Where do I begin?

I'm not sure I rightly know, really...the beginning would probably be a good place I guess.

I'm new here, obviously, though I've wandered through these halls every now and again over the past two years, each time in a different state of mind. I must apologize first and foremost, when I first happened upon this website I left believing that I would never return again. "I'm not like them," I thought, "My situation is something completely different."

Everyone thinks that. I get it now. I wouldn't have believed you, if you'd told me back then. People DID tell me, and I ignored them. I guess that's what happens when you're in love.

I'm not really sure where to put this, there's a hundred places since it deals with all facets of an EMA- I was thinking of cutting it into bits and posting it on the separate forums for Emerald's book, but I figure it's better to just keep it all in a chronological state (more or less) and let whomever wants to take anything from it skim to the parts that interest them.

Ok, here goes...

I am, was, an OW.

Yeah I hear you, so what? There are many, I have learned, in this world, and obviously this forum would be sanctuary to many as well. No big deal to some, a big deal to others. It's a big deal to me, but I'm trying to dilute it into something a little less painful. I do not hide the fact, though it's not like I go around telling everyone and their dog that I had an A with a MM (ah, so nice to not have to type those words over and again, mainly cause it makes for faster writing). I'm honest about it...I tell them that it's not something that I am proud of by any stretch of the imagination, it is actually something that has for the better part of two years caused me much grief and heartache...and hurts me still, even now.

I never imagined I could be one of 'those' women.

I used to judge, when I was younger...when I used to read girly magazines...those letters that women wrote in about being in love with a MM and 'what should I do?' and 'will he leave his wife for me?' It used to make me angry. I'd throw up my hands, shake my head and wonder how anyone could let themselves fall in love with a man who belonged to someone else. I was merciless in my categorization of them. I thought they were stupid, immoral...yeah, even the dreaded 'home-wrecking whore.'

I don't think that any more. Or maybe I do, about myself at least...maybe that's why it hurts so much.

Life has always had a way of trying to teach me karmic lessons every time I opened my mouth to say 'I'd never do that...' And thus it seemed that the fates saw fit to put my MM in my path...at a time when I was at my weakest and thought I was strongest.

I'd been dating a man for almost four years, the love of my life I had thought at the time- he was really only my first serious boyfriend...but like all good European girls I'd martyred myself to my love, decided I wanted to marry him and have his children if he would let me. In four years he'd only ever told me he loved me about seven times, but he was one of those with a dark past and baggage and I guess I used that to justify his cold and clinical nature at times. Our sex life, if it could ever have been called that, was shot...he'd been my first so I really had had no idea what it was supposed to be like, but somehow I doubted that sex every four or five months was conducive to a healthy relationship. I used to think it was me, even though he insisted he found me extremely attractive.

I don't know what I'd expected...he'd lost his first love prematurely in a horrible accident that I still to this day know next to nothing about, I was competing with a dead girl for fuck's sake. Or so he said...I know, I know...he could have been blowing smoke up my ass for all I know- smoke would at least have been something, there wasn't much else being blown up my ass if you know what I mean winks

Anyway, after missing my birthday because he had to fly to Paris without me to 'help out' a friend who'd gotten into trouble with the wrong kind of people, and after coming back three weeks later to find me sitting terrified at the airport because he'd told me before he'd left that he wasn't sure how safe he would be- I was dying moment by moment until he stepped out of that Arrivals gate- he decided that he wasn't sure if he was in love with me anymore and requested a month apart to 'figure things out.'

Sure, no problem. I hardly wanted to be with someone who didn't know if they loved me, even though I'd set my heart on him, even though I'd spent thousands of dollars helping pay his bills, his mortgage, and buying him gifts that could have probably rivaled his wages for a year if we'd sold everything on ebay (actually we did once, I raped my room for CD's, DVD's and clothing to help him pay massive phone bills so he wouldn't get blacklisted). That stuff didn't matter to me at the time (though as you can probably imagine, now that I am older and I hope wiser I'm pretty pissed off)...I loved him, I wanted him to be happy. And if it meant being happy without me, so be it.

Thus began out month apart vigil. Official break up, no strings...I was to do whatever I wanted, in fact I almost felt like he expected me to go and play the field.

At the beginning of that month, I had no doubt that we'd get back together, he'd realise what he had and we'd live happily ever after. I had absolutely no intention of playing anything with anyone on any kind of field. My heart was his.

By the end of the month, I was praying that he stayed broken up with me for good.

Enter my MM stage left. Literally stage left, we met at a theatre group where we both happened to have scored lead roles, having never done anything like it before. Ironically, he was not even my first choice...I'd become quite attracted to our director but, upon learning that he had a girlfriend, immediately wrote him off as unavailable. I know, the logic escapes even me.

MM was young, only a few years older than me and from a foreign country...he'd already been married and divorced once and had met his current W online, leaving his family, possessions and past behind to start fresh in a new country. Yeah he was a looker, of course I noticed, but we never even truly spoke much in the beginning. We steered clear of each other quite sensibly until the night that one of the girls I'd met at the theatre group, upon learning of my one months hiatus, took pity on me (bless her little cotton socks) and invited me to a movie night gathering with the rest of the cast. You know how it goes, he was there, we got to talking, sparks flew...

Nothing happened.

