Hither the frontier – how to befriend your husband´s mistress

According to the results of the Myer-Briggs personality test, I am a logistician with a strong analytical sense, fine sense of observation and pragmatism. That's why, for me, 2 with 2 always equals 4. Things are very linear for me. I don't stop to think about too many variables when I already have certain constants to guide me. For me, the enemy is the enemy, the friend is a friend, sex is sex and love is what it should be. I am a girl with an ancient, old-fashioned heart, who is guided by customs and traditions as old as time, at times I may seem rigoristic, but I´m not. I know that white is white and black is black. Shades of gray are almost unknown to me.

That's why, when I got married, I knew exactly what the role of the wife in a marriage was supposed to be, and that of the man´s, as well. For me, things had been well defined beforehand, to be sure we would not have further discussions on the matter. I knew that a wife took care of her husband, almost giving her life for him, so that he would take care of her, be in love with her, have eyes only for her. In my vision, perhaps too one-sided at the time, I knew that the woman was solely responsible for the man's fidelity or digressions. After all, it is only her fault that the man wanders and searches under other women´s skirts; Not because maybe he might have a big problem, no! The problem always lies with her, I told myself with unshakable conviction, it was always solely the woman´s fault, if there was trouble in Paradise.

In this context, I experienced and endured a marriage with a psycho-emotionally ill man as a result of which I suffered five forms of abuse: emotional, physical, ethnic, religious and financial. After much struggle that lasted two and a half years, I separated from my husband, leaving the kingdom of my pharaoh of the twisted heart and returned home, crossing the sea as if on dry land.

As a result of the traumas I suffered, I enrolled in a strong rehabilitation program. I pulled hard to get back up on my feet, whose boots had been stricken by the very man I was living with, to make sure I wouldn't get up.

For you to understand my character of that time a little, I should describe here some things that I was capable of when I lived in the marital household. I not only loved my husband, but I adored him, I glorified him; I fulfilled all of his desires, convinced that, having everything at home and lacking nothing, he would never feel the need to go astray. I was obedient, compliant, submissive and I deified him. My degree of fidelity had reached maximum levels. If I had even a few temptations in mind with a man, I would immediately go and confess to him, as to my own confessor and spiritual director (guiding priest), my unintentional mistakes.

It happened that, one night, I dreamed that I was kissing an old classmate whom I had once, so very long ago, during my high-school years, a crush on. I woke up so troubled and exhausted by that intense dream that felt more like a nightmare to me, feeling, as usual, so guilty – the guilt becoming for me a second skin layer I could no longer get rid of – that I ran into my ex-husband's arms and confessed to him, repentant and frightened, what I had done in my nocturnal vision.

This time I will overlook the reason why, most likely, I had such dreams that haunted me, because I had already been married for almost two years and my husband constantly and stubbornly refused to fulfill his marital duties towards me. Not to mention the fact that it took him days to want to consummate our marriage. So, the shortcomings were great and wide, and I consented, because, I thought, if my husband didn´t want me in bed, if he didn´t want me bodily, he most certainly did it for a specific purpose, a holy one, as pure as his heart, undefiled and full of virtues. I had a husband with a conduct worthy of taking as an example. I, on the other hand, was for him a monster hungry for sex, a whore.

I had never imagined the scene of cheating on my man. I didn´t need to. My former husband was the embodiment of all my ideals, an exemplary man, straight out of romance novels. Where could a woman like me, who wasn´t even looked at, find such a husband like him, so his words. You are too lucky to have me, he used to say to me.

Greatly was my amazement when I heard of other women who complained of being cheated on by their husbands. And I crossed myself so many times, knocking on wood, saying “something like that will never happen to me, because I know well what my husband needs”. But what did I need? Have I ever wondered about that, about my own needs and wishes?

In the second year of my marriage, I received a court summons on the grounds that my ex-husband had been accused of sexual harassment at his workplace, from which he had been extraordinarily expelled. And our marriage, which wasn't built on a healthy foundation anyway, went down the slide. It was already in free fall.

It was only a matter of time before I opened my eyes to the fact that, indeed, he was leading a duplicitous life, parallel to mine. I remained the same faithful servant at home. Out of duty and fidelity to him and our oaths before God´s altar, I neglected my own promises I had made to myself (should he ever cheat on me with another woman or other women, I would leave him immediately). I forgave him once, twice, several times. And I stayed. Faithful. Fair. Always a good and obedient housewife, so forgiving and welcoming.

