Society has never had much sympathy for the ‘other woman’ in an affair. However, being the other woman is a confusing place to be. Both knowingly and unknowingly, I’ve been in multiple relationships with taken men, and can say this from experience: being the other woman isn’t easy. And often, it can be really hard to leave.
What always lured me in was the cliche circumstantial excitement. It was the fact that he was endangering his current relationship, to be with me. So that must mean I’m undeniable, right? And that connection, that undeniability had to be kept a secret — and secrets are sexy. Especially when they involve actual sex, or sexual tension.
Kissing in the upstairs bathroom against the mirror, at work, while you’re both on break. Waiting for everyone to go home at the end of the night and staying to “help with the dishes” only to rip off their clothes on the kitchen floor. Brushing legs under the table and watching each others’ faces change.
Those moments are charged with desire that feels addictive. It feels rare and electric and like some kind of animalistic magnet you didn’t know you had inside of you, yanking you towards someone else, relentlessly. It feels the way attraction, love and desire is depicted in Hollywood films, except now — you get to be the main character.
I had an affair with a man I used to work with when I was 21. He was more than a decade older than me, and at first, I didn’t like him. He was stand-offish, blunt and bordering on rude. He just gave this air of “don’t talk to me”, and I didn’t understand it. Then, one night, something flickered in his eye when he spoke to me after our shift and I saw him in a different light. It was the strangest thing. I started to see him unravel from the inside out; shedding the apathy that had masked his desires and revealing someone awkward and vulnerable and looking for affection. A moment later, he got up silently out of his chair, pushed me against the wall I was standing in front of and kissed me. Hard.
When he stepped away to look at me, I didn’t know what to say. I was shocked by what I perceived as a bold, out-of-character and unexpected move. I was also kind of turned on.
I remember going to the bathroom to catch my breath. I looked at myself in the mirror and started to giggle. I couldn’t help it. I felt giddy with power and excitement. I’d been let into a side of this person that they didn’t like to show the world, and I wanted to know more. My body burned for it. Is this what desire feels like? I wondered.
That was the first moment I began to understand what affairs mean to people. They’re a space where they get to be free, where they can be whoever they want to me, where they can reignite parts of themselves they feel have become murky in their relationship.
For many people, being in monogamous relationships feel limiting. Like we enter into an agreement that immediately imposes rules on us that we don’t know we want to follow forever. What if we change our mind? What if we get so lost in what we’re supposed to do that we forget about what we really want?
After this man from work and I started sleeping together, I saw changes in him. He became more outwardly charismatic, warm, inviting. He oozed this essence of confidence that hadn’t been there before. I began to wonder how much of himself he was when I first met him, or if he was being truer to himself now. It felt like he’d begun to remember who he wanted to be, which allowed him to open up to others.
I remember asking him about it, one time after we’d had sex.
“Is this relationship having a good impact on you?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said, “I feel really different. Before I met you, I wasn’t feeling that great about myself. I didn’t feel sure of what I wanted, I kinda just felt a little numb. Like I was going through the motions but not being present. I feel present with you. Like myself.”
“And you don’t feel like that with your girlfriend?”
He got uncomfortable, because the answer was ‘no’ and he felt guilty about it. He also knew that because the answer was no, there were conversations within his relationship that needed to be had. He wasn’t being honest about how he felt, he wasn’t communicating with her, or confronting the conflict he was feeling. He was fucking me instead.
Some might see that as cowardly, and I guess it is, but there are a lot of people who would rather have an affair than dig deep into their relationship (and themselves) to find out what’s really going on. I mean, adulterous dating website Ashley Madison claims to currently have 70 million users worldwide, despite a huge data breach in 2015 that revealed the identities of all its members. That’s more than triple the entire population of Australia in numbers, who are actively seeking out an extra-marital affair worldwide, despite the privacy risk. Almost four countries-worth of people!
And for a lot of people, once you’re in an affair — they can feel impossible to leave.
When I told the man I was having an affair with at 21 that I didn’t think we should see each other anymore, he had a hard time coming to terms with it. He begged me not to leave, told me he’d leave his current girlfriend, told me he’d “never felt like this with anyone else”.
“That’s unhealthy,” I said. “You can’t rely on me to make you feel like yourself.”
Upon reflection, I don’t think I understood how poignant that sentence was. I remember feeling put off by his desperation and realising that he felt like he needed me, which meant that he relied on something outside of his relationship that he wasn’t being honest about. It dawned on me just how much we look to the validation of others to feel good about ourselves and how isolating that is if it exists outside the realms of monogamy.
So, is that why affairs are so hard to leave? Is it the addictiveness of the lies that bind you together with someone else and make you feel like you’re on fire? Or is it how they make you feel about yourself? That you couldn’t possibly go back to things the way they were before?
I found this affair pretty tough to break off. Whether it was because a part of me enjoyed being needed, an empathy for the need of escapism as means to unpack who we really are and what we really believe, or simply how convincing his pleading was — I kept allowing things to continue.
And I know I’m not alone in this experience.
In Australian author Madeleine Gray’s debut novel Green Dot, the main character of Hera, 24, quite literally leaves the country in order to escape the all-consuming force of her affair with an older married man at work. Yet all it takes is one text message from Arthur, and they’re right back where they started.
