The Thinking Other Woman

I'm glad I stumbled onto Medium, not only as a way to make extra money, but as a way to learn. I've learned so much from other people who tell their real life stories about infidelity and heartbreak there. (Word to the wise: Number of people I've seen on there who started out as an affair and ended up happily married? TWO.)

Here lately a certain (Medium) famous couple is chronicling their latest breakup and makeup. (And I DO mean latest. These two--he's still married--have been carrying on for the past three years, and have broken up and gotten back together again so many times I can't even count 'em.)

These two make me so, so, SO glad I study astrology, because astrology helped me N-O-T grab an arm and pull and struggle to hold onto my married man. I am beginning to think that is the single worst thing you can do.

At the end of Phase I (four month limited whirlwind; divorce lawyer visit; moveout; then the Big Guilt by the fam back into the marriage, counseling, and then--of course--the Big Dump) I was so distraught, I turned to astrology. It's a good thing I didn't know much about it, or I would never have done what I did: Buy tons of computerized transit reports for the years ahead, for all three people, and then stare at them so long I realized that various ones, if spliced together in temporal order ... told a story with at least two distinct timelines and outcomes.

It was like watching an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation or Picard.


(I'm sure my latest astrology teacher would have gone into apoplexy had I ever admitted this.)


Based on one horrible storyline with a very bad outcome, I elected to turn my married man down when he sort of half-assed it back to me in October of 2017. Oh, I wanted to hang on and fight, but this storyline showed me what was going to happen if I did ... and based on tons of reading and research I had already done on codependency and relationships, I had to admit that scenario was very likely to come true. 


Although the female writer in this saga has published a piece calling me a--what was it? Oh, yeah ... "a meddling woman who does not have the decency to mind her own business and instead inserts herself into other peoples relationships for fun(sic)" because I mentioned to the male writer something about the contents of the piece she posted after their penultimate breakup (there's a reason I used that word), I have to say it:


There but for the grace of astrology and common sense go I.

Because the latest round from these two illustrates exactly the shit that's gonna happen when you Grab An Arm And Pull. 


Since I've been chastised for meddling, I'm not going to warn this person. I'm just going to sit back, grab a snack, and see if this does, in fact, go where I would bet real money it's about to go. What we are about to witness, dear reader, is what WOULD HAVE HAPPENED had I grabbed my married man's arm and fought to keep him, 

                               ... and it's going to happen for The. Very. Same. Reason.

The latest round of pieces from these two is horrifying. Blood-curdling. I wouldn't want to be this chick in another couple of months or so, for all the whiskey in Ireland. 


Why? After they broke up the last time, vowing to stay broken up, and I mentioned she'd written an angry piece about it, he bitched at her for posting about the breakup on Medium, they started talking again, and ... they got back together. This time (apparently), he told his wife he wanted a divorce, told her he was going to stop speaking to said wife except for coparenting responsibilities, and apparently there was some discussion about marriage.

Her latest piece, while lamenting the terrible guilt of having broken up a marriage (why does the spouse who refuses marriage counseling always get NONE of the blame for this???), sounds happy as a clam.


His last two pieces???   O.M.G.

Don't these people read each other's work??? Well, they would do well to.

Because while she's happy as a clam because he's doing everything she wanted him to, he's writing about how UNhappy he is, how he really didn't want to make these concessions, and his last piece recounts the events of a previously written piece with such a different tone I'm afraid he's having a major depressive episode. He's actually written that he's destroyed his life ... and she's happy as a clam! There's going to be a mushroom cloud up north anytime now.


Folks ... this is serious.


And it's exactly what our charts warned us about should I have grabbed that married man's arm.


I've written elsewhere on this site why this is.


It's because, in both cases, we have a very weak male who appears to be hideously, hideously, HIDEOUSLY codependent.


Neither of these guys seems to possess A-N-Y ability to think for himself or to prioritize his own happiness or needs at ALL.

Sadly, our society admires this, because once that ring is on and there's a baby crying in the crib, we are supposed to sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice our happiness, even if we're ready to commit ritual seppuku. Why, we're not supposed to give a flip whether our needs are met or not!

It's all about that spouse and baby!! 


Which doesn't work worth a shit, as we've seen, because this is what both my guy and her guy were doing in those marriages until we bitchy mistresses wandered in, and both guys were miserable enough to have an affair.