On New Year's Day, when I was randomly playing with his mobile phone – locked, by the way – I typed, without even realizing it, the combination of digits that encoded his phone and the screen immediately introduced me to the main window of the WhatsApp application, where a conversation was taking place between him and a woman. Hearing him come back from the bathroom, I memorized the phone number of the lady he was chatting with, instantly blocking his phone and putting it down. I dodged to the bathroom, where I added the memorized phone number into my phone book and then went about my business.

It took me a superhuman strength not to faint or wallow in pain reading the conversation of the two perpetrators. And God gave it to me, especially for what was about to happen next. The coming day, at work, during my lunch break, I texted that woman with whom my husband was cuckolding me, introducing myself in a very elegant and respectful way, asking her to allow me to have a very open and honest discussion with her.

Her answer came to me later in the afternoon – just as I thought I would not receive any of the kind – and so, one evening, I sat with her on the phone talking until late, finding out all about my husband's shenanigans. This woman who, according to the definition of an extra-marital affair, was my enemy and had to be hated in the true sense of the word, because she represented a threat to my marital relationship, did nothing but inspire in me pity and compassion for her, for myself and for all the women led by the nose by the man with whom I supposedly had to be one body and one soul.

How painful it is to listen to the cries of the mistress whining on the phone, yet much more painful to have to comfort her, to advise her what to do and how to do it, to protect herself... from the one man, who should be your team mate, not your enemy! The victim was consoling her co-cheater. And so we became good friends. Thanks to her, I was able to gather plausible proof for my divorce. She provided me with all the information I needed, plus evidence.

If I had not suffered from jealousy before, during my marriage I experienced jealousy of other women as I had never known it before. My jealousy had reached such a paroxysm that I had become downright paranoid. Of course, you will tell me, it was my right as a wife to be jealous. And I absolutely agree with you! I think a good dose of jealousy is always healthy in any couple, otherwise indifference sets in. A playful jealousy that does not aim at hurting both spouses´ pride stimulates the relationship, and can revive it. However, my jealousy had become almost a silent illness that I did not manifest through the usual hysterics and tantrums. I only suffered in silence like a dog, day and night. This is how I ended up with exhaustion, chronic insomnia and a state of perpetual alertness, from which I hardly recovered. Actually, I am still recovering from much of it even now.

The buttons had already been set and I only had to play according to the same harmonica, lest he would leave me, abandon me, lest I be unloved, left all to myself, even though I truly was not loved by him; lest I would become that horrible type of woman, who is a shrew and a harpy, despised and constantly avoided by all men, even though, really, I was already despised and avoided by the only man in my sphere.

The suffering of the victim of a love affair is terrible, you can't even describe the helplessness you experience, seeing that you no longer represent anything for the one who represents the whole world for you. You feel as if the ground is crumbling from under your feet. It´s then you see too well that your foundation is shaky and the marriage was built on a sand dune, not on solid rock.

Jealousy is, in my opinion, uglier than the devil, more horrible than death itself, it's like the flames of hell that consume your bones and your limbs. The mind no longer finds peace, the heart stops beating, exchanging places with a restless mind, building and demolishing scenarios, because a logistician must necessarily know where exactly the short circuit occurred, the reason why it occurred and what the remedy would be. A total shutdown? Or only parts of the problem must be addressed? A logistician does not give up, until he has found the solution to his matrix problem.

Well, here's what I discovered: my jealousy has always been there, like the cancer cell that we all have in our bodies but which, in most of us, never develops into the actual disease, instead remains at the level of a tiny cell, nothing more. The moment that cell was fed, it enlarged, expanding to my entire emotional skeleton, like the tentacles of an octopus.

My jealousy started from a strong feeling of inadequacy and distrust in myself and in the people around me. When my feeling of distrust (“I'm a good-for-nothing”, “I can't cope”, “I can't be loved”, “I'm not able”, “I'm not seen, liked, wanted, desired”... “I'm nothing”..., etc.) found a safe haven in me – I was the most vulnerable at the time, because thus many childhood memories resurfaced and I was triggered just like in the past – my jealousy found the breach through which it penetrated my fortress, destroying it from the inside.

