The Other Woman: Advice From A Mistress
By Michael Drury. Posted on .
The strongest thing I felt was recognition, as if I had known this man very long ago. I knew he was married and, for reasons not mine to disclose, would never of his own accord undo it. You may say that what I did was selfish and that, I think, is true, but not in the way that word is commonly construed. Very little of any moment happens until self-interest is aroused—no wealth or power or art or faith or government; what men and nations desire rules the world. Right and wrong are absolutes, and human beings seldom have the luxury of absolute choice between them. Given the forces that were released simply by our encounter—and that much was not our doing—was it more or less brave to yield to them, along with their concomitants of taste, restraint, the abrasion of disapproval from ourselves and others? One thing I learned was that human beings make decisions as wisely as they can, and then make them right or wrong by the terms on which they live with those decisions.
Being love does not demand mental censorship, but it requires a certain pruning of one's thoughts. Second-guessing, agonizing, leaping to unwarranted conclusions are killers of the dream. A mistress who would let her mind run riot on such fripperies would be dispossessed next week. She does not torture the relationship by constant scrutiny. There are a dozen valid reasons why any love affair should not exist, so that reasoning about it, pro or con, is at least contradictory. But all love is a lingua franca not reducible to grammar, married love included. Read: Why I Cheated
More from YourTango: Is This The Gay Community's Newest Threat?
Have care for the loose talk inside your head. It reflects in a hundred subtle ways: a tone of voice, a glance, a gesture, the things you choose to laugh at, the quickness or slowness of response. All this in turn governs the quality and amount of love you will allow, and thus the kind you get. I do not say a mistress is above these same mistakes, only that she does not keep making them over and over; she doesn't get the chance.
