(06.06.07)

In light of the UPI news wire story on Fantasia Barrino being sued by her married boyfriend's wife, I thought I'd re-post my open letter to all the women who have played the part of "the other woman:"

So here I go ...

When I got married, I did it for love and I was convinced that it was going to last forever and ever because I married my best friend and closest confidant -- a man whom I trusted wholeheartedly and who had stood by me at one of lowest points when a lot of other people abandoned me.

And when I got married, I guess I just assumed that marriage was supposed to edify, to kill all of our primal urges, make us safe from the outside world. I was wrong.

While marriage served as an effective expectorant for my desire for anyone other than my husband, it didn't quite work the same way for him.

Over and over and over again he proved this to me. Then, as if he needed to make sure I understood, over again. And in the beginning, when I found out and he swore to me that he would never do it again, our marriage went through all the usual paces (at least I assume it was usual as it was a first for me).

There were good days for us and there were bad days but mostly it was just bad days where I would say and do things just to hurt him because I wanted him to be able to understand the pain that I felt because I believe it's not until you've been betrayed that you understand the pain of betrayal and while I never stepped outside the bounds of our matrimony, I definitely betrayed him in other ways -- doing things I knew he trusted me never to do. But eventually that wore thin because in the end, I only felt barren.

I just killed him and myself with silence because I realized that he and the girls he would betray me with got a thrill by loving on borrowed time because they were immature.

But even as I suffered in silence, I still expected him to somehow become loyal to me again but I was instead shown that he was only loyal to his needs. And as time further progressed, I just withdrew from him completely -- cutting of all communication and when I did finally speak to him, I thought that upon hearing his voice I would rant and rave or quiver and cry, as I had many times before, but while the pain was still there, it did not smother or overwhelm me. There was no catch of the history of hurtful remembrances in my voice.

I guess I just became apathetic, almost exanimate. I was tired of telling female after female, his mistresses, when they had enough nerve to demand that I didn't disrespect them, "I don't have to disrespect you because you're disrespecting yourself (by knowingly being with a married man)." Usually they were too dense or deeply enamored by husband's wily charm to fully understand the gravity of the statement I made to them.

After all, an affair (regardless of who you are in it) is a false world made up of unreal perceptions and really I am just spent.  But now as the divorce looms nearer, my anger is beginning to resurface but this time it's not so much that I'm angry at him as much as I am upset with his lovers because they play a part in the crime of an affair too -- an equal part. And I hate them for bringing hate into my world.

And it's sad how they could play such an active part in destroying another woman. In fact, sometimes I think women destroy each other more often than men are accused of destroying women.

They knew that he was married and still they were blinded by desperation and selfishness; why else would you have an affair with a married man if not for desperation and/or a complete selfish disregard for what God made holy? Isn't it said that, "What God brings together, let no man tear asunder?"

There are plenty of available men in the world, why do these women, who play the part of "the other" feel the need to be with my husband (on any other woman's husband)? What did I ever do to them to cause them to do this to me? I know what it was with him, but what is wrong with them? How did I wrong them? And how do they get off being mad at me -- confronting his wife as if I was wrong? What is the sense in that? They are perpetrators not victims. Maybe if they didn't know, they'd be victims but all of them knew, at some point of another, they knew. And even if we did have our problems, they still had no right.

Actually, I don't care -- it's just wrong.

There is no way to rationalize it. I cannot believe that anyone's moral compass is flexible enough to be able to justify being with a married -- not separated -- but a married man. It is wrong and my husband's lovers did it anyway. Several of them even had the audacity to call it "love."

So I suppose my anger is justified as the divorce approaches finally, because for me, divorce is like erasing the past and while I am, in no way, absolving my husband of his responsibility and accountability of his part in his erasing my past, I guess I just realized how equal a part the women who knew they were dealing with a married man, played (and still play) in erasing my past.

But, as the past goes, you learn from it and you move on -- taking the lessons into the future because it's like I read somewhere once and am now paraphrasing, "In life, like in driving, you don't get very far with your eyes glued to the rear view."

So, at this point, I just want things to be civil. I want it to end with a little bit of dignity, if possible. I don't want it to get ugly -- he has a child on the way to consider now (not mine). I was once devastated but I have no desire to destroy him now (like I once did). I'm not greedy, I don't want anything -- I am willing to walk away with what is fair, then we can go on with our separate lives.

As for the future, the view outside the windshield, I'm mad about that too because my husband and his lovers robbed me of that too -- he was supposed to be my future but I'm really over that because I know my future will be wonderful, I just have to finally cut off my past.