My post yesterday prompted some interesting responses. Francesca provided a link to an article written some time ago by “Microwave Man” for The Times. Here is his article in full – some harsh words but no doubt some truth in what he says (and I think I’d better get rid of my cats ASAP):-
“Single, older women spell trouble for a man. In an extract from his new book, times2’s Microwave Man explains why.
The chances are that if a reasonably attractive woman is single by her late thirties/early forties, then it is because at some point in the past she has hitched herself to a married man. It is quite amazing just how many otherwise sane, intelligent and self-aware women fall into this trap. What’s even more amazing is that they are then capable of maintaining the most extreme self-deception for years and years on end.
(Of course, once you have the cats, you really are in trouble, caught in a Catch-22. You can’t get rid of them just because your love life picks up, but your love life is never going to pick up if you smell of cat wee. And, trust me, you will smell of cat wee.) Women who go through this process are ruined. No other man will want them because it will have reduced them to pitiful, bitter, angry, depressed, shrunken versions of the woman they once were, and could still have been. Besides, they won’t want other men: some part of them never quite lets go of the hope — the belief — that, one day, he will come back to her (and stay longer than one night and some of the next morning).
The fact that this happens to so many women surely gives the lie to all that bullshit about women being the superior, smarter, multi-tasking version of men. And the smarter the woman, the more likely she is to fall into the trap. It’s not just women’s sensitivity and innate romantic inclination that is their undoing. She believes in herself so firmly that she finds it impossible to see how any man in his right mind couldn’t fall for her.
And it’s about competition. Women, by and large, don’t have football, or darts, or video games to help them to blow off steam. As a result, they can’t just shag somebody else’s husband; they have to try to take him away from her. How many men do you know who have put their lives on hold in the hope that a married woman they are shagging will give up her hearth and home to be with them? That’s right, none. Because men, generally, have PlayStations.
Men will never do this. They don’t have the patience, or the attention span (except for video games). A woman, on the other hand, is prepared to wait it out, to lay siege. She knows it won’t happen overnight so she gets in emotional supplies, a pile of weepy movies and microwave popcorn (and perhaps a self-help book or two) and digs in on the perimeter of the chosen man’s life. She has her friends to support her, but soon they get put off by the whiff of self-pity and the endless self-deception — not to mention the tedious, one-track conversations.
The man’s not innocent, of course. He leads her on, of course; throws her scraps to feed the fantasy. He likes that when he turns up she is never up to her elbows in dirty dishes, never exhausted after a hard day and half asleep on the sofa, never in the middle of changing the bag in the Hoover or helping one of the kids with their bloody homework and never handing him the dog’s lead as he walks in. He likes that he can walk in and, if he feels like it (and he almost always does feel like it, because, let’s face it, that’s why he is there in the first place), lift her dress, pull her sexy panties to one side and do it hard and fast right there in the hallway, up against the wall, without any libido-sapping bikes or school bags or bloody dogs in his line of sight to put him off his stroke. And then, if he wants to rush away immediately afterwards, leaving her flushed and panting, to run back, wracked by guilt and self-loathing, to his wife and family, he can. He likes that too.
And she, refusing to understand or recognise the guilt and self-loathing that rises in him even faster than the sap he has just expended, likes it too, because this is what she insists — to her own ruin — on mistakenly identifying as his unrestrainedly animal passion for her. And if you are one of these women, here’s a flash that (who knows?) might even be vivid enough to shock you out of your sleep-walking state. Are you ready? Are you sitting down? Got enough biscuits? Okay, here it is: he will happily screw you but that doesn’t mean that he likes you very much. Physically, he probably doesn’t even find you that attractive (this won’t stop him wanting to shag you). He might even be embarrassed to be seen in public with you. Mentally, ditto. Personality, likewise. Well, I’m sorry, but I thought it best that you knew.