Not for a while. Not until after he'd announced with false bravado to the entire production company that he and his W were expecting, he was so happy and so proud. We were all happy for them, though by that time I'd met his W and kind of wondered what it was that had attracted them to each other. She really didn't seem him type...night and day it seemed, though I guess we see what we want to see. He loved theatre, she fell asleep at it, he loved art, she wasn't going to any 'fucking art shows to look at boring paintings,' he wanted to come and see independent films at film festivals, she was 'too tired and why can't you just stay home and watch me play nintendo?'

That was how we ended up standing on a bridge in the city one night, staring into the water, pondering our lives. The ticket I'd bought for his W to accompany us to the movies still sat it my pocket, I graciously refused payment for the unused seat. He was seething, she'd bailed last minute...apparently it wasn't the first time.

I remember standing there, gazing into the watery blackness and thinking about my now ex BF, thinking about the little things that he never did, the declarations of love I never got, the birthday and christmas presents I missed, the 'little things' that were never done, the sex I wasn't having...he hadn't even kissed me goodbye when we started our hiatus. He'd sprung it on me in the dark as we lay in bed together, "I think we need some time apart..." and in the darkness that night I left the bed, tears pouring down my face, sobs stifled cause he didn't want me to cry and 'we knew that this was going to be hard.' YOU knew, you bastard...I'd known nothing till you'd slapped me in the face with it ten seconds before. Still, I wasn't angry with him...I loved him, I imagined it was torture, having to tell someone that you cared about that you weren't sure if you loved them. I know it to be fact now...it hurts like hell.

But he never even kissed me goodbye.

And then it came, like a bolt out of the blue, the voice of my MM who was standing next to me doing pretty much the same as I.

"Don't you just wish, for once, that someone who made themselves out to be a certain way actually WAS that way? Know what I mean?"

Double take. What? Mr 'We're pregnant and I'm so happy?' Are you serious? I remember just kind of looking at him for a moment as he glanced up from the dark water and met my gaze. And I nodded.

"Yeah, I know exactly what you mean."

It was all downhill from there. The more we talked, the more we realised just how much we had in common...our hopes, our dreams, our fears. And we also realised just how much of a raw deal we were supposedly getting. Here was a man doing everything I'd ever wanted my current ex to do, and he was getting the 'not tonight, I have a headache,' 'don't fucking touch me, that tickles,' 'what the hell am I going to do with a gift like this?' and 'my husband's nickname is fucker' treatment.

It's worthwhile, I think, to take a moment here and point out that this was the information that was imparted to me at the time. I did not then nor do I know now for certain whether anything of what MM told me was true, but I have this bad habit of trusting that people have no real reason to lie to me, particularly not then. I'm sure, in hindsight, that he no doubt glorified details to make W look like the bad guy...but at the time this was neither here nor there. This piece is not intended as a judgment on her, this is my attempt to tell my story, which I have not been able to do anywhere else for reasons I'll relay a little later on.

Anyway...

The more I spoke to my MM, the more I realised that the man I thought I had been in love with for four years was- whether consciously or not- taking fucking advantage of me emotionally AND financially. I felt like an idiot...I felt angry, more at myself than at him, for I was convinced that he did not realise what he was doing. I began to see MM with new eyes, the eyes of someone who'd always wanted a man like him, and was watching someone else shun, neglect and basically not appreciate what she had.

She was a negative one, right from the beginning...the kind of person that sat at the table with a pout or a frown and answered every question with one or two words, giving nothing in the way of social stimulus. At least not to me and the people we used to all be friends with. She didn't like any of us, she didn't like me...apparently, I was told by him- though I do remember once we were sitting across from each other at the table and she called me her 'evil twin.' I almost choked on my meal. We were similar, yes, as time went by I began to see just how similar we were...but it was too late by then, and back in the beginning I was a fool.

It began with the inevitable texting back and forth. We'd talk about sexual fantasies and the like...we both knew that we were heavily attracted to one another but as far as I was concerned at the time, despite his qualities, he was a potential good fuck and nothing more. I'd only ever been with one man- and despite recent revelations I still intended to go back to that man and work things out. I just needed to be more expressive of my needs. I was going to marry him. MM was just stroking my ego for the moment, entertaining me in that month of hell. After all, hadn't my ex said 'do what you gotta do, consider yourself single?' And he wasn't the only one, a good few of my aunts and cousins warned me against the danger of marrying the man you lost your virginity to, or at least doing it before experiencing other sexual partners. What better way than a one night stand with MM, who loved his wife despite her 'treatment' of him and fully intended to fix his marital woes before baby made three? I'd have my 'life experience,' then be able to go back to my ex and live happily ever after. And then MM, his wife and me and my man could all have dinners together. Don't laugh...we actually said that once. Idiots. IDIOTS.

I'd forgotten, in all that followed, how long it actually took us to do the deed. The finer details get lost in all the melodrama, guilt and blame. In actual fact, MM and I had sat down on a number of occasions and discussed our 'situation,' fluctuating from 'I want you, you want me, let's just do it' to 'no we can't, this is wrong, no matter how we dress it up,' to 'why the fuck should we always be the ones thinking of everyone else's feelings, do they ever think of ours?' to 'that doesn't give us the right to do what we wanna do...'

We decided no, we decided yes, we decided no...his W grew more and more hostile towards me, she started asking questions and he started fobbing them off, she didn't trust me as far as she could throw me- and I don't blame her really, though it was never my intention to steal anyone from anyone else. I wanted sex, I hadn't had it in months and I wanted MM. That was as far as it went. From what he told me, that was what he wanted as well. Then we were gonna go back to our respective partners and move on with our lives.

I still can't believe we actually thought that would work.