Jealousy kills everything, without sparing anyone. It destroys not only the one you live with, but you are its first target. You are so caught in its trap, in its nets, that you end up thinking you are the one weaving it, but it is just a pure illusion, meant to feed more and more this treacherous feeling. Because that's what jealousy is based on, on movies, imagination, immaterialized thoughts. Jealousy is the Fata Morgana that every traveler, who is capable of loving, will encounter in the wilderness of his heart. She's a whore and a lady, a demon and an angel. It's all or nothing. It sells your soul, eats at your heart, stuffs your head with nonsense, plays tricks on you, spins you around and twists you so much that you lose direction for good. You don´t even know what´s real anymore and what´s not. Alas, it's a very dangerous sarabande!

Jealousy brought me to the point where I wanted, for my adored husband, to hire a woman from the red light district of prostitutes near the city we lived at the time. Just to finally see my husband satisfied and happy, and for me to have some peace of mind that he would want me, he would only look at me; only at me and not at other women. Do you see the absurdity of the mind infested with jealousy aberrating in this manner?

Unless eradicated from the bud, jealousy grows exponentially and you will no longer overcome it. It swallows or suffocates you, and you die. Terrible is the death of the jealous man! I also meditated upon such a death, perhaps the only one I didn't want at that time. All the other options of dying seemed more than interesting and welcome, so I could finally be rid of the pain I felt in my heart that had been ripped out from me, so I could end the suffering of a soul that loved too much and was not loved in return.

The moment I realized I was aberrant, devising all sorts of tricks just to beat a dead horse – my marriage – I knelt down, begging God to save me. Interestingly, the jealous man really knows that he is the first one that needs saving, unlike the one who causes jealousy in their partners. Then, with a last effort, I entrusted my ex-husband to God, praying: “Lord, you created him, he is not mine, he does not belong to me. He is Yours and You do what you want with him. I return Him to You, for I received Him as a gift from You. Give him back to me, but only if You think I ought to have him”. And that was my daily prayer until I managed to get out of my toxic and abusive relationship, when I left the marital home altogether and returned to my homeland.

So far I have wanted to expose the things from the perspective of the faithful, jealous wife, a victim of love scams. For those who have the patience to read on, in the second part of my story I will describe another perspective that God allowed me to experiment, for my inner growth, for my self-discovery and for my own humiliation.

Beyond the frontier – how to become a good mistress

From here on I won´t talk about the cheater, for, in my case – a more special situation, because I was married to a pathologically ill man – the same patterns do not always apply as in the case of a healthy person, whose will is untouched and functions at normal parameters. Instead, I will speak from the perspective of the co-cheater, not that of the victim´s.

Sometime after my actual separation from my former marital partner, being in the process of self-recovery, I prayed to the Lord – in all sincerity – for three very important things for me: 1. To make a true friend; 2. To finally meet my one true love, and 3. To have, before my death and the passing to the eternal world, an orgasm (I had never experienced one in the marital bed. Moreover, I had come out of my marriage with strong wounds in this regard and I was not only scared, but downright terrified by the physical proximity to a man).

Less than two weeks after reciting the above-mentioned prayer, I had a dream that I will remember for a long time to come, especially because it had many connotations that came to pass in my life.

I dreamed that I was married to a mentally and physically ill boy, who was limping. In my dream, my father was somewhere behind me but I just could not see his face. I cried and complained, reprimanding my own father for having forced me to marry such a man who, not only did not make me happy, but also tormented me. My father did not respond to my cries. In the blink of an eye, I then found myself in the hall of a large courtroom, where numerous men, dressed up to the nine, were studying my marriage case submitted to the court.

The fuss and noise were interrupted by the appearance of four very tall, well-built, half-naked individuals, clothed only in a kind of apron or cloth that covered their thighs and groin, and with raven-black waist-long hair. In their hair they were wearing colored feathers from different winged creatures, eagles, hawks, etc. I recognized in them the ideal of the Amerindian tribal man that I had read about in my life and that had fascinated me more than any other model of man, for the simple fact that he was the type of man linked to his customs, to nature and to the god he worshipped, being monotheistic, and his manifested love was wild, unpolished, pure in its essence, stripped, like these peoples, of all the gimmicks of society, which the Amerindians avoided as an extirpation, because such constructions of our societal rules would have defiled their customs and lifestyle, which were later on persecuted and vehemently annihilated by the forced assimilation of the indigenous peoples into the American colonial society. For more details, check out American colonial history books.

