Title: Notes for Conversations with Your Man's Other Woman: a True and Miserable Field Guide
Your Story: First of all, pay attention to the feeling. The one you get when you attend his show (the best he’s ever done), having texted him encouragement throughout the morning, having looked forward to it all day, and see her already there. It’s both dull and strong, hitting you right in the solar plexus. As though someone has taken a baseball bat, taken the very tip, and ground it into the indent under your ribs.
This feeling is important, even though he’s tried for months to discredit it. You’ll actually notice later, as you mentally replay the events of tonight for the millionth time, what a large percentage of your time you’ve spent trying to convince yourself the feeling wasn’t correct. He calls it “harassing him.” You call it “just being paranoid.” It will be a few weeks before he starts describing it to others as the way you started “being crazy.” But this feeling is how you know that she’s been here, with him, all day. Her purse is under his guitar case. He has driven here in her car. The sick, horrible feeling on your diaphragm tells you this, and you need to listen this time because it is correct. Pay attention to it. This feeling has always been correct.
When you approach her, do it with dignity. She is not your enemy. Not yet. You don’t know for sure the details, even though the feeling in your stomach is warning you of them. You don’t know for sure that she’s known about you this whole time.
Note: She has known about you this whole time.
It is important at this point that both of you have respect for each other. This means direct questions without name-calling. Clear answers with no sugarcoating. You’re the only ones who actually understand what the other is going through. You’re in the exact same position. So, while you don’t have to like her, you do have to approach her the way you’d like her to approach. “Hi, X. I would like to buy you a drink.”
After she agrees, and he finishes with his show, and he hugs you hello and offers you a drink, refuse. You have plans. No, he may not kiss you.
Note: You will wish, when this is over, that you’d let him kiss you one last time.
Get to the bar first. Pretend it is because you are very cool, and not because you needed the bathroom to vomit beforehand. Notice that flushing your body of all food seems to yield a new feeling that is sort of like power. This new feeling is not jumpy or panicky, like yesterday when he scooped you into his arms and said, “I love you. Just remember I love you. She is not a threat to you. You’re worried about something that isn’t happening.”
Note: This was 24 hours ago.
It is also unlike last night’s noxious, churning dread when, having calmed you, he began to chastise you again. “My roommates asked her to move in,” he said, “ And I had to say no. Because I knew it would upset you. It’s just frustrating to have to consider someone else’s feelings for something that’s not even real.”
Note: You apologized.
Further Note: You cried.
The feeling yesterday was impalpable, frustrating, all movement. This new feeling is solid, grounding. Calm. Heavy as death. Carry that with you. Hold on to it. It is the only thing that will hold you together when she tells you the truth. It is the only thing that allows you to leave all this with your head high. It feels strong. Strong feels good.
After you’ve asked her the initial question (“X, please tell me what’s going on.”) She will surprise you. “I think we both have information that will break each other’s hearts,” she says, with the clear implication that this is not her goal, “so maybe some more specific questions?”
It’s okay if you can’t hate her. He picks good people, and she is one of them. Isn’t it, in a way, a compliment to you that he only picks such cool people to ruin? Look at her outfit now. Look at her small, beautifully maintained body. Flattering that he considered you worthy to go alongside her, isn’t it? It’s okay to laugh at that thought. It’s okay if that laugh comes out cynical and toxic and wry.
It is at this point that he will enter the bar where you’re talking. She seems surprised, gives an uncomfortable, hand-over-mouth laugh. Not you, though. The feeling is too strong. It keeps you solid. You down your drink and ask for the check. You leave in full view of him, and he looks at you from his table of friends with pitiable, worried eyes. “I’m so sorry I interrupted your conversation,” he says. Savor the roughly seven-second look you give him, and don’t ignore the thought that enters your head: “This is the last look I’ll give him before it’s all over.”
Note: It is the last look you will give him before it’s all over.
At the second bar, do not buy her another drink. Two cocktails is too expensive a price to hear truth you don’t want to hear in the first place. Be wary of the way the smaller questions seem to hit you at once. Be on guard, and don’t get distracted by every gut-punching detail that you suddenly can’t seem to live without knowing.
“Had you been sleeping together when he consoled me yesterday?”
“Did he have sex with you in my house?”
