With Love, The Other Woman
Things I should’ve said to the lover who was never mine.
There is nothing worse than knowing that someone is in love with you while also being ashamed that they are in love with you…
You did right by her, always. I’d call you a good man for that. A great man, if I’m being honest. But my life was destroyed by our relationship. I became a walking carcass of trauma and for that, I will never forgive you. Unfortunately, I will never forgive me either. And I can’t say what hurts more.
“The carousel never stops turning. And you can’t get off.” — That’s probably how these relationships can all be summed up.
In an intense episode of Grey’s Anatomy, Ellis finds out that Richard chose his wife, even after repeated promises of leaving her. And strangely, I felt her heartbreak in my bones. I cried with her because I knew what it was like to be the infamous Other Woman who gets put in her place. I relived the pain you had caused, even long after we were separated.
Ellis said “The carousel never stops turning. And you can’t get off.”
That is probably how I would sum up our entire time together.
In the beginning, like every new relationship ever, it was dreamy. With the love and intimacy we shared, it seemed only natural that we’d end up together. Soon things got ugly, then uglier. I was convinced that if we can hurt each other, fighting like maniacs and still be madly in love with each other, that must mean something.
That’s what love does to you. It makes you think of the most toxic thing in your life as if it’s magic. Once the affair started, stopping was impossible. Despite the constant reality checks, the poisoned word wars and soul-shattering trauma — I couldn’t and didn’t want to imagine a life without you. So I kept walking further down the path of shame.
The pain of the other woman is the price being paid to the universe for a man’s inability to pick one and step away from the other.
You never understood that being away from you terrified me. With you, the world seemed to melt away. When tagged a home-wrecking bitch for wanting to be loved by you, I took it with a smile. I thought the man on the other side of it all, was worth it.
But people have a lot to say about the person someone cheats with. That amazes me because even the worst things they can and might say pale out in comparison to the things someone in my position would say to themselves every night as they cry to sleep. I remember all those times when you chose her over me. I remember because that was almost always. I remember, mostly because it was heart-wrenching.
I admire you for caring for her so deeply that you wouldn’t let a tear drop from her eyes. I also hate your guts for making me cry, night after night without any remorse. My pain was the price being paid to the universe for your inability to pick one of us and step away from the other.
I did not deserve that. Yes, I was the other woman and no, I still did not deserve that. No one deserves that kind of pain. But on the other woman, it usually goes unnoticed. People are willfully ignorant of our pain, guilt and self-deprecating thoughts — when they call us a home-wrecking bitch.
Living in constant fear of being abandoned is worse than being abandoned, more so when you know it’s only a matter of ‘when’ and not ‘if’.
A quiver runs down my spine as your words echo in my head. The ease with which you shrugged and said “ What else did you expect? You knew I’d never leave her. I wouldn’t want to.”
Well, I knew that because you always chose her. But you also wanted me. Never all of me, in bits and pieces, as and when it was convenient for you. You neither left nor stayed. To make matters worse, you despised the thought of another man in my life.
I’d desperately cling to the hope that one day you will wake up and understand that ‘we’ were meant be — not you and her. I hoped that this game would stop and you‘d pick me. Eventually, I woke up to the realisation that we’re not meant to be. And since that day, I haven’t looked back.
I realised too late that I needed to let go of you to have a chance at a magical, epic love — the kind you had with her. The love you chose every day, I had neither given nor been given. I chose that over all-things-wrong with us. And swore to never look back.
The other woman is wronged, tried and charged guilty, all at once. No one considers her as a living, breathing person.
To know that someone is ashamed of loving you and that every day they wish they weren’t, brings more trauma than someone not loving you back in the first place.
It’s the worst thing you can do to a person and you did it to me, for years. Like every lovestruck fool ever, I put up with the emotional abuse, belittling and compulsive lies you hurled at me. You blamed me for things that went wrong in your life, called me a mistake. These were things I couldn’t put past you. My heart stops for a minute every time I think of it. It was incredibly cruel of you.
But it was also incredibly cruel of me to not pay heed to your pain. I never even once considered how all these things made your life miserable too. But here’s the thing, unrequited love entwines itself in your soul. It fills your head with unrealistic, unfathomable stories—fills your eyes with tears that blur lines to the extent where you can barely see through the veil of its toxicity.