By this time, it was nearing the end of the month...there'd been kisses, the first time he'd kissed me I'd been sitting on his desk as he 'pretended' to show me something on his computer while our friends hung out in the lounge and his W slept in their bed. The second time was the morning after, in my car, the third just meters from his house before I dropped him off at home...

Hold on. Nausea.

Ok.

I don't know why I feel I have to pause again but I do. I am not gloating here, this is not an 'ahahahaha I'm so clever look what I've done' kind of thing. This is me purging my daemons. I've held onto this for so long, no one but me knows the full story and I can't carry this burden anymore. I have to let it all go and this is the only way I know how. I'm sorry if it offends anyone or if I'm taking far too long to get to the point- there's a while to go yet. I have to do this if I'm ever going to heal.

I have to.

So there were kisses, and slight groping...but time was running out. A day or so and the ex would contact me and tell me his choice. And still I wanted him back, still I wanted the fairytale. I decided that I didn't need MM. Didn't need the sex, I had love and that was more important...and what we wanted to do was wrong. WRONG. I still think it was wrong, and no one will ever change my mind on that- I don't care how we pretty it up. I know that some believe that there are no right or wrong choices as everything happens for a reason...I'm one of those people yet for some reason I cannot forgive myself this or see it as anything but what it was. Unfair. Unfair to his W, to him AND to me. And his child. I know this. I know.

A friend told me once to never regret, he said one needed to remember how they felt at the time of making a choice and remember why they made it. I try to tell myself that on my bad days...I half believe it. But there's still that part of me that has a long way to go...

Obviously, in the end, we did it...we had sex, fucked, made love, whatever you want to call it. My ex was a few days late in contacting me and we decided to take advantage of the situation and the fact that his W was away for the weekend on business and just 'get it out of our systems.' I didn't know enough about sex and lust at the time to know what kind of control it would have over me, if I'd known...hell, I'd probably have done nothing different.

So we had sex, and it was lousy...ok unfair, it wasn't bad, but it was nothing flash. Unprotected, rushed, a grappling of half removed clothing and biting kisses. And then it was done. The next morning he invited me over for breakfast and we did it again. That was the day he told me that he used to be a Drag Queen...right after he said he had absolutely no desire to have sex with me again, now that we'd gotten it over with. Never again turned out to be that night, when he invited me back again for dinner. Still no call from my ex, and as we sat there on the couch, my head in his lap as he stroked my hair and told me about how he went through a phase where he didn't know if he'd wanted to be male or female and his W knew but accepted it only if it was never mentioned or acted upon again, I began to cry.

"Why can't they love us like we deserve?" I asked.

I should have known then that neither of us were looking for just sex. We were looking for someone to bring us back to life...to wrench us out of the little boxes of conformity that they and we had put ourselves into, merely by loving those who could never truly understand us. We were living in fear, lives half lived...yeah, he wanted to maybe Drag up again once in a while and yes, I wanted someone whom I could explore every fantasy with without being judged or denied. Yes, he wanted someone who appreciated his gifts and I wanted someone who bought them for me. And why, oh why did I have to meet you now...where were you four years ago?

The weeks went by, still no call from my ex, and every day me and MM grew more and more dependent on each other. It never occurred to me, then, that I was an OW. The idea that I could be something that I had judged so harshly and abhorred was still alien to me...this was just...I had no idea what it was.

I'd backed myself into a corner with my ex, I'd told him I wouldn't contact him until he called me. I caved in, of course, in the end. Four years and he couldn't even manage a phone call. He never even came to my show, my first theatrical performance and I'd never been onstage like that before. MM used to tell me that if it had been him, he'd have been in the front row with roses. He never was much help in encouraging me to have faith.

I, meanwhile, seemed to make it my personal business to fix his marriage. While I was sleeping with him, I was giving him tips on how to spice things up, things to buy her, places to take her. And she shot us down...every time. She didn't get the movies, she didn't want the chocolates, she didn't want to drive two hours so they could spend a romantic night in a hotel together. She 'didn't think it was worth it.' It drove me nuts. I guess I was doing it to alleviate subconscious guilt, trying to help him fix things so that if it all went bust I couldn't be blamed...though I know now as I knew then that really helping would have been to walk away and never look back. To hell with that, I ended up going to the hotel with him instead, after insisting that I'd only go if she said no (he'd asked me first).

The night I saw my ex again after what ended up being two months apart, I felt nothing. I was numb, and all the time I was driving to his place I was praying that MM would call and beg me not to go. He called, but not till after I'd left my ex's, and so again I went over...and got bloody carpet burn scars on my lower back that have only just faded, two years later.

The ex and I broke up and, despite one or two attempts at NC, the EMA continued.

And it was the stuff of damned Hollywood films...meetings on top of tall buildings a'la Sleepless in Seattle, stolen moments and kisses between scenes during the show, walks on the beach and dancing in the rain, midnight stops for chinese take-out between sex, one time his car died on the freeway and I had to go and rescue him...and he called his wife using my phone. She was beside herself, the poor thing...she kept pushing for him to end his friendship with me, he kept refusing and insisting there was nothing going on. He'd come home smelling like me, they'd fight all night. The more they fought, the more things went to hell, the more time we spent together.

All our friends told him to leave her, they hated the way that she was treating him and truth be told apparently some of her best friends told him to leave her too. Well, that's what he said, I'm not going to go and put words into their mouths, I've never heard any of them say it. For my part, I told him to do what would make him happy, I asked him almost daily if he was sure he didn't want to try and fix his marriage, he replied that he'd been trying for three years and had reached the point where he couldn't do it any more. Apparently their troubles had started long before I was on the scene. Or so I was told, by everyone.