For such a man, almost the worst aspect of his fear of being found out is the moment his wife claps eyes on her non-rival — and the extreme, weird depth of his perverse extramarital excursion is exposed in all its plain-Jane entirety. Most women would breathe a sigh of relief if they could see their “competitors”, and realise they are no more a rival than a blow-up doll would be. Perhaps less.
But, actually, they wouldn’t. Like the women who are being screwed and who convince themselves that they are irresistible, the cheated-upon wives insist, perversely, on being convinced that there is something about the other woman that sets her above them, something that she has or does that makes her more attractive to their man than them. There isn’t. If there was, he would leave his wife for her. All the other woman has that the wife can never have is that she isn ’t his wife, his symbol of containment and of a closed-off, finished life. The other woman is, simply and crudely, a door left ajar, through which he almost certainly has no intention of passing. She is somebody different to shag, where the need to do so is driven not by an uncontrollably rampant libido but by a deeply located fear that This Is All There Is, the end of the line, and that the next stop can be only death.
A woman has childbirth to sustain her. This, or even the notion of this, links her, mentally and physically, to the future. The child in her mind, in her womb, at her breast, at her feet, blocks the very possibility of the one question that sets men and women apart: what’s it all for? For a man committed emotionally and intellectually to one woman, that single question starts to bang away like a drum — softly at first but gradually louder and louder.
Sex with other women, he comes to feel, is all that stands between him and the grave and the general and widely ignored futility of the human condition. Men see this futility clearer than women because their lives are more obviously futile. That’s why so many of them top themselves, for no apparent reason. For a man, an affair is, almost always, nothing to do with the woman involved. It’s not really anything to do with sex, either. It ’s about life and death. And that’s it, nothing more or less.
I do hope we’re buying this.
It’s regarded as a terribly empty and insulting platitude, but when a man utters the cliche “it meant nothing to me”, he means it, completely. Women refuse to accept this, perhaps because they can’t imagine being in that situation themselves without some form of emotional attachment, but a man is more than capable of having repeated, regular, illicit sex — risking losing the woman he loves and the family they have spawned — with someone he can, quite possibly, barely stand to be around.
And you, sitting at home waiting for the call, keeping your weekends free in case he manages to escape one Saturday like he always promises he will but never quite manages to, you should know this: that it is quite probable that he doesn’t even like you very much. I mean, would you treat a friend the way he’s treated you? What turns him on is the power he has over you, the illicit nature of the relationship and the way it has of stopping him thinking about tomorrow.
What sustains you through all those long, lonely, anxious, jealousy-riddled nights is the thought of the future you might, one day, have together. But can’t you see now how that’s never going to work? If he really cared about you, do you think he could bear to see you suffer? That’s why he always goes back to his wife. He loves her, and he couldn’t bear to see her suffer.
Your suffering, however — no problem.
He doesn’t set out to be cruel, but sooner or later he will tell her he loves her (because, after a while, it just gets embarrassing if you don’t) and, once she starts putting on the pressure, he will say almost anything to forestall the dawning of reality. He is torn because although he can see that he is becoming everything to this woman (and he, of course, has absolutely no intention of leaving his wife and family), part of him has become addicted to the snatched, sordid, heavy-breathing sex and the endless, filthy e-mails and text messages that bring him to the boil when he is sitting at his desk and should be concentrating on whatever it is someone is paying him to concentrate on. And he is attracted to the danger because it makes him feel alive.
The Other Woman is, of course, always a willing co-conspirator in her own downfall. Tough, grown-up, educated, discerning and smart in every other area of her life, she becomes a helpless, malleable, gullible dunderhead who will believe any transparent lie rather than accept that the world view she has constructed is nothing more than a fantasy, and that she, to her married man, is nothing more than a fantasy. And so on and on she drones to her friends . .
