The Other Woman

Well I guess it was certainly too good to be true. We thought we’d gotten past all the roller coaster. But BQ reared her ugly head again and have set a bad course for my husband’s daughter, Em, my step daughter. Somehow BQ has managed to completely turn Em against my husband accusing him of abandonment, improverishment of her mother and more. It’s quite sad really. BQ has said out loud that my husband does not pay or support their after school activities, all the while returning his checks un-cashed. I guess that’s her way of proving a point? Third party professionals have observed that this is one of the worse cases of parental alienation using the child as a pawn in all of this. So very sad.

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Em hasn’t talked to my husband since x’mas. According to BQ it’s because she feels like my husband treats her second fiddle to the her sister. But read her text messages again. They don’t say that. They say something completely different. Is there a child psychologist in the house.

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When my husband and his ex were divorcing, BQ a self-proclaimed atheist suddenly found religion and became an avid Catholic. What was previously scorned and mocked by her became all consuming for her and a requirement that her children take part as well via classes and involvement with the church.

The question I have though is whether her new found religiousness came about as a consequence of a major life change brought on by the prospect of divorce that served to immediately nullify all atheist believes or whether she was merely using religion, in this case Catholicism, as a means to demonstrating her “cause” and to further elucidate the wrongful behavior of her now ex-husband and to have the justification to condemn him to “eternal damnation”. Frankly, having interacted with her over the past few years, I have the sneaking suspicion that it’s the latter.

While it has been suggested that Christianity and God Almighty defines what is rightful and wrongful behavior, and while I myself embrace Christianity and the teachings of Jesus Christ, the most powerful prophet of all time, I do not condone it when others hide behind the cloak of religion to their own end benefit.

The irony is that with Christianity forgiveness and eternal redemption is the end goal – and is in fact the goal of most major global religions, including Buddhism. And, the important religious and secular concept of forgiveness works for many people injured by others. Holding anger towards others is just not good for any person’s religious, psychological, emotional or even physical health. This applies equally to all Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, and atheists.

So with that in mind, years later, what has BQ learned from her religious edification? That vindictiveness and spitefulness reigns the day? That there is no such thing as forgiveness where her ex-husband is concerned, and therefore, forgiveness is not available to all but to a select few only?

It is natural for humanity to pursue the opposite of forgiveness and mercy towards others. Holding grudges, pursuing revenge, retaliating incessantly, and living in the past are universally popular activities. Many religions note that mercy and forgiveness are essentially Divine attributes thus they are not possible between humans.

So to that end, I suppose BQ can never achieve what is humanly impossible, no matter what her religion tries to teach her.

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I realized during this past week that perhaps I have turned into that hard-ass woman that I’ve despised all my life. As I’ve gotten older and more focused on my career, I have lost some of that softer edge that I used to have while growing up. While I profess to want to have children, I don’t want to have them at the expense of my career, nor do I want them to ever intrude on my hard earned independence. And dammit, they had better be perfect in all aspects. The rude awakening I had is that my husband fears that I will not care for our children, should we be lucky enough to have them, in the nurturing motherly way that they deserve. And that is indeed a rude awakening because I certainly don’t want to be thought as non-mother material. I resolve to balance by softer and harder edges, to have more compassion and to let that little tender softy in me emerge this year – I know it’s still in there somewhere. And, I hope that we will be blessed some day soon (this year??) with the pitter patter of little feet (whether of our own making or through adoption). I can’t wait.

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Recently my mother-in-laws sister was in town. As I zoned in and out of listening to conversations, I learned that mum-in-law’s sister had a bitter divorce when she was younger and counsels other woman to handle it maturely as she did. My husband’s ex had in fact called her when they were going through their divorce to admonish him to his relatives and demonstrate how unscrupulous he was. The lesson learned for us all was to ensure that we all have our pride and self-respect at the end of the day. However, this past week, we spent the new year holiday’s with the sister’s now-adult children only to learn that perhaps good old mum-in-law’s sister did not behave as the mature adult as we’d been lead to believe. In fact her children seemed very disenchanted with their mother, going so far as to claim that one or two have become estranged from her and that their relationship is now just a cordial one; that they are now firmly ‘entrenched in their father’s camp’ and had been lead to believe terrible untruths about their father. While my husband hopes that Em will one day learn the truth, he did say that he did not wish for his children to become estranged from their mother. Bravo to him for taking the high road!

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name: Sarah
topic: I love my married man. Why won’t he stay with me? He is MUCH BETTER than my husband. Does anyone else feel like this?