It was New Year's Eve when he finally decided to leave her. Ironically, it was set to be our big NC night, we were to say goodbye forever that night and not look back. We were all at a party, and I'll never forget the way she looked at me as she sat scowling on the chair...little wonder, there was her H dancing with a young, rake thin thing in red, picking her up and swirling her around on the dance floor, and no one but us was dancing.

I will not defend my actions that night...suffice it to say that I truly believed that we were never gonna see each other, or her, again and I decided to go out with a bang. Bang is right...I was the first one he kissed right before her eyes at the stroke of midnight, and they spent the rest of the night screaming at each other in the parking lot. A few hours later he ran to me, swept me in his arms with tears in his eyes and, as we both cried, he told me he loved me and said goodbye.

I thought that was the end.

He left her to go and stay with friends the next morning. He contacted me after a week of NC. He went back home only because he wanted to be there for the birth of his child...she was in the hospital for a week and he drove between my bed and her bedside the entire time. When his daughter was born, at 4am, I was the first person he called to tell the news. His father, he called second.

Guilt was starting to set in. I was the OW and now he had a child. I was taking away someone's father...and his W was post-natal and depressed. I tried to break away again, he pulled me back. I let him. The day before Valentine's day we stayed in a hotel...and he gave me a crushed flower that he'd brought back from one of his business trips and a little music box that played 'Over the Rainbow.'

The next morning, Valentine's Day, she found out about us.

Tricked him into telling her, more accurately, saying someone had seen us out together and kissing. At the time, he only said he had feelings for me and we'd kissed...the sex we never mentioned, both because we were covering our asses and no one wants to tell a post-natal woman who's just had a baby that her husband has been fucking another woman for four months. Despite the fact that the woman pissed me off, I could never bring myself to hate her...she was human like the rest of us, she just wanted to be loved. Unfortunately she seemed to have no idea how to love her H.

You can imagine what followed, the nasty VM on my phone, the threats, the tears, the fighting. She walked out on him and took his child, then came back, then left again. I had only just realised what it was that I'd gotten myself into...but it was too late now. There was no going back.

Of course nothing could have prepared me for the backlash...most of you know what I'm talking about. Home-wrecking whore, tramp trying to steal someone's husband and a little girl's father. I was devastated, SHE was devastated...so was he. None of us were any of the things that anyone said we were. I knew that even then. We were all so lost, we all just wanted to be loved...unfortunately there was a major conflict of interest occurring. We both wanted him. I surrendered. I told him to go back and work it out. Again, NC. It lasted four days that time.

The last time I ever spoke to her was a week after that Valentine's day, a rather interesting phone conversation that lasted an hour. In my book of strange, that conversation is right at the top...we fluctuated from yelling to being quite nice, there was a lot of fuck you and fuck you too, she thanked me for the birth gift I'd given her daughter (had thrown together some nice clothes and things out of courtesy) then proceeded to tell me how selfish I was and I wasn't thinking of anyone but myself. I admitted it was true, for once I was thinking only of myself after years of being everyone else's scapegoat and goody two shoes good samaritan. I apologised, and I meant it...I told her that I'd never meant to hurt her, that no one had planned for this to end up this way. And then I told her that she had no right to call me the things she did because she was no better than I was.

A little backstory on MM's W. The day I met her she told me quite straight faced that she'd cheated on her exH (this was also her second marriage) with what I later found out was another MM. I'd been horrified at the time, before my own OWness the idea mortified me...probably because she'd been so callous about it. 'Oh yeah, my exH, nicest guy in the world, I'd recommend him to anyone.' What the..?

Now I'm not saying that this fact in any way justifies my own actions OR makes her somehow deserving of the pain I know she has been through, but I certainly wasn't going to let someone who was and had been as much an OW as me call me whore and home-wrecker. The holier-than-thou you're just a child tactics she used on her H didn't work with me, and I let her know it. She asked what happened next and I told her I didn't know. She asked me to stay away from her family and I told her that as long as MM was trying to fix his marriage I promised I would stay away out of respect for him and for her child. If, I added, he says he doesn't want to continue your marriage and HE contacts ME seeking friendship, then I owe you nothing.

What could she say, really? We agreed to disagree and said goodbye.

I never spoke to her again.

He moved out a few weeks later and into his own place. I asked him if he was sure, he said he was. I told him not to move out for me, that I didn't want him leaving anyone to be with me. He said he was leaving for himself...two months later, he was 'seperated' but still legally married, and we were in an official R.

The title of the OW, I learned, is not something that goes away, and while living in separate houses and awaiting divorce (in this blessed country, one has to prove that they have been separated for a year before divorce can be filed for) MM was still very much married. And I learned what it was like to live a life in the shadows.

Neither of us wanted to cause W any more pain than she'd already been through, and neither of us wanted to put up with her antics either. He lied to her constantly, telling her he and I were not in contact, that their marital problems had only been amplified by my arrival, that there were other reasons that they were not working out. He told me that she was threatening to take away his child if she so much as suspected that I was on the scene. Again and again he lied, again and again we snuck about...our relationship was one of cloak and dagger, driving to all parts of the state to spend time together where no one knew us or would see us. It was like the A, nothing had changed...except now he had a place of his own.

It was hard for us all, she was dealing with the fact that she now would most likely be a single mother and was begging (on hands and knees apparently) him to come home. She would change, she said, she would watch the movies and the theatre shows and do what he wanted...he needed to give her a chance. I asked him why he didn't. He told me he was fed up with it...he'd tried for years with no response and it was bad luck if she'd finally decided to get her act together once he'd left. Too little, too late.