Because both wives refused to go the fuck to marriage counseling, and care enough about their spouses to fucking apply themselves there. 


Spend too much of your life empty and lonely and without enough of your needs met, and bad things happen, folks. If you're having an affair, you've already figured that out.


You're just ignoring what you know.


Why??


Because THIS is how each of these guys makes decisions: Basing them on his ideal of how he is supposed to be showing up in the world.

Not on whether that actually WORKS for HIM, not on whether he can actually live that way in practice considering how he's being treated, and certainly not on some stupid little thing like, oh, his own happiness.


And what is each man's ideal of how he is supposed to be showing up in the world??


A glowing picture of OTHER PEOPLE'S HAPPINESS.

And other people's happiness ONLY.

As long as family is happy, that's all that's supposed to matter. Their spouses could go all Lorena Bobbitt or something, or run over them with a truck, maybe, and they still wouldn't save themselves. They'd still be too, too worried about all the people they've disappointed and all the people their actions made unhappy.


THEY do not enter their own picture at all.

Correct me if I'm wrong: Isn't this the literal definition of codependency???

POP QUIZ, y'all! DOES THIS WORK??

                                                                       A.) Please scroll up.

When making decisions, the only thing that matters to people like this is that THEY ARE MAKING EVERYONE AROUND THEM PERFECTLY, PERFECTLY, PERFECTLY HAPPY. And that nobody, anywhere on the planet, is ever, ever unhappy because of something they did. 


But: You cannot make decisions as if this is all that matters. Relationship does not, cannot work, unless all the people in the relationship are happy.

Now, here's where we mistresses go wrong:

The guy's already told us why he's unhappy. So, of course we believe that if we supply what was missing in this poor, used and abused guy's life, he will be happy. Why? Because he got so flipped out, so crazy with pain from long-term neglect (his spouse's AND HIS OWN!), that he said this.

So of course we motherfucking believed it. But, the not-so-well informed among us fail to recognize the shark in the waters: 

THE GUY'S CODEPENDENCY.

The guy's codependency WON'T LET HIM BE HAPPY if anyone, anywhere, on the surface of the entire fucking planet is in any way put out by something he did. EVEN if they treated him like shit for years!!!

Ah, but we mistresses, ridin' to the mutherfuckin' rescue like Lady Godiva, you know, buck nekkid on that white horse, fail to see this.

EXCEPT ME.

I SAW IT.

Why?? Because I had a mother with BPD. And I read the SHIT out of books about codependency, BPD, relationship issues, you name it, for years and years before this ever happened with this guy. 

Therefore, when an expertly interpreted horoscope transit is describing codependency, I know what that is. I know what that means. And when the guy's already told me he's an adult child of an alcoholic, I know that mutherfuckin' horoscope sure called it's shot.


And when I see a dire warning a few years ahead ... 

                                   ... I know that warning is NO BULLSHIT.


HERE'S THE THING, LADIES:


It is not enough for your married man to move in with you and for you to meet his needs for love, sex, snuggling, and companionship.


What has to happen for the shit to mutherfuckin' WORK is the GUY has to feel his own way into a comfort level with what he's done.


Codependents are going to have a terrible, terrible, terrible time doing this. In fact, they may NEVER BECOME CAPABLE OF IT AT ALL.


Because they have been trained and trained and taught and taught THEIR WHOLE LIVES that they are not good enough, that they are not lovable, that they are not worthy, and that they only way they deserve to have their needs met is when they have made everyone else around them perfectly, perfectly happy and comfortable instead.


Society is never going to agree that it's acceptable to leave someone who's treating them like shit, because THEY CHEATED. The living instant someone cheats, as we all know, the cheated-on spouse gets ALL the sympathy and is held to be completely blameless, no matter how they acted in the marriage, and every and all problems are laid at the feet of the blackhearted person who cheated.


A sobbing spouse and their sobbing children are only too happy to drive this point home.

They don't care how the cheater got treated in the marriage. Who does??


And the codependent has been raised in a home where the parents never thought his feelings mattered to begin with. 


Therefore, the codependent CANNOT ACCEPT HIS OWN HAPPINESS. 

Because HE BELIEVES IT IS WRONG.


Not only that, but the living instant YOU become his primary love object, YOU become the person he MUST please. 


Which is why this guy moved in, made all these concessions ... and now he's spiraling deep, deep, deep into depression and getting ready to leave this chick YET AGAIN.


