Should We Have Empathy For Mistresses?
Something I need to get off my chest...
Earlier today, an opinion piece came out in a newsletter I’m part of.
The Refugee Newsletter is a newsletter made up of writers from Medium who feel as though Medium isn’t promoting their work in the ways it should. The writers have different perspectives, diverse voices, and are incredibly talented. In case you didn’t know, yes—some of your favorite writers from the platform know each other.
I’m an advocate for different points of view. I love healthy debate. Ask any one of my close girlfriends. I grew up in a household where education was highly coveted. Critical thinking was expected around the dinner table. I’m a sucker for philosophy, especially as I get older. Some of my closest friends are people who have differing opinions than I do. We’re not shy about sharing our disagreements.
There was an article written by
I want to be clear, I do not agree with the points made in the piece. Nevertheless, I think voices like TTOW need to be heard and we need to sit with perspectives that make us feel uncomfortable.
Her article made me ponder an idea though,
Should we have empathy for mistresses?
I think about my own dating life and how I’ve watched my peers date with no issues.
I’ve seen friends get in and out of relationships quickly. I’ve seen men commit to other women readily. I wonder that if in 15-20 years, if I’m still single, I won’t have as many reservations about dating someone who is already married. Is there a world where I’d get to the point of so much misery in my own loneliness, that I’d entertain men who complain about their failing marriage? I hope not.
However, I can see how some women could.
You don’t have to look far to see women on the internet talking about dating a separated man or a man who says he’ll divorce his wife. He says he has a dead bedroom and a wife who is insufferable so no wonder he’s looking elsewhere. Women are empathetic to the “good man being married to a witch,” story.
One of my takeaways from TTOW article was that she didn’t feel bad about pursuing a married man if the wife was mistreating him, was toxic, didn’t see what a catch he was, was emotionally abusive, etc. Unhappy married men were fair game and it’s on the wives for not acknowledging how much they hit the spouse lottery.
Because, make no mistake, I have no qualms about taking a guy out of a marriage who isn’t loved and who’s only being used and abused there. Treat a good man like that, and I have no sympathy for you. And I don’t believe I should have any. This guy had suffered in this marriage a good twenty years.
But if the wife had her own issues or trauma of her own, TTOW was willing to offer sympathy to her. TTOW goes on a crusade of sorts, trying to figure out what the wife’s damage is. What childhood trauma causing her poor behavior in her marriage.
Here’s the thing—
Other people’s relationships are not about you.
Over the course of my healing journey, I’ve learned this hard truth. Everyone else’s relational choices and behaviors are not about you. The woman who gets the great husband is not a reflection that you’re not as good as her. Believing you’re a better catch than who a dude already has, doesn’t give you the right to step in. That’s where TTOW and I differ. She believes intervention can be a good thing; I don’t.
There are several other points I don’t agree with, but I don’t want to put my own views on you. Again, I suggest you read the entire article.
I want to talk about the empathy part.
I have a profound empathy for people who believe their trauma has more weight than someone else’s trauma. I’ve been that person and it’s because I was hurting so much that my feelings were the center of my universe. They trumped everyone else’s. I have empathy for someone who has been hurt so badly that they’re sacrificing someone else’s well-being to be fruitful in their own. After all, that’s how narcissists are born. We should have empathy for mistresses.
They’re usually people who feel as though they’ve had to work for love in their life. They feel like they’ve had to earn love, which isn’t fair to them because they feel like they’re more loving than the people who don’t have to work for it.
It’s painful and distressing to want to be loved, but feel like you’re running out of time and options to have that need fulfilled. I think we all, as humans, can have compassion for that.
I came across this post in a Facebook group I’m part of:
“Why do women that take a married man, which kept an affair with them for years, think they won? I’m really trying to comprehend why the woman that had an affair with my future ex-husband shows him off like she won a prize? Do women that do this really get more of a kick to torture another woman? He lied, cheated and stole from both of us. How can anyone see value in a man like that?”
It’s very hard to see why someone would want to be with a man who they know is cheating. We wonder how someone would go ahead and marry a man who kept up lies in order to maintain the status quo. The reason is because the woman who is participating in the affair doesn’t see it that way. They see it how TTOW sees it. They believe the relationship their man is in, is terrible, and they’ll have a better one with them. It’s not much deeper than that.
We could go on and on all day about the psychology of why people do things that don’t align with their own code of ethics.
We can dissect cognitive dissonance, childhood trauma, attachment issues, codependency, and emotional abuse until we’re blue in the face. God knows I have. I have nearly 300 articles to prove it. Hah.
We can feel sorry for people while still holding them accountable.
I don’t think it’s a good idea to normalize infidelity or erase the stigma on affair partners. We can work to understand them, but not excuse it.
I felt the need to comment on this post because it was fed to my audience. Since my audience has come out, in large part, of my Medium blog—I have to reiterate that I’m not a supporter of cheating of any kind. Or any justification of it, ever.
