Being the 'Other Woman' Gave Me the Validation I Needed

This story is based on an interview with the editors of The Doe.

I met John at work. At the time, I was single, and then I entered into a relationship with somebody else for about a year. That relationship fell apart after he told me that he wasn't attracted to me anymore, which was heartbreaking. At that point, I considered John a close friend. He was nine years older than me, so I sort of viewed him as more of a guiding force in my life. And he helped me through that breakup.

One night after work, a group of us went out for drinks, and John and I ended up sharing a kiss. I knew that he was in a relationship, but he didn't really talk much about her. Initially my thoughts were like, Oh, maybe they broke up. The next week, he shared with me that he and his partner were actually in an open relationship, looking to bring in a third person. He said he was attracted to me and that his partner would also be interested in me. I asked to think about it, then came back to him a couple of days later and said, “I’m flattered, but no thank you.” He was like, “No worries. We’ll just forget that kiss ever happened.”

Except a couple of weeks later, the same thing: We went out for drinks, got a little too drunk, and shared another kiss—which then spurred into this whole other conversation. I suggested we spend some time apart, because I didn’t want to come between him and his girlfriend. And he replied, “I’m really interested in you. We are interested in finding a third person, but we are also exploring the idea of dating other people separately.”

To have someone chase after me and seemingly put so much on the line to be with me was intoxicating.

I was quite flattered. This person was attracted to me and was choosing me, after I'd been through this other break-up and not feeling attractive at all. From that point, it spiraled into an affair. I say “affair” because he let me know his partner had vetoed anybody he worked with. But his attitude was “Well, what she doesn't know won’t hurt her. I'm really into you. We can do this. We’ll be sneaky.” He started coming over at least once a week, almost every Friday night. He never stayed the night because that was a rule between him and his partner.

At the time, it was thrilling. I didn't really care about the fact that he was in a relationship, because the validation I got from him meant more to me than anything else. 

It was also the height of COVID, so you couldn't really go out and do anything—you had to go to someone’s house. My mom had an autoimmune disease, and I was really worried about catching the virus. I hadn't seen either of my parents in almost six months. The city I lived in put a restriction on how far you could travel, and all of my friends lived outside of that boundary, so I couldn't even go and visit my friends. I felt really isolated from my family and friends. All I was doing was going to work and coming home. And my work situation at the time wasn’t great—I felt under-appreciated and was so worried that I was going to get fired every day. It was a dark time.

John was the person I saw the most. He was my main human contact. The fear of losing him weighed so much more heavily than it would normally because if I didn’t have him, who did I have? 

At the time we had an affair, he had a child that was maybe two or three years old. I got the sense that he never wanted to be a dad and that the pregnancy was a little bit of a shock to them. And so for him, being with me was sort of an escape. He was getting to live out this life where he got to be a young, single, child-free person. 

We broke it off after we’d been seeing each other for a year. It wasn’t a clean break. We’d agree we had to end it and we'd spend two weeks apart and then we'd hang out and he'd end up back at my house. We just kept falling back into this routine. Eventually I moved cities, and we said we’d keep in touch but then I heard nothing from him. He was always looking at my Instagram stories, even though he never posted on social media. Finally, I blocked him.

I think when we talk about affairs, people don’t often talk about the “other” person in that situation. But trying to understand where their feelings come from are just as important. I don't think anyone sets out into an affair to be malicious; you’d have to be pretty narcissistic to do that. There were many nights when I would lie awake thinking, “Who am I?” If his partner were to find out, she would be so hurt and the fact that I would be the cause of that hurt—I felt awful. But I couldn’t stop it because my feelings of validation and lust were stronger than my guilt. I’d never viewed myself as a sought-after person, so when I had someone chase after me and seemingly put so much on the line to be with me, it was intoxicating.

Having an affair is like being in a blender of emotions, all wrapped up in this weird little mix of head versus heart. Ultimately this affair was a coping mechanism, albeit not a healthy one. Yes, it might not sit right with your morals and values, and that's okay. It definitely didn’t sit with mine. I like to think of myself as a good person—I try to live my life in a way where I'm kind to everyone. But when you're just trying to keep your own head above water, sometimes that leads to hurting other people. I think that there's a grace in understanding that hurt people hurt people.