Because the big ones are the ones that actually matter, the ones that are going to change things. You may not be able to accurately articulate these at the time, but the big questions are: How serious? How long? and Is it going to stop?
Note: They had been sleeping together when he consoled you yesterday. You will never get a straight answer on whether they had sex in your house.
The solid, grounded feeling, while necessary for your survival, may trick you into believing that you’re unemotional or rational. In some ways, you are. You have the presence of mind, for example, to tell her the truth: “I think I’m a pretty honest person, X. I’m unused to these strange half-truths and half-relationships. Don’t worry about breaking my heart, please. Tell me the whole thing.” But in other ways, you absolutely are not. You are unable to keep the vitriol from your mouth when she tells you she’s seen many women come and go over the years (“yeah, proud to have been part of that collection.”), or the elation from your heart when she tells you that you’re more special than they are. It is clear that, even though she does not seem malicious, she is hyper aware of your reactions. She is watching you like you’re watching her. She’s been in this game longer than you.
You will find it strange but comforting that you feel such a high level of camaraderie with her during this conversation, and such a low level of anger or suspicion. That’s the trick of the solid, grounding feeling: having supplied you with unearthly power and courageous honesty, it may trick you into thinking that she and you are not only equals, but the same. You may even feel like you're on the same team. You are not. She may say you are, and she may have even convinced herself. But you will realize as you look back on this night, this conversation, your relationship with the two of them, that she is not without an agenda. She is willing to let you get hurt. That’s why you need to make notes.
How Serious? “Why are you okay with this?” is the only way your mind can think to ask. She has explained that he’s done this several times. She’s explained that she’s known about you. “It’s not that I’m okay with it,” she says, “it’s just that…we’re family. We’ve been through so much together. I just know that I’m going to be in his life, in some way or another.”
Note: The answer to the question How serious? is very, very serious.
How Long? “I mean, we’ve been sleeping together since 20XX.” This is her hay-maker, and she knows it. She didn’t want to tell you. Her eyes are down and to the side. “Enough that I know exactly which condoms to buy.”
The ground underneath you may shake here. 20XX was the year you met him. There has never been a time in your relationship when he hasn’t been sleeping with her. For a moment you will lose hold of the grounding, heavy feeling. For what feels like 90 seconds, you may not be able to say anything except, “Okay. Okay then.” This is perfectly fine. Keep breathing. It feels like you will die, but you will not. You make it out of here alive. Breathe.
Note: The retort “of course, he makes you buy the condoms” will not occur to you until your drive home. You never had sex with him, but he probably would have asked you to buy them, too. Would you have done it?
Is it going to stop? “So…” you say, fingers gripping the booth beneath you, stomach filled with rocks, breath a deep, sick, steady drum, “you are always going to be around, aren’t you?” She frowns. “Well, no,” she says. Eyes down and to the left again, hands wringing slightly in front of her. “No. What I really want is for him to be able to love and commit to someone, and I know that that isn’t me. I don’t have any delusions of holding out hope for him to come around. But if and when he finds someone he wants to commit to, and he asks me to step back, I will go. And I will truly be happy for him. It will be like a tragic happiness for me.”
Silence from both of you then. Staring is rude, but unavoidable. Do not say what you are thinking, which is, “ew.”
The steady feeling in your stomach will alert you that something is off about her. What she says sounds like everything you’ve heard in every romantic comedy: “I want him to be happy, even if it’s not with me.” But something this time is not right. In another situation, if it wasn’t you, if your world wasn’t collapsing around you, you may have been able to articulate why. It isn’t okay that he’s been sleeping with her this whole time, knowing that she’s in love with him. It isn’t okay that she’s seen women come and go, and let him lie to her, and done nothing. It isn’t okay because now he thinks that’s how women should respond. It’s how he thinks you should respond. “Why do you put so much pressure on me?” he bellowed at you two days ago, “Why can’t you be kind and encouraging about this?” That makes sense now. The reason he expects you to be kind and encouraging as he breaks your heart in front of you is because of the precedent she’s set with all of this “I just want him to be happy” talk. She was kind and never got angry or mean when he did it to her. She’s always going to be around, being kind and quiet and waiting for the day he asks her to leave. He expects that of you, too. But he shouldn’t.