The bitterness in the hate of someone once loved, is a lifetime worth of irreversible damage.
You told me that I made your life hell. The sadder part is that it was true. We were indeed better off without meeting each other. You left me without a goodbye and that has to be one of the worst ways to lose the ones you loved. The indifference with which you left astounds me.
Over the years, I’ve learnt that mediocre beginnings and just good enough times are better than beautiful times and ugly separations. Nothing in the world compares to the bitterness in the hate of someone once loved. It’s a lifetime worth of trauma.
I still wonder, who did you love? The fact that you chose her would suggest that you loved her. But the memories of the moments you lived with me, beg to differ. We were drawn to each other despite several attempts at separation. We were willing to put up with the most toxic person in our life and make it work somehow even in the years when we had zero physical intimacy. How can that be anything but love? I guess I would never know the answer to this. Maybe, I’m better off without knowing.
“Sometimes, people do terrible things. Doesn’t mean they’re terrible people.”
If you hurt someone and they don’t know it, does it mean you didn’t really do that much harm or that you’ve done more harm than can never be forgiven? Eventually, all our sins catch up to us, don’t they?
Every time I asked for more of you, I was stealing what was hers. In the loving moments, I cherished more than everything else in the world, I was pushing the knife deeper and deeper in her back without even feeling a speck of guilt. I’m a hypocrite for cringing at the news of people I know getting cheated on because I made you do it. I pushed you to do it more. I let you let her live in the dark, oblivious to something happening right in front of her eyes.
In my heart, I knew that I might never have all of you. So I believed I deserved to get as much of you as I can, while I can. I get how stupid that sounds when I say it out loud today. At the time, that’s what kept me alive.
I kept telling myself that I was doing nothing wrong, I was just chasing the epic love of my life. I thought I’m doing it for the person I love and what they do to someone isn’t on me. Except it is. It is on me, just as much as it is on you.
Every single time, that you lied to her because of me, I was equal parts responsible and never did I own up to it. The worst part is that I had been in her place once before. I had been the one living in the dark and I knew exactly how painful being in her shoes is. But I did it anyway.
Trust me, when I say this, never in my worst nightmares did I think that I’d be the homewrecker…
I didn’t know I would become this person that poisons another soul, day after day. But I was just so madly in love with you that I didn’t care who gets their heart broken as long as it wasn’t mine. I wasn’t entirely wrong to look out for myself, was I? No one else was going to. You were looking out for her and I had no one looking out for me. It seemed only fair.
I am a good person, you know that better than anyone. And I know from the depths of my heart that you are too. It’s true what they say—when you love so deeply that you can die for them, you can also kill for them.
I wasn’t a horrible, immoral homewrecker like one would assume. I was just a woman who fell hard for a man who was already spoken for and didn’t know how to go back. You were not a lying, cheating monster. Just a person who bonded with another person when he shouldn’t have. You felt the love as I cried with my head buried in your chest and I felt it too when you pulled me closer, comforting me for something that broke you just as much as me.
It takes a lot of courage to walk away from someone you deeply care about. We keep looking for the signs and ignore what our gut tells us. Not everyone has the will or the strength to do the right things, at the right time. And that is not a flaw worth being condemned for.
I’ll take a moment to quote Meredith Grey again, “Sometimes, people do terrible things. Doesn’t mean they’re terrible people.”
We loved each other, in absolute toxic secrecy, going against all our morals, ethics and values. The love we were desperately clinging onto, turned us into all the things we weren’t. Yet it wasn’t enough. And that’s okay because there is enough love in the world for everyone to live their fairytale. Life goes beyond the concept of ‘forgive and forget’ and ‘one true love’.
We walked away from each other — while it was emotionally draining, both our lives have been better since. The whole ordeal taught me a lot about love, life and principles, along with the most valuable life lesson that exists.
It’s right what they say, holding on to the wrong lovers often hurts more than letting them go. If and when letting go of someone you love, is the right thing, it should be the only thing you do. When love changes you into something you’re not, walk away. Walk away with dignity and fond memories.
Sometimes, we just have to accept the fact that the people we love are simply not right for us and sometimes, love just isn’t enough.
