Being The Other Woman: Who we are, what every woman should know and how to avoid us Read Online Free PDF Page B

neither husband nor wife cared much for the other.
    Things continued between us as they had in Europe and, having had a taste of freedom, we soon found ourselves forgetting to be careful and beginning to behave as a normal couple would in public. His desire to include me in his life brought introductions to friends we naively thought would accept our relationship. Our naïveté helped me to sell myself the fantasy and forget that a real marriage existed. Blake’s wife, Beth, was a figment, a bothersome backdrop to the play that was my life and what was otherwise a normal partnering.
    A month after Blake’s return from Hawaii, I flew to New Hampshire to be with my sister as she gave birth to her son. Most of my family had also flown in for the event, but instead of spending time with them, I spent most of the visit in a withdrawn and somber state of mind in the spare bedroom, reading the books Blake had given me, or calling him or sending him poems in e-mails about vacationing in a little town I called Norman Rockwell hell. I was miserable without him. I wanted him there with me, enjoying my family and my events. After being swept off my feet by romance, I was beginning to see some of the shortcomings of a relationship like this. Depression overtook me.
    Shortly after my return home the holidays began, and now I learned more about why an affair leaves one so lonely. I spent Thanksgiving with my family as Blake spent it with his. I understood this, of course. The children, the in-laws, his parents—none of them were ready to be affected by what we had created in darkness and family holidays were certainly not the right time to “out” our affair. Nonetheless, my own holidays were miserable, lonely and empty. We sent beautiful letters to each other each night we were forced to be apart, longing for one another and anticipating the time when all of this would be behind us, when we would be free to openly be in love. We were eager for the day when we would be able to comfortably express our love to others and walk arm in arm in public without second thought. Stuffing reality to the back of my mind didn’t help me. No matter how much I tried to enjoy those days with those closest to me, inside I was dealing not only with pain but also with shame as I looked at those I loved and knew that I was hiding an ugly truth from them. Though a part of me was happy and very much in love, a larger part of me wouldn’t shut up about how wrong the whole situation was.
    Blake’s wedding anniversary was also near the holidays . In effort to prove to me that the date was not significant to him, he spent the day with me, until it was time for him and Beth to go to dinner together. I was assured that she had made the reservations without his knowing. But what was he to do? To reassure me that nothing physical would transpire between them, he made love to me before he left and called me several times from the restaurant bathroom. He sent text messages from his phone he held under the table while they dined speaking of how much he missed me at that moment and expressing all of the love he held in his heart. After he got home that night, he went right to the computer and stayed there until well past three a.m., sending notes to assure me again that he had never climbed into their bed.
    We just had to get through the holidays. Then we would talk about the next step.
    As I write this, a key moment of total and utter self-disgust for the situation I had allowed into my life strikes me. One evening, my friend Sasha shared with me that one of her male friends had reacted in surprise that I, of all people, would allow myself to be involved in an affair. I realized then that others thought more highly of me than I had thought of myself. I resolved to end things before more people learned what I had been doing. In fact, I intended on ending things almost every day for the first six months of my involvement with Blake. I am not a hypocrite so I resigned