The Other Woman

The Other Woman

This is a blog post that feels a little difficult to write, but I think that’s why it’s important for me to write it. This is the story of how I become the other woman.

I find myself irritated on a daily bases when I see memes about how girls are stealing other girls boyfriends, and while that may well be the truth in some cases, when it comes to my experience it certainly wasn’t anything like that.

I was minding my own business parking in car park I always use in the town over from mine, and I saw a boy I had known a long time ago walking across the car park, I waved, he gave me a confused look, and I carried on about my business. Later that day, I found myself thinking about him, truth be told he was a crush of mine at school. I had been a lot bigger then and he had been really nice to me, and I always had a soft spot for him. We were friends on facebook already so I had a little look at his profile, no mention of a girlfriend, no pictures either (don’t act like we don’t all do these checks).

So I took the plunge I sent him a message, just saying hi and that I thought I’d seen him earlier on. He was quick to respond and it went from there, conversation flowed easily, both of us saying how nice it’d be to catch up. A week or so later we met up for a drink in town; we still lived near one another. It was so relaxed and easy, we talked about all the bits from school to now, my job, him graduating university. Not once was there the slightest indication that he had a girlfriend, and that would have been the time to say something. We went for lunch together and he dropped me home, with a hug and a kiss goodbye.

We quickly arranged another date for the week later; speaking all the time in between, it seemed so easy, so perfect. I felt like I’d found someone I had lots in common with. The second date was lovely, and we were still at a stage where could tell me he had a girlfriend – nothing had happened yet that made us more than friends. But during the walk home, we had our first proper kiss and he’d made the decision to cheat there and then, there was no way for me to know what he’d begun.

We started seeing each other, and it was his birthday a couple of weeks later and he’d already made a lot of plans that weekend, which I wasn’t overly concerned about. I baked him his favourite cake, we got a lot closer... and he did his weekend of birthday stuff. He barely messaged me but I pretended I was laid back, trusting he was with his friends having a good time. When in honesty I spent that whole weekend worrying he didn’t like me anymore. Little did I know what was actually happening...

The Monday after that weekend he come round and met my parents for the first time. Some things happened, but we still hadn’t had sex, I had wanted to wait so it could be special. How stupid that seems now. That night I had a look on facebook to see who he’d spent the weekend with, and a girl’s name popped up with a picture of them together, he had a lot of female friends so I didn’t think much of it. Until I went on her instagram and she had tagged the picture with this tag #boyfriend. I spent a sleepless night thinking about this. I messaged him the next day asking for an explanation and he called me talk about it. I asked him outright if he had a girlfriend and he told me no. We met up for coffee the next day. He told me a whole story about what had happened between him and this girl and that he was letting her say she was still with him for the benefit of her horrible uni housemates, who would give her shit otherwise.

Now I understand a lot of people would have immediately decided this was a lot of bull shit, but he was known as a ‘nice’ guy everyone we knew in common thought so. Everyone thinks he’s a nice guy and he could have just ignored me so I made the decision to believe him. Because it was believe him or break up and I didn’t want that. I remember telling him that if he was lying I would look like an idiot. And I really, really did.

The next few weeks passed without incident, we had sex for the first time, it was all going well. Because of my job there were a lot of weekends I’d by flying for at least a day so I wouldn’t know if he was replying to my messages quickly or where he was. But I didn’t think I needed to know. I trusted him. This was until I looked at her instagram again, there was picture of them together at her graduation and I lost it a little bit. I messaged him and called him and again he explained the situation away, but I think deep down, I knew he was lying. He was on a trip for his job and he got back at the weekend. During that last week, the girlfriend tried to follow me on instagram and I questioned him about this more than once.

I saw him that Saturday, and cooked him dinner, he stayed at mine, and it was in fact a lovely evening. He had told me his ex (or as we now know girlfriend) wanted to have a talk so I asked what he intended to say to her. He told me he wasn’t going to get back together with her. The next couple of days we didn’t speak as much but we still messaged.

Then it happened, I had known he was going on holiday at the end of that week, he told me he was going with my friend. But as I looked at her twitter and she tweeted about how excited she was for her holiday, that Italian flag emoji taunting me, I knew that my doubts were well founded. I called him, I messaged her. He met me for a coffee and continued to lie to me, told me how sad he was about breaking up but he had to get back together with her and give it another go.

I was honestly devastated, he seemed to be so upset about the whole thing, and I truly believed he was as upset as me. His girlfriend didn’t believe me, and he then told her I was a liar, that I did this kind of thing all the time and that I couldn’t be trusted.

It was so horrible, to break up was hard enough, but to be lied about, for someone to act as though I hadn’t existed was worse than I could have imagined.  It was a tough few days and weeks. His girlfriend refused to believe me and I sent her lots of proof that it was the truth. Deep down I think she knows I wasn’t lying and that he was, but she just wanted me to go away. Because if I was gone, she could pretend it had never happened at all. And honestly I do understand that.

They’re still together, they went on their holiday and I got left to deal with it all on my own.

So that’s the story of how I become the other woman. But as you can tell, it wasn’t a case of my stealing someone else’s boyfriend. I was just a girl who liked a boy, who appeared to be single and starting dating him.

The other women are not the problem, whether we know about you the girlfriend or we don’t, it isn’t about us. It’s about the fact the man you are dedicating time to and loving would cheat on you. Emotionally and physically he chooses to betray you, and so often you leave the blame at our door. But they chose to hurt you, and you have chosen to let them.

The last thing I ever wanted to be was the girl who could destroy another’s confidence, and a man made me that girl. It has made me jaded and untrusting for now, but as time goes by, I move on more and more and realise that I’m the lucky one. I know that I’ll find someone better, because I’m not sure I could find anyone worse.

Writing this has been cathartic, and I hope if anyone who has been cheated on this has given some insight into the other side of the story.

Yours,

Ciara xxxxxxxxx