The Other Woman

The other day I stumbled upon a website called TOW or The Other Woman at http://gloryb.com/. I’d like to make it clear that I wasn’t actively searching for anything, rather I was Googling the title of a Nina Simone song I happen to like out of procrastination fuelled boredom (I guess it’s a generational thing that the first thing I think to do when I’m bored is Google something). Upon stumbling upon this site I was at first confused, and then naturally, curious. It was essentially a forum/advice article archive which catered to women engaged in extra-marital affairs (in which they were not the married ones). The site offered support for the other woman (referred to as TOW) and information concerning what the site refers to as MM’s (Married Men). After doing some digging I was surprised to find that the content of the site was often written in a bitter tone (specifically, an article titled “My MM is different”, in which the author explicitly states that he is, in fact, not). Being a person who is (apparently) bitter myself I naturally took a kind of disturbed liking to the site and now I just can’t get it out my head. This internet grouping of bitter women engaged in affairs which themselves know are not morally sound and yet willingly continuing to persist in (whilst, in many cases acknowledging that the MM will never leave his wife) in a way reminded me of myself. Having engaged in a triangular relationship (nothing serious mind you, nobody married was involved), I felt myself relating to these women in their acknowledgment of their own delusional persistence.

That being said, I prefer to align myself with the TOW that persist in delusion because that plainly want what they can’t (or shouldn’t, your call) have. I’ve always understood cheating to be something you get into for sex (and some sense of the forbidden). But I suppose that’s only true if you’re the person that’s cheating, rather the person that just helps the process along. In the case of these women, it seems like they got into these relationships for reasons other than just sex, and by the time they reach the point where they write (or read, even) an article for The Other Woman they’ve realized that not much else is going to come out of it.

Let’s hope the sex is good.