AND HE HAS NOT TOLD HER AND SHE HAS NO IDEA.

And I saw this. I saw this played out in our transits.

I KNEW IF I GRABBED AN ARM AND PULLED, THIS IS HOW IT WOULD END.

Because it takes an emotionally healthy person to factor his own happiness into any situation where the needs of a group of people in relationship to one another must all be taken into account. And any marriage, any family, is one of those situations. You cannot sacrifice one person's happiness to make everybody else happy. It does not work. If it did, there would have been no affair to begin with!


And the step that has been skipped is THAT PERSON'S HEALING FROM CODEPENDENCY AND LOW SELF-WORTH.

And WHY has it been skipped?? Because that person was busy having an affair!!! (It's easier than choosing to go back into childhood and work on what we learned there about whether we count or not.)


And I WOULD NOT ALLOW THAT TO HAPPEN, FOLKS. 


And I saw that THERE WAS NO WAY I COULD MAKE THIS PERSON HEAL.


The most important factor in a former adulterer's adjustment to being in an above-board relationship with his former affair partner is that person's comfort with the decision he's made to prioritize his own happiness even though other people aren't happy about it and they are crying that their lives are ruined. I thought my life was ruined when my AP left me. Was it true? No. It doesn't have to be true for anyone else, either. Lots of people with divorced parents are perfectly fine with it now and on good terms with all parties. 

You will never feel comfortable or make peace with anything in any way you can live with if you cannot recognize that you are a human just like everyone else and your needs are, not more important than, but AS IMPORTANT AS, your kids', your spouse's, your affair partner's, or anyone else who is making demands of or on you. And that how other people treat you is just as important as how you're treating them. You only get one life, and you don't deserve to be unhappy the whole time just because you've been taught that other people getting what they need/want from you should be the only consideration, and that your happiness and needs don't matter at all. You cannot be an okay person when your underlying assumption is that you just aren't as good or as worthy as other people.


And the only way to get there is to heal from the childhood-induced disease of codependency and low self-worth.


When that guy leaves that marriage and moves in with you, HE HAS TO BE THINKING FOR HIMSELF. He cannot be letting YOU think for him.


And I sadly recognized that all this was far more important than me getting my way and getting what I wanted. Because what I really wanted was a WHOLE PERSON, I would not have ended up happy at all! And I must say, transits far, far into the future bore this out, and I could totally see why it would happen.


If I wanted this guy to think for himself, I would just have to leave him in the marriage to experience out the consequences of ONCE MORE putting everyone else above himself even when they were treating him badly. I could not perform this crucial experiential learning for him.


So, that was what I did.


It was very painful for me, because I had literally nothing left in my life. I was all alone for eight years, and I didn't know how to be alone. I had to recognize that I was basically a narcissist, and that every dream I had ever had was unrealistic and unrealizable. I had to recognize that I am just a poor, fatm old woman, and that nothing much awaited me in life, and that my job was to accept that and learn how to be happy anyway.


It was the hardest thing I have ever done. It's been very, very painful.


But I'm at the end of it now. I've given up on this guy and accepted the life that I have. I've learned how to be okay. 


And it sure is a better outcome than the one that awaited us if I had grabbed that arm, given that married man what he said he wanted, and tried to strongarm him into making ME happy. Which I would have done, because I was afraid of the eight years I've just lived. (And with good reason. They were bad. This is an understatement.)


What's more important than anything else is that that codependent find their own mind and their own self-worth and learn that it's okay to take up for himself and it's okay to think for himself. And he needs to be capable of thinking for himself!! If not, he's choosing you because he got stuck with you, since he let other people make his mind up for him and accepted what they chose, or out of guilt feelings of responsibility for your welfare. Not a recipe for happiness.

This was more important than that dream life I wanted to have (but could only have with a whole person anyway.) Part of that is being able to actually make decisions and live with them in a way that discourages constant ongoing angst and life-destroying guilt.


If I had strongarmed him into it before he was ready ... he wouldn't have been a whole person.


And his wholeness meant more to me than him making me happy.


That is where your head needs to be. Because if a guy is dithering and dithering and dithering about leaving a marriage that's really, truly bad, there's a disorder of self-worth and the ability to think for himself in operation there. 


And you can't have a healthy partnership where one person can't think for himself.


Anyway, this torrid saga is playing out on the infidelity tab on Medium. Grab some popcorn ... you can't miss it.