Let´s go back to the four individuals, who had appeared in the courtroom, taking my folder and scrutinizing it. Annoyed, because no one was paying attention to me, I started whining and screaming:

“Where and when am I going to meet my Native American love once, and for all?”

To which one of the four, probably their tribal chief, answered me: “At the frontier you will find it!”

“Pardon? At the frontier??? Impossible!!! How the hell do I get to that god-forsaken land of the Americas? They will never give me a travel visa! And, anyway, it's too far away! I can't get there! Please help me! I beg you!”

In my dream I knew exactly what the frontier was: the geographical separation line drawn by American settlers, in whose proximity the indigenous Amerindian tribes lived. So, the two peoples looked at each other face to face, but no one dared cross the frontier line to mess with any of the enemy people.

“At the frontier you will find it! At the frontier!” repeated the chief. The courtroom disappeared and I woke up in my bed, extraordinarily disturbed. The dream was very clear to me, with great detail, but I still did not understand its meaning. Yet God did not delay in interpreting it for me.

A few weeks after this dream I received a message on a social media platform from an American citizen, with whom I corresponded, let's say, for about a month. A logistician like me, with an analytical mind, married but experiencing a strong marital crisis somewhat similar to mine, minus the abuses, having many affinities with my personality and leading interesting conversations.

Before I knew it, he made a ticket reservation and, on the same day he paid for them, packed a few things, got on the plane that very evening and, two days later, he was already in Romania, standing in front of me.

When we met, he caught me during a period of strong transition: I was more confident, with more self-esteem, I felt good in my own skin, good about myself, many things were already in place. If, before, I had been a woman, constantly frightened, like a rabbit, by male presences, authorities of any kind, authoritarian figures, this time I played the ace up my sleeve.

I wasn't at all afraid to put him in his place, to tax him for anything that didn't suit me or made me feel embarrassed, uncomfortable, vulnerable. In a few words, I did with him what I had never dared do with my ex-husband. I put him to work and, without wanting to, I must have provoked him. Because the man likes to hunt, to chase after his prey, to make an effort to win a trophy... Man remains, after all, a hunter. And his qualities as a hunter are best observed during the period of the courtship of a woman. This courting dance between us lasted for about a week, no more.

Have you ever wondered why we cheat on our partners? Here we have several options. Because we lack love, affection, honesty, trust, playfulness, validation, attention, active listening. But the main reason why anyone, whether male or female, cheats is that, in the short-lived and clandestine love affair, we feel ourselves or, in other words, we are the coolest and most authentic version of ourselves. It is not so much the person we cheat on, but the image we form about ourselves, when we are with the person we have a hard crush on. Because in our relationship we fail to be the most honest version of ourselves, we resort to a deceiving adventure to get closer to our own truth.

Like any mathematical theorem, everything must also be proved. And it was confirmed to me that the American had come to Romania because his wife did not allow him to be himself, just as he is, in all his truth as a man who likes to court, to hunt, to be put to work, to be a woman´s hero... He lived a lifeless, fruitless marital relationship that lacked energy, like so many in our days, in which both partners are complacent and experience a clinical death of the soul, of the partnership.

What does a man, who in his marriage does not enjoy physical intimacy with his wife, let alone emotional intimacy, do? He goes out and looks for someone else elsewhere. Any ex-partner who ended up in the trash becomes the delight and the delicacy of another partner who searches in the trash. Then, when he finds what he was looking for, he takes him along, cleans and polishes him, uses him and either keeps him or passes him on.

If, at first, I had been the victim of my ex-husband's love affairs, now I ended up in a Bermuda triangle, becoming a co-cheater with this man. His mistress. That is, the other woman. I exchanged the roles in my own story.

They say that everything´s fair in love and war. That nothing is fair for any of those involved. Yet everything is fair for everyone involved in the love triangle. None of them deserves it and everyone deserves it plentily. There is also a lesson to learn and a moral here, but all in good time, all in good time…

I consummated my relationship with this man a week after his arrival in Romania. Imagine our affair – it was something like the fireworks of the 4^th of July, on America's National Day. In a word, I became a woman.

After his departure, I went to my confessor and spiritual director (priest), whom I told everything in the smallest detail. When the priest heard my soap opera, he became upset.

“My child”, said the father, “do you know where you are at now?”

“Where, Father?”

“At a frontier.”