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I may have shared previously that my husband’s ex (known as BQ) is…well…insane. But that’s beside the point. The real tragedy here is that BQ has transferring her issues and psychoses to her daughter, my step daughter, who is twelve years old and a semingly normal girl on the surface. But Em has had issues and breakdowns over the past 2 to 3 years where she accuses her father of numerous things stemming from her belief that he abandoned her, her sister, and her mother. While we’ve tried talking her through her concerns and also sought counseling, more recently Em has reached the apex of sharing her mother’s psychoses. We feel troubled and helpless at this point because each time we feel we’ve made positive progress with her, she has another meltdown. And always around holidays and birthdays. To give you an idea, below is a series of text messages to her father this Christmas Eve. These messages came out of the blue because things had been relatively normal for the months leading up to receiving these. We can only attribute the initiation of these messages as a result of her mother and her sister being together for the holidays. Typically all hell breaks loose when these two women are together because the girls (Ce is 14) are exposed to an inordinate amount of negativity that involves rehashings of all past events in minute detail . Why can’t women let go and go on with their lives? Why must they wallow in helplessness and self righteousness?

Text messages received on Christmas Eve. What should we do?
- dad i love u i didnt mean it but i dont want to go on the vacation. i love u.
- dad. just pay mom or leave her alone u got 3 cars while she has an old one that can break down at any minute. we downsized houses a lot and u got another million dollar house. u made mom call jin li whenever shr has to go to the docter. u loved her for 20 years and this is sick. please just let my mom live without her having to worry if we’ll be in new jersey tomorrow. love u.
- how come ur not paying for us to stay in our home.i know whats goiing on. ur killing mom. jin li is especially killing mom. i have no desire to go on vacation with u. ur evil. this isnt u and i dont believe this is. but ur going to kill her and i will never forgive u.
- u kno2w exactly what ur doing to mom and ur eventually going to kill her. u dont even write ur own emails u sued her five times.
- answer me dad. why are u killing my mom.

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From time to time, by following the sexual and emotional escapades of married celebrities, we are reminded of how common and frequent extra-marital affairs are. So much so that latest statistics indicate that in this country 45-55% of all married women and 50-60% of all married men had an affair while in a committed primary relationship (Atwood & Schwartz, 2002.) If we consider unlikely for all cheating people to be married to one another, then we can infer that cheating affects approximately 80% of all marriages in the U.S.! Additionally, recent trends indicate that, under the age of 40, women’s rates of affairs are getting very close to men’s, closing the gender gap.

This is a departure from a more traditional profile of the cheater as typically male, middle age, sex-starved, looking for excitement and adventure and needing to be made to feel young and attractive again, preferably by a much younger woman than his marital partner. Not that this profile does not exist any more, but it does neither exhaustively describe nor explain why people cheat in a society where sexual mores have become more relaxed and open, and where women are as likely as men to act out their emotional and sexual fantasies .

Other changes in patterns of affairs have to do with the way in which today people connect with one another. The increasing use of the Internet as a social network creates a whole new set of opportunities, and threats. The fact that about 35% of all divorce litigations cite internet affairs as the cause of them attests to the widespread use of the Internet for this purpose. People get in touch with one another after years of disconnection, or they anonymously connect with others in ways that create new virtual networks. About 70% of the time people spend on line is allegedly used to visit “chat rooms” or sending/receiving e-mails. The vast majority of interactions in chat rooms are of a romantic nature (Adamse & Motta, 2000.) Because all this was unheard of just a decade ago, we are just beginning to grasp its importance and its effects on intimacy and love.

One of the astonishing differences between romance and sex in cyberspace and in real time is that more than half of all men and women who engage in cyberspace romance and sex believe what they do is not adultery. I believe this contributes to lowering the threshold between thinking and wishing to have an affair on the one hand, and carrying it out on the other. This belief, in fact, by lowering one’s inhibitions and reducing guilt, increases acting out emotionally and sexually.

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This is an excerpt taken from Laurie Pawlik-Kienlen:

Reasons for Extramarital Affairs

* Inability to cope with cultural or ethnic differences.
* Disappointment that one partner hasn’t grown in the same ways.
* Unrealistic expectations about marriage.
* Sexual curiosity.
* Lost sense of fun and excitement in the marriage.
* Sexual addiction.
* Inability to accommodate a partner’s needs, interests or expectations.
* Inability to communicate one’s own interests, needs or desires.
* Boredom with the marriage, work, life, the relationship, or the routine.
* Lack of verbal skills or motivation to solve marriage problems together.

Do Men and Women Have Different Reasons for Extramarital Affairs?

Women may look for more emotional involvement when they’re involved in marital infidelity. Emotional cheating may be more likely for women. “Men and women often seek different things when they become involved in extramarital activity,” writes Dr Lusterman in Infidelity: A Survival Guide. “…women are more likely to link sex with love, while men’s involvements are more often primarily sexual.” Why men cheat may involve more physical reasons (not emotional cheating).

Dr Lusterman points out that this isn’t true for all men and women. In other words, not all women are looking for emotional attachments as part of their reason for extramarital affairs. Similarly, not all men are looking to satisfy a physical need as part of their reasons for extramarital affairs.

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I am amazed that the 2010 calendar for the kids was approved without all hell breaking loose. Very unlike last year when interventions from the children’s legal representative had to take place and hours upon hours were wasted nuancing the time that my husband could have with his own children down to the minute. Bravo boys and girls!

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