It went on and on, back and forth...someone would see us out and it would get back to her, she'd freak out and threaten to leave the country with his child (allegedly), we'd try NC, a week later he'd call me crying and telling me he missed me. In two years we said goodbye fourteen times. Fourteen. She convinced him to try counselling. He went, telling me that he was doing it to make a clean break, to prove to her that it wasn't going to work...to do it 'the right way' so that they didn't blame me for stealing him and him for leaving a mother with a baby for another woman.

I've beaten myself up over this fact for what seems like forever now. Everyone tells me that it's not for me to blame myself, that I didn't make him leave, that he made his choice and to some degree this is true...but it doesn't excuse my being there. I could have walked away. But I'd told her that I would do so only if he told me he wanted to fix his marriage...and everything he told me was the opposite. I'm not going back, he told me, so they can put me in a box again. There were things we were exploring that she'd never let him do...he'd taken up Drag again, we'd play dress ups and I encouraged him in every way I could to be true to himself. At one point I thought he might make the change completely and become a woman. He didn't...I was glad for it. I don't judge, but if I'd wanted to date a woman I'd have done so.

I'd found him a counsellor for himself too, so he could work through his issues...he'd been abused as a child by his step-father and had more or less run away from all that when he came here to marry his current W. I became therapist as well as friend and lover, we shared everything, I believed, as much as we could...still in the shadows.

It never occurred to me that he really should have just been a man and been honest about what he was doing. Friends and family were starting to ask me questions, why was he still hiding me? Why doesn't he tell her? She can't take his child...wasn't he proud to be with you? Every person that knew us and saw us together claimed that we were made for each other. Everyone thought that we would be together forever. I loved him, I had fallen in love with him at some point along the way and it terrified me. I was mortified...how could I have so easily forgotten the man that had come before, the one that I wanted to marry? One thing I have since learned about myself is that once I'm done, I'm done. And with my ex I was done...and my life with MM was just beginning. Or would, once he was divorced.

And the rollercoaster continued. People saw us out and about every now and again, she'd freak out and throw things, abuse him...'emotional abuse' his counsellor called it, saying that if they were separated she had no right to dictate who he could and could not have in his life. I was not dangerous or a threat to the child- though MM and I had some rather interesting S and M sex games- and therefore she had no grounds. We all knew this...still he hid me. He'd loved her, he still cared about her...he didn't want to hurt her even while she was hurting him...and I was so much more understanding than she was, I knew this was a sacrifice that needed to be made for the greater good.

Just what greater good, I have no idea. I guess I didn't want the divorce settlement to get ugly. I'd already stolen her husband, I didn't want her to take his child and then have that on my head too. It was the Drag thing that did it...he was frightened she'd use it against him in court to prove he was unstable. I don't know if something like that would even have grounds in this day and age...but who was going to risk it? Better to hide...a year wasn't that long anyway, and it would allow us to be sure that this was really what we wanted. And so I let it go on...and at night I'd sleep in his arms, with a digital photo-frame on the bedside table constantly cycling a plethora of photos of him, W and baby in after birth happy snaps.

This was my life.

Back and forth, back and forth. Contact, NC, Contact, NC. Sometimes he'd call me, sometimes I'd break first and call him...

Sometimes he wouldn't even say anything, he'd just play the music to our favorite song then hang up. He said he couldn't live without me, that he may as well have been dead. He called me his light, his freedom, his inspiration.

Funny, my ex used to say the same thing.

To his W, I was still a home-wrecking whore. Nothing had changed. If he didn't answer his phone on the first few rings, she'd yell at him. If he didn't answer at all, she'd call ten times and leave abusive messages. She did drive by's of his apartment to see if I was there, she had her friends do drive by's when she couldn't for the same reason. People I didn't even know were coming into my workplace to 'check me out' and to see if he was there, people were adding me on myspace under false pretenses and asking me leading questions to try and get information out of me. I made my profile private, they made phony ID's to try and get in and read my blogs. I was living in a state of perpetual paranoia...I was being stalked. We both were.

Still, we remained in the shadows. Still it went on.

The names came hard and fast, there were not so nice things posted about me online. One time I got an email from his W saying she'd kept her distance till now but I needed to leave them all the fuck alone like MM wanted. I didn't know what to believe anymore, after a year of knowing him and almost eight months in an on and off again relationship where I was living in a fishbowl, I was at my wits end. I called him and asked if what she said was true and he got angry with me. He already fielded calls from her screaming at him till 4am, which he allowed 'for his daughter's sake'. Was I going to start that too?

Hell no, I just wanted to know is all. I felt bad...he was having issues at work, they were going to sack him anytime soon and he was depressed. He didn't need this. And me...well I couldn't do it to him. I hated seeing him so run down, this whole thing was destroying him. I'd be damned if I was going to be the cause of it. It seemed no matter where we turned, the world conspired against us. He told her the truth about where he was and what he was doing, she freaked, he lied, she freaked...eventually he developed a 'ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies,' mantra. He'd been living away from her as a separated man for over ten months and still she had him under her thumb. I told myself it was because of all the other stress, work, depression, issues from the past...he wasn't strong like me, he couldn't handle it like I could.

So I hid, for his sake...though every day that passed something in me was growing, a desire to fight back, to be heard, to scream out my own frustrations.