How do I know all this? How do you think? And let me take this opportunity right now to say . . . sorry, but what the hell did you expect? Men know women like this on sight. They can recognise them. At work, in bars, passing on the street, reading self-help books on the Tube and hanging around wistfully in the tumbleweed-blown sections of bookshops everywhere. The bitter aura of their disappointment clings to them like a noxious gas; the underlying fairytale that, despite all she has suffered and should have learnt from, there will be a happy ending, clanks at her feet like a rusty ball and chain. Men can smell it and hear it and they avoid them like the walking dead because there is nothing less attractive than a woman who has so utterly and obsessively surrendered herself.
What a sad sight is the Other Woman. At times (usually the times when she’s hit the Pernod and cranked up the Dido) it seems that her only friend is the cat.
And then, just the other day, as I glanced in irritation at my mobile phone, and the text message telling me that my expected Saturday morning dalliance was off, it suddenly occurred to me. I am the Other Woman.
Well, the Other Man, obviously. But it got me thinking. What is the difference between me and the popular stereotype above, and should I start reading self-help books with such titles as Why All Women Are Bastards — and How to Get One of Your Own? The first thing, I suppose, is a question of quantity over quality. I have had one or two (OK, four or five) relationships with happily married/boyfriended women (occasionally, more or less simultaneously), and I suppose the effect of this has been to dilute my emotional and/or physical reliance on any one of them. And then I haven’t exactly been moping around, polishing my nails and preening my bikini line, waiting for any of them to leave their partners.
One of the drawbacks of being the male equivalent of The Other Woman is that one doesn’t get showered with chocolates, jewellery and flowers. On the other hand, there are no empty promises sought, or given, about her leaving him once the kids are grown up. (And a heads-up for the sisters here: it should be a red light with klaxons, bells and slaps around the face for any woman whose lover claims to be staying with his wife solely for the kids. It is almost certainly rubbish and you are, as the rest of us already know, merely a bit on the side. And if it is true, then he’s not right in the head. Anyone that dependent on his children for his own happiness is heading for disillusion. Don’t go there with him.)
Love, as the great and tragically under-rated psychosexual philosopher and poet-balladeer Belinda Carlisle once observed, is a big scary animal. How very true. And it’s a big scary animal that requires constant feeding. Rather like Tiddles. If you insist on climbing into the cage with the beast, be prepared to feed it often, or it will start feeding on you. And if love doesn’t get you, Tiddles surely will. Lose the cat. And the wee-soaked litter tray.
© Jonathan Gornall 2006
Extracted from Microwave Man, to be published by Penguin on January 26 at £7.99. Available from Time Books First for £7.59 with free p&p, 0870 1608080.
saz
August 7, 2010l recently shocked myself and my friends gathered in my lounge…..
I have always abhorred the ‘mistress’ type and even have fallen out with a friend recenlty as she took up with a married man, stating she had him first in the 70’s and well al the old the relationship is over crapola…
l said out loud, without thinking obviously, that the idea of a married man might solve my singledom thirst, as l am reluctantly celibate for the first time in my adult life, l dont want a meaningful relationship for at least 3 decades (i jest) and l really do not wnat the cooking, cleaning etc for someone else EVER AGAIN.. lm done…l wont bring a man back to this flat, anytime in the near future, as that isnt fair l feel to my son….so l said perhaps l should be a mistress next time around…
I was so pounced on and rightly so…..l didnt mean it, l dont think l could do it, but they thought and realised where l was coming from….in theory l should have added it would be a solution…but for now….what?? online porn lm told is the singledom sexlife?? LOL…where to start?? ugh!!
saz x
Family Affairs
August 7, 2010Yes. Tempting as a “no strings attached” option – but it’s never like that. Always gets complicated. One or other party gets too involved. Lx
pol
February 14, 2011Dude, i generally agree. HOWEVER, I enjoy not having to put up with any domesticated stuff, and the ringed up guys are the ones who do the damn thing and leave me alone otherwise…no cooking, cleaning, goddam laundry, listen to his whining, blah blah blah. his wife can keep his ass for all I care….
