The Mrs Club

Friday, May 23, 2008 Would you be the other woman?

The characters in my book are all confronted with real life situations and one of them is dealing with this particular question.

Well would you?

Before you all jump to answer no, let's be real. Many of us are choosing this path, or at least find ourselves on it and at that moment are faced with whether to jump right off or continue along. Quite recently some notable women have admitted to being the other woman. Barbara Walters did, Oprah did and I am sure some of y'all did and are.

A while ago, a young woman sat in my living room and proceeded to tell me why she thought wives were the stupidest women. She said and I quote "Majority of the men, I know, don't love their wives, they love their girlfriends. The wives are the fools because they clean up after them, take care of them and at the end of the day, he goes to have fun with his girlfriend"

I resisted the urge to slap the stupidity out of her brain. She was sitting in a married woman's house telling me, how she thought me and my kind were stupid. Ah...but I have come to learn that in order to gain wisdom, you have to listen to even to the most inane of conversations.

So I poured my drink as I listened to this otherwise educated and smart young woman, justify her choice in a roundabout fashion. The mind is amazing, you can justify anything if you really want to...I mean, Bush justified Iraq and I have just rationalized this chocolate chip cookie, well I am still justifying it, crap I really can't justify it without lying to myself, darn! Must put it down! Aargh

But I digress.

I think the key thing in her statement was that she was lying to herself. Affairs, adultery exist in a realm of lies. He lies to her, he lies to you, he lies to himself, you lie to the world, you lie to yourself and then you cry to yourself because there will be nobody left to lie to.

There was once a girl who told a married man, that she missed him and wanted to see him soon. The wife found out and confronted her. The girl feeling like a hard chick, told the wife, that if she were her, she wouldn't be making such a big deal, after all, all she did was flirt with the man.

I don't know when we as women started to believe the lie that we have to settle for this s**t! First of all, if you don't know it, let me help you aspe big sister concerned, anyways, here goes.

1.If a man is married and stays married and has you on the side, then you are only a side piece. You are simply there because you agree to be there. Occasionally he may become so besotted that he will contemplate or maybe even leave his wife, but even in that circumstance, most of the time, it's more about his needing to leave anyway and you providing a convenient safety net.
2. Men lie, shoot we all lie. We lie to get what we want. We lie to ourselves, so what makes you think that Mr. Man is not lying to you? He told you he doesn't love her? What line do you think he used on his wife, when she found out about your last tryst? The same one. Verbatim.
3. The wives of men who cheat, have agendas. They stay for a myriad of reasons, don't assume stupidity is one of them.
4. Don't believe the it's not where he is, it's where he wants to be myth. Where he is, is where he wants to be period. Trust me, don't fall into the trap.

I know a woman, who was a man's mistress for at least twenty years. She was and is a beautiful, elegant, educated woman. I don't know what he told her to keep her hanging on in there for all those years, must have been good. Long and short, dude had a heart attack. Left everything to his wife and kids. His mistress and other child, were left nothing. Nada. Zilch. Their names weren't even penciled into the will. She couldn't see the body. She couldn't mourn him publicly. She was a shadow widow, just like she was a shadow wife. She went to the memorial alone, her friends refused to go, and she sat at the back like a nobody. Because in his real life, she was nobody to him. His friends that knew her, pretended otherwise. She was a strictly after midnight, no status. I think about her a lot. I wonder how a woman like that could have fallen prey.

I wrote the book, the Mrs club, because I wanted to talk about how people feel when pressured to marry, but there is a secondary pressure. The desire to find love. When time starts passing, you start to fear. Hey this is real life right,so let's be real. You start to fear that maybe you won't find that perfect love. So sometimes when a counterfeit comes around, showing you all the romance you felt would come with that perfect love but none of the commitment, you think that you have to settle for less. Their verse is practiced so its convincing, but it's no more real than the world they are promising you. Any man that is serious will close one door before opening another. This is fact, simple and true.

Tell yourself what you like...but find a little time to tell yourself the truth. These so called hard babes and senior chicks, that self medicate with gucci and prada are sometimes, dying inside. They don't tell you that sometimes, he doesn't take their calls for days or weeks. They don't tell you that they have to beg sometimes for the money that they flash around like lottery winners. They don't tell you that sometimes, they get lonely. They don't tell you that sometimes they hate who they have become.

I guess that is what gets to me the most. I told that girl in my living room and I am telling you. If you are on the verge of making this choice. Don't choose him. Choose you. Don't give up everything you believe for a person that has made no commitment to you. Don't give up the right to dignity for a little bit of intimacy, don't give up being alone and end up lonely. You are worth more. You deserve to live and walk in the light. You deserve to subsist on more than crumbs, you deserve the cake.
I understand that fear, believe me I do. I think that sometimes that books and movies set us up. They are about romance, not love. When the screen gets blurry and the music starts, what is happening is not love, it's romance. Love is commitment, pure and simple. It is not necessarily sexy. It doesn't necessarily come with perfect words. It simply is.

And if you stop looking for the lies, you will see the truth and say it.

I have told you O. You know yourself. Don't say you haven't been told the truth. Plus, I think his wife is an MFMer. Heeh!!! Don't let her holy fire deal with you O!!! My hand no dey!

As always my people
Be well, be loved, be happy

P.S
The Mrs Club
available amazon.com

Posted by Naija Babe :: 1:14 PM :: 7 comments