Only at the hearing of this word did I almost faint. In fact, all my filaments were burning inside my head. Then I told the priest about my dream. This adventure had a specific purpose and here is the meaning of it: if I had thought, judged and analyzed life and the people mathematically, that white is not black, black is not white, lo and behold, now I was experiencing inconstancy on my own skin – I played three roles: the victim, the mistress or the co-cheater and, finally, the cheater of my own heart.

If, at first, I felt like committing outrageous crimes against women who meddled in marital relationships intrusively, I felt even more sorry for them now. Last but not least, I didn't judge them anymore, because I had suffered so much in my femininity; even though I had already been separated from my former husband for a long time and my marriage was a corpse, I had still cheated on someone: God. He allowed me to cross the frontier, and when I returned home, I didn't like it so much anymore. I would have gladly jumped over the frontier line once again, to be truthful. Because with that man I allowed myself all the things I had never allowed myself in my marriage. Moreover, he became my friend and confidant. This is rare in such situations that usually end in a lot of bitterness, hatred, conflicts, and revenge.

In this whole story I learned one more thing about myself: that I can love without selfishness, without reserve. While I was enjoying the stranger next to me, who made me feel great in my own skin, I did not stop praying for him and his wife, for their reconciliation, if at all, and, above all, for his happiness, exclusively his. I smile, thinking about what I used to say to God on those days, when I let myself be comforted, pampered and adored as a woman. I thanked Him for so much joy and pleasure and, at the same time, I asked Him to solve the situation for my American friend.

I learned that I am an extraordinary being, a girl with an ancient heart, given to safe, settled, traditional things, faithful to the idea of fidelity and authentic, altruistic, selfless love. Not to mention that all the horror of intimacy, of being close to a man, of the refusal or judgment of the man who sleeps with a woman untried in the affairs of the bed passed. That I am good in bed, that I have an absolutely healthy sexual appetite, that I am neither frigid nor a nymphomaniac, that I function at normal parameters, that I am a full-fledged woman, with needs, feelings, desires and aspirations that must be taken into account, not a monster hungry for sex or a whore, as I had been called. That I have a generous heart. That I could make any man happy. That I am more than enough. I am tender and playful, seductive and pleasant, that I can be the woman that any man would want to be with.

Finally, here is the meaning and the moral of my dream: America meant to me a continent of incomprehensible vastness. Big, extensive, wide and large America. And the word native means pure, natural, in a state not combined with other substances, autochthonous, original, innate. And here is the last piece of my puzzle that completes the model: God planted in me a vast love, in its pure state and essence, from my birth on, which I can use towards myself.

Here is the secret and the key to all the problems described above: I don't have to cross oceans and seas to get to America and meet my true, native love, which I have always been waiting for. And even though America came to me, I already had this love in me, yet, sadly, I didn't know it.

No husband, no friend, no lover can love me to the extent I would like to be loved. It's impossible. And rightly so, it must be and remain so. If I don't love myself with the love that divinity has instilled in me since birth, no one and nothing can satisfy me, can quench the thirst of my inner being. Therefore, no relationship should be started on the grounds that the man in question would make me happy, loved, desired, and wanted... This source of love flows within us and pours into the source of God's Infinite Love. As simple as that.

In the end, the Good Lord above answered my prayers: 1. He gave me a friend, an extraordinary one, ME. 2. I met true love, where the other love forms in life originate from, that is, a healthy love for myself or that t0 in mathematics, where certain axes start from and return to (not to be confused with a selfish love, mind you!)And 3. I also had the bodily pleasure that I had longed for.

God does not encourage sinning in any form. First of all, because everything that goes against us, hurting us in any way, even if the evil is not felt initially, saddens Him tremendously. Being a parent par excellence, God suffers seeing His children hurting themselves or each other, willingly or involuntarily, consciously or unconsciously. However, He allows evil for the greater good. I am not proud of what I did, that I helped a man cheat on his wife. But I had to cross the frontier so that, in the end, I returned to the demarcation line , where I stayed, finding myself at the frontier between friendship and love.

Jumping over that fine line between friendship with a man and possibly something more, I hoped to discover something amazing, and I did: I ended up discovering myself, a truly astonishing and very nuanced person. So I jumped hither the frontier, back home, to ME.

Disclaimer: After the American´s return to his homeland, we did not stay in touch anymore. Fair enough. I assume and truly hope he got back together with his wife and lived with her happily ever after…