Again NC. We broke up and I told him I would not be his GF until I could do so out in the open, away from the lies. Two weeks later, same story. I'm a glutton for punishment.

But I was getting tired...worn out. I was working myself in knots thinking about things over and again. I blamed myself as W blamed me, I knew what I had done was wrong...every time I felt upset or hard done by I'd make myself think of her and what she must have been suffering, how afraid she must have been now that she was a single parent. I'd go over to his place, we'd cuddle up...she'd call crying cause her dog had run away and off he went to find it. And still I lived in darkness.

It seems so obvious now that I was a fool, even as I write this I'm kicking myself. But when you're in love you justify it any way that you can, and you want to believe that the one you love will never lie to you or take advantage. I should have learned from the relationship that had come before.

The months rolled on, Christmas, New Year...he had to spend them with his daughter and not me...it was her year of firsts, why not? Of all the things he is, MM has always been a wonderful father. It was one of the reasons I adored him.

What I did not adore were the pre-conceived notions that W and all her little friends had formed about me. Ok, home-wrecker, whore...whatever, that I was used to by now, but what I didn't like and what I constantly wrestled with was the notion that I was a stalker, a psycho, a hanger-oner who would just not let MM be to fix his marriage. According to them, I was seeking hi out constantly when he was asking me to stay away, I was pursuing, I was pushing, I was stealing her H and her child's father- nevermind the fact that he's left her almost a year earlier and he saw his little girl every chance he got. I hated that...the thought that they actually believed that I was simply someone who couldn't let go. They didn't know I'd dated him for eight months, they didn't know that ten of the fourteen times we declared NC HE was the one who sought me out again. I was a legitimate part of his life and they were twisting it and cheapening it to seem as if I were chasing a man who didn't want me like a fool.

I guess I should have asked more questions.

And then, just when you thought that things were calming...W backed off, our relationship was getting better...

And his fucking step-father died.

MM had been planning for months to go home and 'confront' the man who'd made his life hell as a child. The abuse had never been addressed, his own mother had accused him of making it up...his trip home was to close a chapter just before his divorce, before his 30th birthday...before a new life could begin.

And the bastard died three weeks before his trip home. So much for closure.

Things were hell after that. He'd wanted to take his daughter with him to meet his family, W obviously wasn't letting the child leave the country without her...which is how I ended up spending countless days and nights in constant nausea while for two months he, W and baby holidayed across the world.

Now, to hear him tell it when he got back, the whole time had been hell. He'd planned to keep W there with him for two weeks so everyone could meet the baby, then send her on her merry way and spend the rest of his holiday with his family alone. I found out from HER online blog that he changed his mind and kept her there the whole time. No email to me to let me know what was going on. We were in a NC period. No Valentine's Day anything...though I was quick to remind myself of HER last Valentine's Day and called it karma. Of course I sent him a Valentine email. I'm a romantic at heart.

Nothing.

This was about the time that- having been single for over five months in a technical sense though I never stopped sleeping with or spending time with MM- I began to take interest in someone new. Well, actually not new, a friend of mine who'd become a friend of MM...someone I'd known for a year whom I'd always been attracted to but had never really done anything about (save for the occasional threesome with him and MM or s group sex thing for kicks). I didn't need any more drama, of course...but the urges I'd always had were getting harder and harder to fight, and I know he felt it too. Nothing like a year's worth of unspoken sexual tension to get the blood boiling. Now I'd had other lovers during the EMA- well ok, one, and I did it to prove to MM that I was not his property and he had no right to dictate what I did- but nothing like this. This man and I...we were kindred spirits, the best of friends and had the highest respect for each other. He loved me and he loved MM, he wished he could have what we had but was content with admiration from afar.

But something happened in those months while MM was away with is wife and blatantly shunning me. And that something was fatigue. I didn't eat well, I dropped two dress sizes and two cup sizes in my bra, people were starting to worry...I was depressed and worn out, emotionally drained. I was dying inside...and still MM stayed away. And our mutual friend, he was getting constantly more and more annoyed with me for what I was letting MM do. He was not happy with what he was seeing, he told me that as much as he cared for MM, I deserved better. He started trying to cheer me up, amidst blazing rows over petty things that were a direct result of sexual frustration and tension.

We never once imagined that anything would come of any of it.

It was about the time that MM finally came back that I realised I was falling out of love with him and in love with our friend.

I was devastated.

Words cannot express the sickening feeling of guilt, shame, blame...the things that went through my head. I contemplated suicide a few times, though I know I'd never have done it. Just one week earlier that friend had kissed me, and for one moment I'd felt alive again. And I went home so wracked with guilt I could hardly breathe...

And then I saw that MM's myspace had been changed from just his name to his and his W's. I don't know how I didn't throw up.

The next morning MM contacted me, telling me W had gotten his internet passwords and was using his accounts to contact friend's cause hers had been sabotaged. The page stayed that way for the next month...with both their names. He only finally changed it because I asked him to...and I told myself I wasn't going to do that. Even after our friends started asking why it was so and what had happened. 'Aren't you in love anymore?' they asked.

I had no fucking clue.

I knew that somewhere out there was a man who wanted to give me everything and had no W that would hold him back. A man who wanted me like I wanted him, and there were no complications and no setbacks. And I was single and could damn well do as I pleased...but I loved my MM so much, even then.

I told him, one night...in tears I told him I was having feelings for someone else and I was terrified because the longer this went on, the harder it was to be understanding and wait and hide. It had been a year, the divorce could go through now...I shouldn't have had to hide anymore. His reply? Soon, I can't just slap her in the face with papers, it has to be done delicately...I could lose my child.