GP
February 13, 2012I’m really offended by the idea that if an attractive woman is still single at age 40 it is because she has let herself be involved as the other woman to a married man. Many attractive early 40s women have NOT touched other women’s husbands. We talk about how other women’s husbands are constantly pursuing us. I had a married man pursue me for 2.5 years. I never gave him any encouragement. I deleted his emails. Returned his mail, his gifts. I stop responding at one email address and he found another to contact me through a mutual friend or work information (I don’t know how he found it). Two and a half years of steady searching for a way into my life. He didn’t understand that I preferred being single and sexless to being with him. He is a terribly HANDSOME married man with 3 children. I felt sorry for his wife and 3 children. They deserved BETTER than that. I found that I was even happier at the thought of being single. Seriously. Because I’ve been approached by MANY married men. I work and I find happiness through work, friends and extended family. I also enjoy hobbies and have plans to launch a small business from one of my hobbies. I go years without sex but I have no cats and I’m hit on by men ranging in age from 22 to 60. I’m NOT gorgeous but I take care of my body and love to wear dresses and makeup and fix my hair. I thought I would fall in love and marry but I had 3 boyfriends who all cheated on me and then I saw how married men pursued me and then I asked myself, what exactly would I get if I got married? What would I be winning? And then I stopped worrying about marriage. Seriously. I’m happy and every once in a while I do say yes to dinner dates and date chastely (I have no pressure to put out) or satisfy my lust (I do have need I just masterbate or think about other things). Life without a husband is possible. Would I marry if I found a man of good character who treated me well? Yes. Good character is tough to find. It is. My ex-boyfriends cheated on me and it hurt me. And sometimes I tried tolerating it. I was wondering if I could tolerate it in marriage which is how I found this page.
Family Affairs
February 13, 2012Thanks for your comment – very long and considered and good for you – it’s a brave step to take in many ways but I like you am finding that single life is good – especially if you’ve been betrayed in your past – it makes it difficult to trust – hopefully that person that teaches you to trust again is out there but in the meantime – ENJOY! and good for you for batting of married men L x
Scabs
October 19, 2012WHY do women let men cheat?
What women decide to accept in the 21st century in regards to our sexuality is imperative. What kind of men are we encouraging? What kind of men are we leaving behind for our daughters to inherit?
This is HUGE.
Not to sound grandiose, but I really think that what we decide to accept or not accept in our relationships shapes the kind of communities and nations we live in. what we accept at home directly translates to what we accept in our communities, schools, governments. Women are half of the worlds population, yet we, and our children, stand to lose the most when we don’t stand up for ourselves. This has been proven over and over again through history and even currently. When communities become centered around the entitlements of men (or any other singular group) equality and peace are flushed down the drain, abuse and exploitation become the norm.
Ladies, promote world peace. I will only accept a compassionate, respectful, monogamous relationship. Nothing less.
Family Affairs
October 20, 2012I COMPLETELY AGREE WITH YOU Lx
Cassandra
January 11, 2013This piece of writing is truly a good one it helps new internet viewers, who are wishing in favor of blogging.
cheating husbands and christmas gifts for mistresses
April 29, 2013Howdy would you mind stating which blog platform
you’re working with? I’m looking to start my own blog soon but I’m having a tough time deciding between BlogEngine/Wordpress/B2evolution and Drupal. The reason I ask is because your design seems different then most blogs and I’m
looking for something completely unique.
P.S Apologies for getting off-topic but I had to ask!
