To the Other Woman

Out of respect I'm referring to you as the other woman but really you are closer in age to a teenager than a full-fledged mature woman. You're younger than my oldest daughter. When I found out, I felt sad for you. No one thinks about where they want to be in five years and says, "I'd like to take part in destroying a legacy. I'd like to break up a home." I thought your dreams should be larger, even if you didn't know that yet.

I remember how you were described to me and I thought I would never, ever want anyone to describe my daughter in those terms. Especially by someone who had to sneak around and lie in order to sleep with you. I wondered if you even understood that you deserved better.

Of course I was angry. Who wouldn't be? But that was quickly replaced with worry for you. You were so young. So impressionable. You were supposed to be out having fun with someone proud to be with you, not sneaking around hoping he would one day leave and choose you. How could this older man living with another woman raising a child together be the low standard you held for yourself? You looked so bold, so beautiful - why would you shrink yourself for a man who disrespected committed relationships? Whose main form of communication is mendacious and deceptive on the very best of days?

It took me a while to weed out the lies he told me from the truth. Too long, really, but you saw that. I knew you were hurting, that you so desperately wanted your happily ever after with him. When you're my age and have spent that many years together with children you'll understand why it can't just happen in the blink of an eye, why it had to take time. Truth be told, I'm disappointed it took as long as it did, but my critical hang up was purely logistical: finances, and I had a child to figure out how to care for. We had been paying down the mountain of debt that came with him (seriously, who mortgages their down payment?) - we had lived so lean for too many years in order to satisfy his many debt collectors and build his credit back up. We had a plan. Unfortunately, that plan was self serving to only one person and that person wasn't me. I pray that never happens to you. Never give all of your time, all of your talents and all of your money to someone who doesn't care that the cost you paid for building him up has left you completely depleted and empty. You deserve someone who never ever wants to see you struggle. You deserve to be taken care of, not stuck doing all the doing. I pray you never have to start over with absolutely nothing. Learn from my mistake.

You're married now with two small boys of your own and I still pray for you. I pray that when life comes crushing in (as it is known to do) that your husband turns toward you and not away, outside the relationship. I pray that he never walks into a place of business and decides the young girl working is a far better choice than his family at home. Because eventually you will become older and there will be someone younger. There is always going to be someone younger. And someone lonelier. And someone willing to look past the fact that you share his bed and these children and, no matter what insane story he tells, there will always be someone who desperately wants it to be the truth.

I pray that if your husband ever does become tempted, that it is by someone who knows her self worth and knows how she should be treated, and knows how women in general should be treated. Especially ones in relationships. I pray she will look him square in the eyes and say, "go back home. Figure this out with her." I pray she is nothing like you in this regard.

I pray your children will never know what it's like to be removed from the only bedroom they ever slept in, forced to make a new place their home.

I pray that your husband looks at you in wonderment and pure love for the next fifty years. And I pray you now understand that you were never meant to be the other woman. You were always meant to be the Only Woman. You were not meant to be with some cowardly older man that had to sneak around and lie in order to sleep with you. You were never meant for a beginning based on chaos and hurt and betrayals. You were meant for love. You were meant for respect. You were meant for honesty. And you were meant to have your happily ever after with someone worthy of you.

May God continue to bless you.