What I Learned From My Ex-husband's Mistress

I found out he’d taken her to our home. He’d introduced her to our three year old son behind my back. She spent time with him and his friends. She’d also met some of his family. She’d even stayed nights at our place while I was out of town visiting my family. She had every reason to believe she was going to be the next in line for the closet where my cloths were hanging, which she’d looked at and even tried some of them on. I felt like I’d been violated in the most profound way.

What I learned about Kelly was that she wasn’t the evil horrible person I’d taken comfort in believing she was. She was a woman, in love with a man, believing his bulls*it just like me. Although on one hand she knew in her gut she was the other woman, it was easy for her to paint that picture as being the “next” woman. She was devastated by my version of reality and we were both devastated by the shared revelation of his version of reality. What comes around goes around. Generally speaking a man who cheats on his wife will cheat on his girl friend. Like Kelly and I figured out that night he was in fact cheating on both of us, with someone else.

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I’d like to report that Kelly cut off all contact with him immediately and that I filed for divorce the next day. However, neither of those things happened. She did however quit seeing him very shortly thereafter and was so hurt by their relationship that she started dating women. Obviously a divorce did happen. However, in all honesty it wasn’t soon enough.

In my practice I’ve worked with the other woman. She’s often frail, afraid, and lonely, if not entirely desperate. My words of wisdom to the “other woman” are always the same, you can’t trust a man who’s still sleeping in a house with his wife. That’s not trust worthy behavior. He will break your heart. Statistics show that is an inevitable eventuality.

I’ve obviously also worked with the broken hearted wife, hating on the vicious other woman and my words of wisdom to her are also always the same. Take up your issues with your husband. Focus your anger on the man who’s actually made a life long commitment to you. Stop making up stories about who you think she is. You’re probably not right and it’s a waste of time anyway.

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That said, I would like to invite women to start being more kind, more respectful, and even more loving to each other. There’s not a single reason in the world that justifies the hurt it causes to engage in any sort of relationship with a man who is married, despite what he says. Occasionally the other woman doesn’t know he’s married initially. However, in the recent political scandal it’s hard to imagine that the women involved didn’t know the Congressman was married when they were tweeting away or having phone sex. In one of the pictures he tweeted there were family pictures in the background.