It’s miserable being the other woman
DEAR BEL
I’VE been a widow for two years. For the past eight years of marriage I was just a carer. After my husband’s death, I sought another companion and soul mate online. Three months after unsuccessful dates, I ‘met’ a man looking for companionship — he was honest and said he was married and still loved his wife. But that she had refused sexual contact for years.
Eventually we met, saw each other about twice a week and got on very well. He’s highly sexual and enjoys that side of life, as do I, and I think that’s why we fitted each other perfectly.
I live alone, rarely see my children, so life is lonely. He says he’s merely the financial provider at home — no relations with his wife for years. He’s tried to work on the difficulties, but she refuses to engage.
He’s a very nice man, 65, with two married sons, kind, unselfish, and loves his family and grandchildren. Although he’s happy with the status quo, I’ve fallen in love and it’s making me unhappy.
I feel I cannot go on being the other woman and receive nothing in return. He says I’m constantly on his mind. He doesn’t want to lose me and comes straight to see me after a trip abroad, rather than going home. Yet I sit alone, without the closeness I crave.
He says he cannot hurt his wife, who herself betrayed him twice with close friends.
But how can he live with a woman who denies him his husband’s rights, say he still loves her and yet have a relationship with me?
Aware of the rights and wrongs, I’m not asking for your judgment. This was not planned, it just happened. The heart rules you, you’re not in charge. I’m very sad at myself, but now feel so much for this man that I cannot walk away. What shall I do?
FRAN
Many years ago, the poet Vernon Scannell wrote a bleak poem about watching a couple in late middle age (or older) meeting illicitly in a scruffy pub (it’s called Taken In adultery — you can find it online). He observes their ‘ tiredness’ and ‘ melancholy’ and reflects that: ‘ There must be many voices in the air / Reproaches, accusations, suffering / That no amount of passion keeps elsewhere.’
In other words, their personal histories and guilt follow the couple and sexual passion cannot keep them away.
Scannell seems to conclude the affair is doomed: ‘They start to wonder who is betraying whom / How it will end, and how did it begin…’
I’m sharing that, not in judgment but sympathy, because there’s a universality in this situation that transcends time. I’ve received many letters from ‘ other women’ — some young, some older — and usually feel the situation is likely to end in tears.
For years, some women continue believing their lover when he says he’ll leave his wife, weeping through lonely Christmases as the years change and he never does. I once knew a lady who’d been ‘the other woman’ for well over a decade — and then, when his wife died, her lover quickly married a younger woman. The heart is indeed turbulent and there can be little justice in its workings.
you knew your man’s situation and walked into it because you craved a bed-mate as much as a soul mate. To be blunt, you don’t receive ‘nothing in return’ — you have good sex and (I hope) some fun.
Sounding bewildered (as well as judgmental) you ask how your man can live in a sexless marriage yet say he loves his wife while having sex with you. The answer is, quite easily!
So what to do? If you put pressure on him, he will finish the affair. you must realise he will not risk his sons’ fury and the loss of his grandchildren.
People will think I should tell you to do the honourable thing and end it. Indeed, I wish you that strength.
But more realistic advice would be for you to continue to dabble in internet dating and (much better) widen your interests in order to meet new people and recreate your life after widowhood without desperately seeking romance. after all, there’s more to living than soul mates and sex.
Meanwhile, you could go on seeing your chap from time to time — enjoying his physicality but taking firm control of your mind and heart (and that is possible) so you don’t expect anything else.