Life/Self/Redemption

Adultery Doesn’t Have To Define You Forever

Despite the stigma.

What do you think about when you imagine a person who is involved in an affair with someone who is married?

Do you conjure up thoughts of an evil person who is unabashedly fornicating with a married person with malice? A person with no values or morals? A person who is not in charge of their own life?

Well, I was once this person — the other woman. The mistress. The side chick. Whatever you want to call it.

I don’t consider myself to be evil, immoral, or malicious by nature. I did my to never make that kind of choice again.

No one would have ever guessed that I was having an affair with a married man when it was happening. Everyone thought I was the good girl or the type of person who followed the rules. In fact, I am naturally a person who follows rules. I consider myself to be kind. I was also a mistress for many years.

The experience I had in the affair almost drove me insane. It caused severe depression. It took a long time to heal from such a destructive relationship.

In film and television, we’re generally bombarded with the image of a female mistress as a sexy bombshell rolling around in satin sheets waiting for her lover to return just as soon as he can get away from his wife. However, the majority of the time, in the real world, an affair is nothing close to glamorous. It can be painful and shattering to everyone involved.

In truth, most people who are or who have been involved in a relationship with a married person are the same people we talk to and interact with every day.

They are at the bus stop. They are hailing the cab next to you. They are serving you coffee. They are the nurse who helped you at the hospital. They are teaching your children in school. They are anyone you might know.

The last thing people think about when they meet me is that I was a longtime mistress to a married man. I’m now a mother and a stepmother. I’m a wife and a business partner. I’m a friend and daughter. I’m capable. I’m intelligent. I’m empathetic.

I also chose to be a man’s mistress at one time in my life. It’s sometimes difficult to reconcile even in my own mind, believe me. The stigma of being the other woman was stuck in my brain for over a decade.

However, when you realize that the one thing human beings are adept at — and have been since the beginning of time — is making colossal mistakes, you realize that someone who is a decent human being is also capable of doing something extremely shady. It isn’t so far-fetched.

It doesn’t matter how educated you are, how intelligent you are, or how compassionate you are — you are capable of doing bad things. Everyone is. Life is about choices.

The real test is how we deal with the consequences of our more terrible choices once we’re faced with them. How we do better once we know better.

The more compassionate of a person you are, the more likely you are to feel empathy for someone who says they’re not happy in their marriage, or how they are only staying married for the kids, or how they want to be with you so badly — and only you — if they could just get out of their miserable marriage.

YES.

It happens to the best of us, sometimes.

I still think that I am a decent human being capable of being the best that I can be. I do still think I’m one of the good ones. Despite everything.

I have spent the years since the affair trying to be a better person and trying to become more enlightened so that I can pass on my lessons to anyone else who is listening or reading and struggling with the same kind of situation.

I probably don’t look like someone who wants to destroy a marriage — or a family. You can’t always tell those things just by looking at somebody.

We often live in denial about people and we tend to do so by assuming things about them by the way they look, talk, where they come from, or how they act. However, people are more complex than that.

Human beings are complicated, layered creatures, capable of unexpected and sometimes sinister things.

However, it’s in the journey of redemption that we can find ourselves again somewhere in between the tangled pairing of mistakes and the acknowledgment that we can do better.

That’s what defines a person’s character in the end.

The link below will take you to my referral page where you’ll have the choice to invest $5 a month to support my writing and gain access to every article on Medium. Thank you xoxo

Want more articles from me? Keep scrolling.

Still here? You can show your love for my writing by leaving me a tip, contributing monthly, or buying me a random glass of wine on my Ko-fi page! Thank you!

Oh, by the way, I also have a podcast about being a stepmom. Check it out if you’re interested.

You can support me over at my ko-fi with a quick tip or a monthly contribution of your choosing… ;)