Apparently she saw their trip as a fresh start...and she'd told him as they'd gotten on the plane that if she ever found out he was fucking around with anyone he could kiss his daughter goodbye.

I told him I wanted this man, our friend...and that it was something I thought I needed to explore. He was devastated, but said that he understood and as long as it didn't change my feelings for him he would be fine with it, he wouldn't judge me.

But he did.

He judged me and he condemned me. I think that was when I started to fall out of love with him...after I'd told him that me and this other man had slept together and he pretty much ostracized me. He claims he didn't...it was a busy week at work (he'd lost his job and gotten a new one before he'd gone on his trip), he didn't have time to call and text me a hundred times like he had every day for months and months when we were together (and sometimes during NC). Funny how all at once after I told him that I'd slept with someone else he was suddenly too busy.

Only a week before that he'd broken my heart, again, by telling me we had to say goodbye forever. We couldn't hide...he couldn't be the man I deserved if we were sneaking about and we could not have a relationship until he was divorced. He wanted to do it honestly...and I agreed. I knew that it was the right thing to do...we knew it was what we should have done in the first place. SO we said goodbye and my heart broke (for the thriteenth time). But unlike all the other times...I was actually ok. I was healing and starting to move on...till he called me again and back to the drawing board we went.

So, by the time the little episode with our friend occurred, I'd had more than enough...after a year and a bit of hiding my relationship with a legitimately separated man because he didn't have the balls to stand up to his W I could take no more. My heart could take no more. I'd reached the end of my tether...and the shunning broke the camel's back. How DARE he judge me? How dare HE, who took his W on a supposed 2 week holiday that lasted 5 weeks, who lets her parade pictures of them about and allows her to call me every name under the sun just to keep the peace so he can see his daughter, who told me he loved me and would never judge me...how dare he condemn me for sleeping with someone other than him after he told me we had to say goodbye forever AND after I'd been single for over five months.

I was livid.

And still, I loved him...

I remember that last night we made love, I went over and he was doubled over in bed with stomach cramps from stress. My heart bled. All my anger with him went away, I saw what I was doing and I couldn't do it any more. One of us had to be the strong one...one of us had to walk away or it would destroy everyone. Why should his poor W be a single mother? Why should his daughter grow up without a child...why should our love be killing us both day by day?

Love wasn't supposed to be that way.

I told him, then, that I was giving him three days to make his choice. If he wanted me, I was to be his GF AND a visible one...he would tell his W, file for divorce and we'd be together. OR, we said goodbye...indefinitely. There was a man out there, I said, who wanted me for himself...who'd played the good friend long enough and realised that he was letting me slip out of his fingers while MM fucked about dragging his ass. The choice was mine...I loved them both very much. Someone was going to be hurt now, either way. I hated myself.

But I knew he'd never do it.

In the end, I made the choice for him...I told him I couldn't be the one to take him from his child, and I couldn't ask him to risk losing her in order to have me. If he chose to do it anyway, it was his business, but I was taking myself out of the equation. What he did then was up to him...but he was not to contact me until he was in a position- if ever- to 'woo' me properly. A day later he was calling me and asking if I'd told anyone we'd been to the movies the week before, because someone knew and his W was going nuts again.

That was when I let loose.

I put a blog on myspace telling his W and her little friends exactly what I thought of them. Perhaps it was selfish, but after two years of keeping my mouth shut I couldn't hold it in any longer, I was getting out, and I was going to say my piece before I went...funnily enough it actually made them start listening to him, start learning...apparently some of them were afraid. He tried to get me to follow it up with a few more mind games, which I bluntly refused to do. I was done. I wasn't playing anyone's game any more but mine.

The night we said goodbye we went to Cirque du Soleil. It was a beautiful night, heartbreaking...I knew then that I had no intention of ever being with him again. He rambled on about his plans, how he was going to buy a house and make himself the man I deserved...he'd get this divorce done as soon as possible and then we'd have the life we dreamed of. Gods, I loved him...but I didn't want anything more to do with him. I was broken...I was lost. I was so tired of the effort it took to love him that I couldn't muster the energy to keep doing it.

So we said goodbye, and though he came to my work twice after that and called me a few times, that was it. A week passed, I tried to heal...I started writing a journal online on my myspace, which of course his W and everyone still logs into daily a hundred times to read...and then came the call from him asking me to please stop writing things because he didn't want it to screw up his newly found friendship with his W. He had no intention of going back to her, he declared, he loved me...he was going to get my name tattooed on his body...but please don't make trouble, I'm doing well.

I could have killed him.

I was not doing well. I was hurting. I had a beautiful man just waiting to love me like I deserved, but I had so much rage and anger in me to get out first. I know I chose this, I know I did a bad thing...but I never asked for this freak show and had I known I certainly would never have bought into it. I'm an OW and I have to live with that for the rest of my life, and some days I wake up and hate myself...and hate him for being weak and not having the balls to stand up and fight for me, to be a man and take what he said he wanted. And I hate her, because while I know how much she's been hurting and has been afraid and in pain, she fucking knows what this is like...she did this to someone else just as I have done it to her, and she seems to have conveniently forgotten that. I hate her for making the past year of my life hell, and him for letting her, and myself for letting both of them...and her little friends for stalking me and not minding their own business and makin everything so hard...

