A Former Side Chick Answers Our ‘Other Woman’ FAQs
If someone were to ask me if it was a good idea to fuck around with a guy who already has a girlfriend, my response would be a resounding hell no.
Men already get everything they want with a snap of their pomade-covered fingers, why make it even easier for them? But as many of you probably already know from experience, the advice we give to others is seldom the advice we follow ourselves.
Which, long story short, is how I ended up being the infamous other woman for more than a year. I know what you are all thinking and trust me, I have heard it all. How could you do that to another girl? Why demean yourself like that? You will never be in a satisfactory relationship if you are spending all your energy on an unavailable man!
But guess what? Here I am in a solid two-and-a-half-year relationship with the other guy and I am perfectly happy.
Here’s the weird part: the man who I will be moving in with in a year is the same man who I fucked around with against the advice of both friends and strangers. I am pretty open about this fact too. And why not? I love my boyfriend and neither of us are ashamed of how we got here. But I do get a lot of questions and of course a lot of judgement about it. So in the interest of satisfying the rampant curiosity of all of you women out there, here are my answers to a few FAQs that come up regarding my status as that oh so detested other woman.
Give us the back story — how did you end up hooking up with a guy who had a girlfriend?
We had actually originally dated back in freshman year but it didn’t work out (I screamed at him to never speak to me again). He didn’t listen and we kept talking for years after, we both dated other people, but eventually we started hanging out again and it started off as a kind of mutual “casual thing” that eventually became something more despite the other people involved.
Did you know he had a girlfriend?
I did, in fact I had even met her and actually liked her (she didn’t like me for obvious reasons).
How did you rationalize this to yourself?
I told myself that since I was single and he was the one with the girlfriend that it was his problem. Even I knew this was a lie at the time, but I didn’t want to end it so that’s what I told myself.
How did you not feel guilty or feel bad for the other girl?
Again, I told myself it was his problem, not mine. I think if I had let myself really think about the situation I might have felt worse, but I was so in it at that point that I didn’t want to think about any of the negatives of what we were doing.
Weren’t you ever annoyed that this guy was having his cake and eating it too? Like, what’s so special about him that he should have two girls?
I was extremely annoyed at him. One of my friends at one point said something very astute about it, she said, “he’s no prize,” and he isn’t (sorry babe). We never really had that honeymoon phase where you think the other person is perfect (freshman year doesn’t count because we barely knew each other then). From start to finish, the flaws in each of us were always pretty obvious.
How did you not get fed up with sharing your dude with someone else?
I will admit I did get fed up, we talked about ending it several times, but neither of us could ever stick to it which I guess is why it ended up the way it did.
People always say the guy will never leave his girlfriend for you — but this guy did. How did that happen?
I can’t really get into it since the reason why he ended it was over multiple problems that they were already having with each other. I don’t want to give the wrong impression that this is a common resolution to a situation like this (I have never heard of this working out before), so I guess the best answer is that I just happened to get lucky!
Now that you’re dating, how do you trust him?
It is really hard. Luckily we have pretty good communication in general and I think that is the most important thing. We are pretty open with each other if either of us is having an issue.
Don’t your worry about bad relationship karma? How would you feel if someone did the same thing to you?
I believe in karma, but not in that sense. I don’t think that either of us had bad intentions, we had no idea that it would become what it did when we started out. That is why I never felt as guilty as I might have, I knew from the beginning that if he and his girlfriend were solid then what we were doing would have gone in a totally different direction. And if someone cheated on me I would know we weren’t solid and that our relationship wasn’t what it should be. I would end it because I think that when someone cheats, they are looking for something they aren’t getting from the other person.
Have you ever cheated on someone? Would you?
I have cheated before for just that reason, I was looking for something that I wasn’t getting.
How can girls make sure their boo doesn’t cheat? Do you have any insight into this?
I don’t know if I necessarily have any more insight into this than any other girl, but I would say that communication is key. Tell him if you are having an issue, make sure you are hearing him when he tries to talk to you and if your gut is telling you something, listen to it. If you feel like something is off, usually that means something is.
How did he keep it a secret from his GF?
It was super in depth! I was in his phone under a different name, I wasn’t “allowed” to post about him on social media at all. Even if I didn’t mention his name, if it was just a vague rant on my personal blog, he was like, “someone could see it!” He would like some of my pictures on Instagram and then instantly unlike them after I had seen the like.
Also, I personally love leaving marks during sex. A scratched up back turns me on and I couldn’t do that. I did it once and he says he went home and freaked out because he was like, “Fuck, I have a girlfriend, how do I hide this?” What’s weird is that all of his friends and all of my friends actually knew about it and didn’t really care, so we were pretty much just hiding from her and her friends.
If she found out, did she ever confront you about it?
She never found out. We had met once before she started dating him, and then she started dating him and blocked me on social media. When he did finally break up with her she Skyped me, obviously completely freaked out. It was all very dramatic.
What did she say to you?
More or less what you would expect: “WTF? I will kill both of you! Leave him alone! He’s my boyfriend!”
I made the badly advised decision to respond with, “Well technically, he’s my boyfriend now, not yours.” She did not take that well and I pretty much hung up after that and made sure not to respond to her again. I was very surprised that she decided to Skype me, I probably wouldn’t have done that. When I told him about it, I asked him how it felt to have two gorgeous women fighting over him and all he said was “It’s terrible.” I don’t think either of us were prepared for the reality of it.
