"The fallout from our affair affected not only how I felt about myself, but also how other people related to me." Photo / 123rf
This is what happens when your relationship starts as an affair.
I became the other woman over two decades ago, all the way back in 2003. I was about to turn 30 when a former colleague started to pay me more attention, in a way that suggested his intentions were a little more than friendly.
We’d sat across a desk from each other for over two years, but I’d never once entertained the possibility that we could ever be more than friends – so I convinced myself I was imagining it. After all, he was recently married.
Just to be on the safe side, I resolved to keep contact to a minimum; I didn’t want things to get awkward and was worried about jeopardising our friendship.
But then he invited me to his leaving do and, after a few drinks, we kissed. We vowed it was a drunken one-off, but the next time we saw each other, it happened again. That was the start of our affair.
Initially, we kept in touch over email – this all happened before smartphones and social media – as it seemed more discreet than talking on the phone or texting.
Yes, it was exciting, but I wouldn’t say that it was fun, mainly because I was wary of getting emotionally involved and scared that I’d get hurt. I was also consumed with guilt.
I didn’t think I was the kind of person who would mess around with another woman’s husband, and I had no expectation that he would leave his wife for me. I kept telling myself that I should know better, but I still kept going back for more.
At first, it was easy to convince myself that it was just a fling. I’d recently started a new job and worked long hours, so we barely saw each other. We’d meet for a few minutes when our paths crossed on the way to-and-from work and sometimes we managed to get together for a quick drink before he got the train home, or he came to my flat – but he never stayed the night, and we met at the weekend just once.
Despite this limited contact, we already knew each other so well that things moved fast: within weeks we were falling in love.
Convinced that we were destined for disaster, I called it all off a few times in an attempt to avoid the inevitable heartbreak. I even talked to a friend about a job opportunity in New York. This meant I was entirely unprepared when he called me, three months in, to tell me that he’d confessed everything and left his wife.
It sounds like I got the happy ending – and in some ways I did. Although we never married, we moved in together within six months, and his divorce was finalised after a couple of years.
However, it wasn’t until we separated in 2022 that I realised the extent to which being the other woman had defined almost two decades of my life, and understood how the fallout from our affair affected not only how I felt about myself, but also how other people related to me.
Here are all the reasons why I never really stopped feeling like the other woman…
As we never married, we never had a special day to celebrate our relationship. Although I still remember the date of that first kiss, it felt wrong to mark the date that the man I shared my life with first cheated on his wife.
I was even more uneasy about celebrating the day when he left her – so I never experienced the anniversary cards, flowers and romantic dinners that most other couples take for granted.
I always told myself that it didn’t matter, but our absent anniversary was a lasting reminder that we got together in far from ideal circumstances.
When people asked, I usually just said that we met at work – which was true. But even years after the event, I glossed over the finer details for fear of being judged.
There were a few times when I dared to tell the truth, but I almost always regretted it. More than a decade down the line, a new friend was so shocked by my admission that she wouldn’t talk to me for days.
She later explained that her ex had cheated on her, and she wasn’t sure that she could trust someone who could do that to another woman. After that, I resolved to keep my mouth shut.
Once word got out, our new relationship became a hot topic. People who I thought were friends traded gossip about us, which meant I could never really trust them again.
Other friends – even close friends – were so disapproving they abruptly stopped talking to me. A few of them came around over time but, by then, the friendships were damaged beyond repair.
Only one or two people – including an ex-boyfriend – really showed up for me, asked how I was feeling, and encouraged me to think carefully about what I was getting myself into. They didn’t judge me, and were genuinely concerned about my happiness. I’ve never forgotten their kindness.
When you become the other woman, you stop being a three-dimensional person with thoughts and feelings. Instead, you become a stereotype: you’ll be branded a home-wrecker or a marriage-wrecker, and reduced to ‘a bit of sex on the side’ – as I was known to a member of my partner’s family.
Had they bothered to ask, people would have been shocked to discover that our connection was forged over lunchtime baked potatoes and office tea runs, rather than cocktails in Soho bars and steamy hotel trysts.
Instead, they assumed I was a sex-obsessed seductress on a mission to steal another woman’s man, not someone who accidentally fell in love with her friend.
When bad things happen, it’s human nature to look for someone to blame. And if you’re the other woman, that person will be you. When our affair began, I was casually dating – and I quickly broke things off with the guy I was seeing.
I wasn’t in a serious relationship so, technically – if not morally – I was free to do whatever I liked. However, my partner’s friends and family made it crystal clear that, in their eyes, I was the one in the wrong, not him.
I tried hard to make peace with the idea that it was easier for them to blame me than accept that he’d willingly cheated on his wife. I really tried not to take it personally. But the situation didn’t get any easier over time: I remained responsible for his actions. It was always my fault.
Even though I wasn’t the one who cheated, I never really got over the guilt. For many years I felt so awful about my part in destroying another woman’s happiness that I was braced for some kind of cosmic payback.
I kept looking over my shoulder, waiting for things to go wrong in my life, certain that sooner or later I’d get what I deserved. It was only after my partner and I separated that I realised what I felt wasn’t just guilt – it was shame.
I’d been carrying these feelings around with me for 20 years: my dirty little secret. No matter how long we’d been together, the guilt and shame never really went away. I suppose that’s why I never wanted to admit that I was the other woman. It’s a relief that I’m not any more.