the day i met the other woman

beautiful dowtntown lawrence, winter 2001.

i'd been doing psychological battle with my then-boyfriend M for reasons aplenty: i had convinced myself he was seeing someone else. perhaps not seeing, so much as screwing. whatever. betrayal is what it is, regardless of the form it takes.

we'd been together for quite some time, and some aspects of his behavior had changed. case in point: he was a drunk. but he was very good at it. he'd go to kansas city every thursday loaded, to bowl with his old friends and drink more, then drive home drunker still, and always made it. never had any issues.

one night, he tells me he's going to J's house (the three of us knew each other because we had all worked together at one point in time) to help her change her tire. or a lightbulb. or something equally ludicrous. whatever, i think, but think twice when he doesn't come home. a day or so later, i ask him, where the hell did you go that night? and he tells me that he'd gotten entirely too drunk to drive back from her place (was within two miles of where he lived). suspicious, and one more thing to add to a list of many, and finally, i tell him what's on my mind. this was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back, or in my case, my silence.

i ask him if he's seeing J? he tells me in no uncertain terms that he is not, and how dare i accuse him of anything. which was interesting, seeing as how if i came home an hour later than expected, i was subjected to either the third degree, or a three day silent treatment. we argue, i cry. we both pout and take it out on each other and our friends. things get worse.

not long after this, it all falls apart. no worries, it's really for the best, i tell myself. inside i hurt hurt hurt. i can't entirely avoid him, we have many shared friends. like any good youthful breakup, it isn't as cleanly ended as anyone would like. we still talk. we miss each other. we still sleep together even when we're not talking to each other. i found it hard to sleep alone after so long, and yet, sleeping with him, even just beside him, was so bittersweet. it was hard to give it up, that is, could i save this? was it worth trying?

and through all of this, i still run into J here and there, and i was, frankly, a bitch to her. not catty, not angry. just very short, very cold. she was the embodiment of opposition, someone who would/could come in and take my man. she was a touchstone for my self-loathing, and a reminder of all that i wasn't. and yet, i still believed that they (M and J) hadn't been seeing each other.

my brother worked with J's roommate (a man unable to change lightbulbs, so it seems). he had a party, and bro and i were invited. while i felt ackward, i decided for some reason to go. J is of course, there, and since we're both smokers, we found ourselves time and again on the back porch together. liquor flows, and i get my nerve up, and decide to make good. i tell her, listen J: M and i had been going downhill for some time, and i thought you two were seeing each other behind my back, and if i've been rude to you i truly am sorry. i wanted to be a bigger woman than that, didn't want to make myself part of the women-fighting-over-shitty-men enterprise.

which stops our otherwise warm conversation short. she says, seeing him behind your back? and i say yes, he and i dated up until (insert here) and i finally kicked him to the curb..and she breaks down. crying. is drunk, and as such, throws herself into *my* arms to tell me that she HAD been seeing him, had been for such and such time, and now she believes he's cheating on her.

let me repeat the point here: he had been cheating on me, he had convinced me that i was foolish and hateful to think he would cheat on me, and suddenly, like a light comes on i realize i had been right in the first place.

many things went through my head at that point. they had been seeing each other while he and i had been seeing each other, and J and i had a little honest discussion, just between us girls, to figure how long he'd been playing the two of us off one another. figured it at something like six months. clever boy. i didn't have any suspicions til closer to one month before the end, and while she knew that he and i had been dating, she was under the impression it had been over a lot longer than it had.

and then there was this third girl, as well. hmm. J and i didn't see any need to discuss her, let her have him, and she and i decided to call him on his little game. which we did, literally. it was ugly, and it proved nothing and it made nothing right. but just once, we girls fought him instead of each other, and that made me proud, in way. nonetheless, i think the poor idiot J went on seeing him. myself, i actually felt self-righteous for a while, then like an idiot, as he'd convinced me to convince myself that he was flawless, and i was the paranoid jealous one.

interestingly, it was both a victory and a defeat. i won, because just then i had broken off with him, entirely. i wanted nothing more from or of him. i was finally hep to his game. a defeat in that i realized just how stupid and traitorous to myself i could be. how i let some shitheel make me doubt myself.

while this story isn't intended to be one of those "i hate men" diatribes, i think it rather clearly illustrates (at least to me) just how much our emotions can override our sensibilities. i wanted so badly to love and to be loved that i was willing to sacrifice myself to an extent to achieve it.

i've flatly refused to get that close to anyone since, because i am aware of just how malleable i am in a skilled player's hands.

i do get lonely, i do want sometimes what other people (seem to) have. i will not, however, give myself up again like i did that time. i'm not going to desert me for "us".

it was hard to be alone, at first. then hard became "different". then different became okay. and in a nutshell, i suppose, that's what healing is. you sometimes get hurt, and it makes you different. not indifferent. in my case, smarter. more able to take care of myself. braver.

i won and lost. i lost M. i gained myself. i was right, and i was very wrong. J did take my man, it seems, and i still haven't thought of an appropriate way to thank her.