailable.
I was pushed in the “other woman” role twice. Both times unknowingly.
The first time I knew the person I started dating is married but he made it look like he was separated. The optics checked out. He had his own apartment, in a city almost an hour away from his family. We dated, like a “proper” couple. We spent weekends in charming little countryside hotels but we also did the mundane things people do. Went to the farmer’s market, grocery shopping, strolled in local parks. Went out for day trips, made a list of all the restaurants we wanted to try, we went to concerts, we went to see movies, we went on shopping trips together. We were seen out and about, we weren’t sneaking around. And then eventually we even moved in together!
The second time, I started dating someone and while he never explicitly said he is single, he implied as much. He wasn’t single. In fact he was very married, very much a father to a young child, and very much a step father to the son his wife had from a previous relationship. And he was very much using me.
What was common in both of these situations: I became the other woman without even knowing and unwillingly, I took a man away from his family, I took time they could and should have spent with their children.
By forming a relationship with me, these men just ran from their problems, not knowing they will only create more, and endless cycle of lies, of sneaking around without being able to tell their partner and just hoping it won’t all come crashing down. But it always does.
When I found out that my boyfriend whom I was living with by this point, is lying to me about being sick while visiting his father and in reality went on the trip we planned on going, taking with him his entire family, “estranged” wife included, my whole world imploded.
At first I blamed myself. I thought I should have been better and more and I should have made sure that he feels like he can always be 100% honest and doesn’t have to lie to me, no matter what. It turns out that lying is “just what he does” — in his own words.
P was relentlessly pursuing me, he set up his life to fit his story about the separation and he went after someone much younger than him. He also made sure I didn’t have too much time alone to really think things through and see through his stories. And he also made sure I never questioned his values as he still spent time with his kids and he made sure I knew he was always there for them in any way he could.
He never really spoke badly about his wife either. He just said they grew apart and they were happier when they were not together. The story went that they didn’t want to get divorced until both kids were in college because it was just much more simple that way. Fair enough, I thought.
The other guy said that he just didn’t know how to tell me. That he wanted me to get to know him, for us to have a connection before he tells me because he didn’t want me to judge him. Basically what this means: he wanted me to like him enough that I won’t want to leave him. That I will go along with whatever he wanted. To some extent and for a short period it worked.
The common thing in both of these instances is that both these men knew what they were doing.
M willingly and knowingly deceived me. He made it look like he is very much available, he is very much looking for a serious relationship and he is very much into me. He was probably more into the idea of someone much younger, someone actually available and someone who didn’t come with any of the emotional baggage, resentment and various other issues his marriage and home life came with.
But here is the biggest difference: M never said anything nice about his wife. He blamed her for all of their issues. He never took responsibility and said that he doesn’t have the courage to leave. He never admitted that he actively chose to stay in that situation and he actively chose to deceive and lie to multiple people. He also never spoke positively about how his wife went along with uprooting their whole life and moving several states away, back to his home turf when his addiction got to the point where it almost killed him.
He resented her for not getting sober, for her financial decisions but it was clear her never ever had the hard conversations. He tried to do this to me too: force his values and his way of thinking on me, set expectations without checking in with me first. Can a person get any more selfish than that?!
After I confronted M, he was telling me how he was searching for a way out of his marriage. That he was researching how much it actually costs, he was looking into their assets, shared and separate, to work out if he can afford a divorce. He was looking into custody, the logistics of coparenting and so on. The usual lie, basically: I want to leave, I just don’t know how to.And then I found out they bought a house.
To some extent, I am to blame for staying in these situations. And I am to blame for something 100%: I never told on them. I never contacted their families. I toyed with the idea. But then I realised they would lie their way out of it, they would make me out to be some sort of psycho stalker, they would downplay everything that happened between us.
They would not face consequences but I would have to face the anger of the person who will blame me. I have to admit, I was scared to face the consequences and this was partially due to me not choosing to be shoved in the middle of these situations.
Whenever I tell anyone these stories, they always ask me how I could do it.
To clear things up a bit: when I found out P has lied to me about virtually everything, I left. He was in Italy with his family and I found out. I packed my bags and left. We stayed in touch and met a few times after, essentially dragging out the break up for several months but we were not a couple. It turned my life upside down. He never really apologised. He never really acknowledged what he did to me. So basically, I did it because I didn’t know what I was actually doing.
I pieced the puzzle together pretty quickly about M’s lies and behaviour patterns. I confronted him, he sort of confessed and I started to remove myself from the situation. I wasn’t in a good place when we met and while I’m ashamed to admit it, the truth is, I didn’t have the strength to just cut him out of my life.
I did end things not too long after the truth came out, but he tried to stay in my life, for years, until I finally blocked him.
So while there probably are women out there who actively pursue men they shouldn’t, men they know are in committed relationships, men they know have families who would get hurt, we also need to start holding men accountable. And to broaden this statement: not just men, but the party that is cheating.
Cheating is always a choice.
Being the person someone cheats with isn’t. Even with social media around, it’s not always that straightforward to find someone on social media and figure out if they are single. And we shouldn’t play detective to try and figure out if someone who says they are single is actually single.
By labeling “the other woman” as the home wrecker, we shift blame entirely and we basically say that the person that chose to cheat is not to be blamed. Who wrecks a home? The person who actively chooses to step out of their relationship, or the person they drag into this situation?
Why did we create a precedent where it’s a scary thing to reach out and say “hey your husband dragged me into this with his lies and deceit”? Of course, this shouldn’t be an easy and casual conversation.
But I was genuinely scared that the women I wanted to reach out to would somehow try to hurt me. How did we get to a point where I was the person that had a lot to lose? How did I become the person whose life imploded because someone dragged me into a situation that I didn’t even know about?
I realised I’d do the same if I was the person who was cheated on.
It’s always easier to shift blame. To not face the reality of our own situation. Not really accepting the fact that the person we are with isn’t truly committed. That they are with us because it’s convenient or because it’s what they’ve known for years and they simply do not want to figure out what happens next or what happens if they leave the situation they are familiar with.
We are also afraid to leave a situation we know. So instead of lashing out at the person who betrayed us, we shift the blame, we deflect. We essentially blame it on someone who is technically an outsider in the relationship. Someone we don’t know and have no connection with.
By creating the “other woman” and “homewrecker” concepts, we basically shift the focus from the relationship that clearly isn’t functional anymore to someone we don’t know, to someone we don’t care about and to someone whose side of the story we will most likely never hear and will actively choose not to hear because this way, our own narrative can be the correct one.