Mistresses don’t need to explain themselves to the rest of us. We know they’re broken.
We are already empathetic to how they’re feeling and feel sorry for them.
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Read Melissa Alvarez’s Blog On Medium. (While you still can.)
I have to say that this is pretty fair. Fairer than I might have expected, considering the rampant terror people have of being cheated on and the utter hatred and vitriol directed at people who cheat ... because of the rampant terror people have of being cheated on!
However, a few words about this bit of the piece (considering that my own was, in fact, too long already):
"They see it how TTOW sees it. They believe the relationship their man is in, is terrible, and they’ll have a better one with them. It’s not much deeper than that."
Um, not necessarily. The fact is, it takes TWO people to make a relationship work, and one would hope a person in the throes of an affair would stop to think of that, and take the time to make some realistic projections into the future. Too many don't, but that wasn't me. It took longer than the affair lasted of observing this person's behavior to be completely clear with what I needed to see, but it did get clearer with time.
Going on a "crusade" to deeply consider other people's relationships isn't a bad thing if you believe yourself to be considering a future with someone. In fact, even if the person is free to be with you, you might do the same when observing how they interact with their parents, siblings, and friends. The reason is if you marry this person, how they are is going to significantly affect the rest of your life, as well as your divorce if you have one. Not to mention: Your kids.
How a person grew up is perhaps the single largest determinant of how their couple relationships will go. So, you bet I'm going to look at that, as well as how their previous relationships went!
You do this with an eye toward: What might I expect in the future?
What I concluded, but didn't get to in my piece, because it wasn't the point of that piece, was that this guy has some serious issues that are going to be a problem whoever he's with. He has them with his wife, his kids, and all his relatives.
It's going to take a lot more than me to wake this person up.
I feel bad for him, I really do. He's an adult child of an alcoholic, and these issues are common. He doesn't deserve them, but he came by them honestly, as we all do. Sad to say.
It's sad. He's a much worthier person than he thinks he is.
But, to somewhat misquote Scarlett's father in Gone With the Wind, If the guy came back, t'would be with great misgivings I'd say yes. I'd have to see some evidence of healthy change, and I'd be hanging back looking for and evaluating that.
We should all do that. It's called, "evaluating your future with a critical eye."
If he says he's divorcing, if he says he's separated, if he just got divorced, if he just got separated ... use your head. Look at this stuff. She who looks least, divorces most sadly.
I've run a pub about infidelity for about four years now, and I've seen all kinds of stories. Fewest among those are the ones where an affair showed someone in a truly abusive marriage they needed to get out. In those few cases, the affair was a good thing, overall, for the person who did, indeed, need to get out. In those few cases, the affair changed their lives significantly for the better (and THEN it ended painfully).
Only one of those cases is still together happily today. Not good odds, those.
In all the other cases, the lovers didn't end up together. That happens almost never. When it does, the lovers generally break up because of the very issues that drew them together.
This seems to be a very common pattern when someone really ought to get out of a bad marriage. One or several affair relationships ensue as the person struggles and thrashes about in the marriage, caught usually between someone with problems who doesn't want to change and the social ostracism they will get if they upset the kids and the fam and bail on what everyone else thought was a storybook marriage.
It happens so frequently that we ought to write about it. Because it's a THING.
Nobody thinks it's a thing, so they feel free to judge and heap criticism and condemnation on these people, many of whom actually ARE considering everyone else's feelings more than their own and agonizing over the right thing to do.
So I write about it. If you find out you're being cheated on, there's a good chance your marriage fits this mold.
You want to know something about it rather than jump to conclusions.
Prospective "other" people ... if you decide to speak to someone you see being treated in a way they don't deserve, it's possible you could spark healthy change in that person, and that's a good thing.
But it's going to take an awful lot out of *you*, which most people don't believe going in, and that's what they stand to learn the most from. Most of us don't have that much gas in the tank, even when they were raised a whole lot healthier than I was. Most of us actually worry about the wife and family more than we care what eventually happens to us ... and that's a mistake. Maybe because we don't believe it will eventually happen to us ... and that's a mistake, too.
Which is why people raised a whole lot healthier than I was leave it to heaven and the therapists and stay the fuck on out.
Some of us don't have the perspective and need to learn our life lessons through difficult experiential learning. (We tend to group in third-party relationships.)
We're the ones healthier people like to point and laugh at. Or, worse, put us down because we aren't more healed than we are. (This is where all fat-shaming comes from, by the way.)
People like to put it in terms of "whether we choose to be 'good' people or not." Because of the fundamental misconception that NO "good" person has an affair; therefore, if you had an affair, you are "NOT a good person!"
However, you actually can be a fundamentally good person and still have an affair. (GASP!! NOBODY believes that.) It's hard to read some of the stories I've read and call the writers fundamentally bad people.
Do it if you must ... but let the difficult-experiential-learning people read.
They need it.