On any other day, you’d be able to say these kinds of things. You’d be able to say “that seems pretty toxic,” or “no, I don’t buy this. You knew he was lying to me and you never said anything,” or even “that is really gross.” But all you will say today is, “okay. Okay then.” There is no room for anything else in your head now except for the answer to the big question.
Note: the answer to “is it going to stop?” is no. It is never going to stop.
There is more, of course. You will be unable to stop the flood of questions from pouring out of your mouth.
“So on such-and-such a day, when I came in and found him obviously looking guilty about something, you’d just been sleeping together, right? “
“Is it your car he’s been using this whole time?”
“Have you been sleeping over every day?”
She is deeply honest with you on each. You somehow love that about her. You somehow relish hearing every single detail, each so excruciating it threatens to break you in half. You drink these details in like cool water and savor every poisonous drop. You cannot get enough. He held and consoled you 24 hours ago, having woken up next to her that morning. You’ve repeatedly sung songs he wrote about you, directly into her face. She was in the room when he called you from what you thought was a trip to meet his long-estranged father. She’d bought his ticket for that trip–to Bali, you learn, not Jakarta–and had sex with him every day. They only stopped because he got in a motorcycle accident and found it too painful to thrust. You absorb every burning, torturous answer because the feeling in your diaphragm, having enabled you to do something difficult, has made you believe that walking face-first into the most horrible parts will mean coming out on the other side of this more satisfied.
Note: The feeling in your stomach is wrong. You will never get any more satisfaction than you have now. There will always be more questions that gnaw at you, and most of them won’t ever get answered. Settling this with yourself will prove to be the most difficult part of it all.
It is both this strange, false solidarity and your sick desire to imbibe every horrific detail that makes you offer her a ride home. You are at this point more rattled than you were at the start. You can feel the ocean of panic and despair creeping at the corners of your resolve. But you cannot walk away from the bar and have it be over. When the conversation ends, your life has to change, and you’re not ready for it. Perhaps if you wait a little longer, you’ll be ready for the break. Perhaps just the car ride home.
Note: You are not giving her a car ride home. Her car is at his house, where she woke up this morning. That, it turns out, is where you’re taking her.
You will not remember how she ends the conversation, except that it is cordial. You stop in his driveway, say something that isn’t as mean as you will later wish it was, and “click” the door unlocked. She leaves, but she doesn’t go to her car. You watch her: perfect, small, muscled, lithe, and younger than you. She walks up to his door and knocks. And when it opens, you see the faintest glimpse of him—a touch of curled hair, one strong hand—guiding her into the house you’ve grown to know so well. It is only now, seeing her disappear behind his door, imagining the hands that cradled you yesterday now in her hair and on her thighs, that you feel the great CRACK in the foundation of the feeling that has held you together all night. It was enough to bring you through the conversation. It was enough to help you survive while you heard the truth. But it is not enough now to keep you from what’s about to happen, from the misery you’ve been expecting but cannot avoid.
It would be okay if you cried, but you don’t. And that’s okay, too. What you pay attention to now, in these minutes and hours after your world has ended, is important. Do not let your head swim with the lurid details you’ve learned about the two of them. Do not pay attention to the list forming in your lower intestine of all the ways she fulfills him that you do not.
Instead, think of her walking in to greet him now. Letting his hands touch her, knowing they’re touching others. Being kind and supportive when he betrays her, and even kinder and more supportive when he betrays her again. Her eyes, down and to the side, as she tells you about the “tragic happiness” of the day he will inevitably tell her that her constant self-betrayal isn’t quite good enough for him. Count the years she has been doing this, and think of the way this will happen over and over. The answer to the biggest question, after all, is no. It is never going to stop.
Listen to her voice again telling you that she knew, that she just wants him to be happy, and feel what it does to your stomach, to your breath. All of a sudden the gravity under your solar plexus is gone. In its place is a pool of molten rock, a heat and a rush of fire. It sends smoke through your lungs with every breath. There is a rhythm to it, a steady beat, an energy. You need to pay attention to it because it is correct. It is the sound of your world falling apart, yes. But it is also the sound of the message you most need to hear, the one you need to repeat to yourself in the weeks and months ahead. Listen to it. Let it melt into your bones:
”It’s not going to be me. It’s not going to be me. It’s not fucking going to be me.”
Note: it won’t be, and maybe someday you’ll thank her.