Family Affairs
April 29, 2013Hi thanks for asking – I’m on WordPress which is pretty easy to manage. Lx
Are you serious
May 23, 2013In this tidbit of narrsastic ego, you so eloquently reflect upon the fantasies of the mistress. Painting her as the delusional idiot willing to be used. Though I don’t disagree with you, I also feel you leave out the delusional fantasies of the man willing to fu*k her. In his fantasies there is a maden willing to subject herself to the deeming level of concubine all because of his virility and prowess. His delusional sex god status arms him with dreams of being seen by his concubine as irrestible, the one to be won and so the knight in shinning armore she had been searching for. The woman who will truely appreciate him, bowing before his godlike feet, in appreciation of his very presence on this earth. Finally a woman who knows that men want only sex, without burdening him with the other mundane things that most other women need. A woman willing to sacrifice her own needs just so she can have sex with this sex god. Oh to be appreciated for nothing other than his mere existence and his prowess in the bedroom. Yet when he finds that sex does not come with no strings attached he feels annoyed that this woman also has needs? Irritation builds as he realizes it’s not just about him. You mean to tell me I actually have to put effort into something to be seen the way I imagined it in my delusional fantasy? So actually, it’s not that the mistress is annoying, it’s that a man realizes he actually has to do more than wield his penis to be any sort of man.
And I bet you think this was written by a mistress? Nope, by a betrayed wife who sees the big picture. Because of course if I didn’t have needs other than the wielding of a penis, I’d be the perfect wife and have no need to write anything about the hurt of betrayal. Why????because if I were just the fantasy woman a man expects, I’d have no needs, no feelings and be at my spouses beck and call. There to serve his every desire and sacrificing myself to all his needs. Newsflash… You actually have to do more than just have a penis to gain respect and admiration.
I bet there are hundreds of betrayed wives that find this post refreshing. As long as it meant nothing to their spouse they can reasure themselves that he really loves her. The problem here is that your spouse only loves themselves and their entitled selfish existence. I really don’t know why women can’t figure out that if you give away the milk, they’ll always be someone there to take it. Maybe these women are tired of being responsible for policing the immature sexuality of men and surrender to the mentality, if you can’t beat um, join um. How about we hold men to a higher standard instead of excusing their sexuality as that of Neanderthals. We as humans have the ability through evolution to fly to the moon, create nuclear power, split an adom, but not progress past animalistic sexual behavior? I call bullshit!
jo
October 31, 2016yes! i concur! very refreshing indeed, also a betrayed wife.
musicaparabandas.blogspot.es
August 2, 2013Today, I went to the beachfront with my children.
I found a sea shell and gave it to my 4 year old daughter and said “You can hear the ocean if you put this to your ear.” She put the shell to her ear and screamed.
There was a hermit crab inside and it pinched her ear. She never wants to
go back! LoL I know this is completely off topic but I had to tell
someone!
Family Affairs
August 2, 2013oh no! Poor her!
jo
October 31, 2016HAHAHAHAHA i know it’s not funny but gosh that funny! lol
Jorcoly
January 2, 2017The article and the comments have taught me concepts that i was not aware of, thank you. It is a relief to know that the other woman is up for bitterness and dissapointment; that my husband is actually just looking to inflate his ego, and that I can rest assure my stability is not threatened. I know of my husband fairly new affair with someone I thought was my friend; I suffered the dissapointment, the anger and the shock that comes with being the one betrayed but I see her now as such selfish, insensitive, inmoral and desperate idiot that makes me think I never really knew her. Now i understand why her neglect for her children, her brothers never wanting to help her, her other friendships so superficial, her air of superiorty (with no real accomplishments to account for). Anyway, I am happy she is up to become a joke. On the other hand I know my husband’s insecurities and shortcomings very well. It did hurt but at the momment I am trapped. Yes, I choose to stay with him because of financial reasons, i don’t want to be stigmatized as a single older woman, i want the protection, the safety and the comfortable life I am able to have thanks to his income and resources. So I choose to sacrify my amorous life for other aspects of life that to me are more important. He doesnt deserve more anyway and, I have lived long enough to know thatfor me finding a really good man is very difficult. So at least I have found a good material life that will keep me healthy, well taken care of and with a number of choices to make myself happy. I see that i sound self centered but I can say that through the activities i am involved in I support and advocate for a sector of the community. Even though I am disappointed about people in general I just can continuing my quest for being a better person for the ones in need. The envious and bullies around me can go to hell.