To The Girl Who Has No Problem Being ‘The Other Woman’

I’ve never met you and yet you enter my mind more often than I prefer or would like to admit. I have no idea what you actually look like, my only frame of reference being the filtered pictures you use on your Facebook profile. I don’t have a clue what the sound of your voice is like, how you move or the shape of your body.

In the beginning I remember hearing stories about you and feeling nothing but indifference. I had no reason to believe you would ever be a part of my life or someone I would need to know about. I barely remembered your name.

But then you knowingly slept with my boyfriend so now you, and everything about you, consumes my thoughts.

I think about how I view you as less of a woman for what you have done. Women have the capacity to treat each other better than that, regardless of the circumstances of the situation. What if you had been the person to say ‘No, this is wrong.’ What if more women did that? If we can’t trust in our men we should at least be able to trust in other women.

But your choice was selfish, despicable and cowardly.

I think about how I feel bad for you. I know that you’re mentally unwell, because someone who is healthy and happy in life wouldn’t find comfort in actively destroying the lives of others. They wouldn’t willingly participate in an act that makes them lesser of a person. I feel compassion for you and your inability to form meaningful and real relationships. I feel sorry that you hold such low standards for yourself that you would want to hurt someone you don’t even know so deeply.

I think about how this experience must have made you feel. Did it give you self-worth to know that in a moment of weakness he chose you over me? Do you actually equate that action to being better than me? Does it validate you and your feelings to think that you ‘won?’ Or do you face the reality that the only reason it happened was because you were convenient?

I think about how you say you love him and can’t get over him. I think about how you really must not know what love is at all. Because if you really loved him, you would have removed yourself from his life and given him the space to be truly happy. Real love is transparent. It isn’t fueled by lies, manipulation or dishonesty. It isn’t found in infidelity. It comes from fighting for something you can’t live without.

He was never fighting for you.

I think about what it would be like to meet you. What would I say to you? What would you say to me? What if in any other situation, we could have been friends? Would you apologize? Do you even care?

But mostly I think about how I wish I didn’t have to think about you at all.