And then I remember how much of a hell HER life must have been since I breezed into their world, and I feel bad again, and tell myself I have no right to be hurt or feel betrayed because I took something that didn't belong to me, that I had no right to take. Or I didn't, I don't know...to the very end I was telling him that I'd understand if he went back to her, that I wouldn't agree with it but I'd understand why. Maybe I wanted him to go back and fix things to alleviate my guilt...if he went back and they stayed married then technically I hadn't fucked up anything right? 'I would never go back to THAT' he declared the last time I spoke to him, "You think I'm fucking crazy?'

That was two months ago.

One month ago I sent him a text message for his 30th birthday to wish him the best. I got an abusive phone call from his W the next morning at the crack of dawn telling me to stay the fuck away from them and didn't he tell me it was over and why did I continue to go after a man that didn't want me.

He'd gone home. He was sleeping beside her.

I shot off a quick email telling him I didn't give a damn what he did with his life, but I'd appreciate if he had the courtesy to let me know so I didn't text him cause I thought it'd be the nice thing to do...only to have psycho woman having a mental attack.

That night I got two novel-sized emails from him, calling me a child and an idiot and I should have known that he was back with her because she'd posted it all over her blogs (I'd read those, but like everything else I'd read over the past two years I'd been told that they were lies and she was a manipulative bitch...according to MM). So yes, I should have known and I should have known he'd want nothing to do with me. Then he went on to accuse me of not knowing what it was like to have a child and his W had reopened his eyes to a lot of things...here's a match, build a bridge, get over it and burn it behind you, he said.

I calmly replied that he and his trailer park W deserved each other and that he was everything his abusive step-father said he was. Mean, I know, but I was angry.

I hear now, two weeks later, they've just bought a new home and moved in together to play happy families...and they both write so eloquently about how much they love each other online.

I don't begrudge them that, if they truly have learned from all this and will be bigger and stronger than before then I wish them all the very best of happiness. I have since found a new life with a man who adores me, never lies about me and actually walks down the street pointing at me and yelling to passersby that this is so and so and she's my girlfriend. He makes me laugh...

Which brings me to now.

I have my good and bad days...right now I feel as though I am glad for the way things have worked out and I just want everyone to be happy. When I started this I was homicidal...there are times when I hate MM and wish he was dead...I wonder, many things...he effectively told me that he'd lied to me about getting back with his W, which of course led me to wonder what else he lied about over the years...and then I pause and the rational mean part of me says 'what did you expect? you watched him lie to his wife for two years, as if he wasn't going to do it to you.'

I walked into that one, I know, but like all women I guess I always wanted to believe that I was special, that somewhere out there was someone for me who would love me just as I was and not for what they wanted me to be...

I guess I was looking in all the wrong places.

Or maybe not...maybe this was meant to happen. Apparently W loves theatre now and they are connecting on so many levels that it's almost like she's morphed into some weird version of me. And if that's genuine and they're both happy with that, great...if not, it's really not my fucking problem.

I don't know...I still care about him and want him to be happy, though it makes me sick to even type it here. I care, but if he ever dares even breathe in my direction again I won't be held responsible for what I'll do. I think it's because those emails he sent me were carbon copied to his W...just like a good little lapdog, or maybe because he's now telling her that every moment he spent with me he was thinking of her- which is ridiculous, cause if that was the case then I would have presumed he'd have just gone home in the first place.

Ah well, I guess she has to believe it...how else is she going to take him back and have her family? It's easier to put the blame solely on me, that way they can move forward wonderfully and beautifully. And if that's what it takes, I hope it lasts, I really do.

But me, I'm done with it. They don't exist to me any longer as of this moment.

No I just need to learn to love myself again and allow myself to be loved by others. Forgiving yourself is always the hardest thing...and I struggle with it every day. Every day. This is my punishment for what I did, though I never intentionally wanted to hurt anyone. This is my cross to bear.

Judge me as you will, I couldn't give a damn.

I'm tired. I'm hurt. I'm battle-weary and emotionally exhausted. Part of me is afraid to post this in case they find it and it starts all over again. I'm trying to let go...I've been trying to live and love, but it's been hard.

But I have to post this, I have to tell someone, anyone, how it really happened. I've lived in the shadows too long...and they're all doing the 'you tried to steal him but you lost' thing now...they all think or have convinced themselves that I tried and failed. And I can tell them I was the one who left him till I'm blue in the face, they either won't believe or won't care. No one cares about us, the OW...we're just the homewreckers and the whores...we don't have feelings and hopes and dreams do we? Better to blame us, they can live in their illusions more comfortably that way.

It's a lonely place to be sometimes...people ask 'why, when you seem so much happier now, can't you let it go?' They don't get it, they don't understand the damage that has been done and the damage you have done to others. Yeah, ok, so there's worse things to have endured...but the memory stays with you and healing, I'm finding, is taking it's sweet time.

Maybe soon. Maybe now that I've written this, it can be over.

I guess here, now, in the end of this motherfucking long ass piece, I just wanted to say to those other OW out there, you are not alone. Someone knows, someone understands...someone prays for your happiness, a happiness that doesn't involve shadows and lies or a web of deceit. I hope one day you all can stand in the sunshine and have the life you deserve...and to all the wives out there, I send you love as well, because I don't care how much of a bitch anyone is or is not, no one deserves to be betrayed in such a way, and I feel sick that I have been in any way a part of such pain.

May you all find the joy that you seek.

With Love
xoxo

my heart hurts for you and what you went through, please find the happiness and peace you deserve as a human, regardless of what happened in the past. in a way, i feel as though i know you, even though i probably will never talk to you.

thankyou for sharing this with us.
x