A dive down the “other woman” sub-Reddit shows post after post of women talking about going “no contact” with their affair partner, before getting caught in a spiral of getting back together with no resolution in sight. On-again, off-again relationships are nothing new, but the unhealthy cycle of break ups and make ups seems particularly prevalent when one person is cheating.
“Every affair is different,” says psychotherapist Amber Rules. “Emotional attachments can form making it difficult to end a connection that may offer support, care or excitement, no matter how hurtful or dishonest it may be.
There are mixed, intense emotions and affairs can often meet emotional or physical needs which aren’t being met elsewhere, which can be a difficult thing to give up. An affair can help people feel excitement, relieve loneliness, cause internal conflicts, boost self-esteem and a host of other complex feelings.”
Affair partners can often be idealised, she says, especially because we don’t do all the usual relationship and day-to-day drudgery with them, such as paying bills, managing family life or seeing each other frequently. Combined with excitement, attraction and secrecy, this may create a heady but unrealistic view of the affair partner.
Why do people in affairs say it’s hard to leave?
Rachel, 34
Rachel has been having an affair for over six months with a man she works with. He’s married, she’s in a long term relationship — but now she and the man she’s having an affair with are in love. She’d never made love before, until she met him. And she would be heartbroken if it were to end.
“I’m in love. We’ve told each other we love each other. I would be absolutely heartbroken if it ended, I’d have to pack up and move countries. I wouldn’t be able to handle it,” Rachel said.
“Love aside, the hardest thing about leaving would be not having that sense of excitement, arousal, suspense and fun that we’ve brought into each other’s lives. The thrill is just exhilarating.
“I’ve made up the most intricate web of lives, just so that we can spend the night together tomorrow. I’m wearing special lingerie, we’ve got snacks and a bottle of wine planned, and a bubble bath. I fucking love it and so does he — I never want it to end.”
Todd, 32
Todd got married in his early twenties and hasn’t really felt like himself since. It’s not anyone’s fault, he just felt the pressure of society to do things in a certain way and didn’t feel he had the strength or language to stand up for himself back then.
Now, he finds himself in multiple affairs with other women because he feels they allow him to play different characters and explore parts of himself he finds exciting.
“I’m addicted to the feeling of being in other relationships because it feels like a form of escapism. I have the freedom to open up because I don’t feel the weight of expectation and commitment that is set by something bigger than me. I can just exist honestly — I know how ironic this sounds — with someone else. I don’t have to pretend to be something I’m not,” he said.
“I often try to call off these affairs because I feel guilty. I don’t like the dishonesty that comes with this feeling of freedom. But I’m afraid to talk about it to my wife (or anyone) because I’m afraid of being judged, or it being taken away. I always find myself back knocking on their doors because I’m desperate to get the feeling of being myself back. I’m more scared to lose that, than the affairs I think. But that’s the role they play in my life, and I don’t know who I’d be without them. Probably extremely depressed.”
Ash, 29
Ash is in a two-year relationship with a woman who is married to a man. She feels a gravitational pull to her like nothing she’s ever experienced before, and although the secrecy makes her question her worth, she doesn’t know how to leave a relationship that feels so deeply emotionally and sexually connected.
“I fell in love with this woman before I knew she was married, but now we’ve been dating for two years and it’s way more complicated than I could’ve ever imagined. I don’t really know how I got here. I’ve always identified as an open and honest person. I wear my heart on my sleeve and I’m shameless about who I am and who I love. That’s one of the reasons I find this relationship so tricky. I’ve never felt more passionately towards anyone before and I’m not able to show it to the world,” Ash shared.
“In saying that, I don’t feel I can leave. I’m not sure if it’s because it feels like a challenge I want to solve or simple because of how I feel about her, but there’s always something that draws me back in. She’s coming to terms with her sexuality and doesn’t want to blow her life up. I get that sometimes, and other times it makes me angry because I feel disrespected.
“It doesn’t change the fact that every time I “break-up” with her and block her number, we wind up in each other’s arms even more intensely than before. I honestly have no idea what to do, because I know this can’t go on forever.”
Kate, 24
Kate has been seeing a married man for almost all of her twenties. He’s a family friend, and she’s always felt a connection even when she was younger. When he kissed her one night after an event, she wasn’t surprised that it felt good. She’d been imagining it for years.
“We’ve always had this spark, so when we first kissed it just felt like “finally”. I find it really hard to be in this relationship because I can’t talk to anyone about it. People can’t hear it without accusing him of grooming me, or being a predator — which I find really hurtful because it paints me as this victim I don’t feel I am. I want to be in the relationship and I’m choosing to be in it. I love the way he makes me feel. We can talk about anything and his vulnerability makes me soften on the inside in ways I can’t with other men,” Kate said,
“We have an arrangement that allows me to date other people too, but I know that deep down I just want to be with him. We talk about this all the time, but I don’t think he’s ever going to leave his wife. I think I’m an escape for him, a place that he can be the version of himself he wants to be. I’m okay with that, for now.
“I don’t feel like I can leave yet because I love him and I feel like I’m learning a lot about myself. I know that if the circumstances don’t change I’m going to have to, but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.”
[Image: Getty]
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