How to Tell if You’re the Other Woman |
One thing I wasn’t prepared for in dating was a man’s marital status. I felt good about my ability to spot fuckbois and their vices. I didn’t think I’d have to be on the lookout for their wives.
Married Guy and I matched on Bumble. He said he was 33, looking for something serious, and a vegetarian who had never tried meat. That should have been my first red flag, but he seemed worldly and didn’t mind my own geopolitical red flags. He was a nine out of ten (subtracting for the vegetarianism). Keep in mind, I didn’t know he was married yet.
He loved to pick my brain about politics. He liked making plans and knowing when I’d be free during the day. He even insinuated we’d have a beautiful Jewish-Indian wedding at the house my great-grandfather built in Colombia.
Whenever I meet a man online, I make sure I have his phone number and full name before a date. I don’t care how uncomfortable it makes you. If you plucked, lasered, waxed, and spent days thinking about your outfit, you should know the legal name of the guy you’re investing in. A quick Google search never broke a relationship before it started. Equipped with my usual tools, however, I couldn’t find this guy with a high-powered career in mergers & acquisitions anywhere.
Alarms started going off for me right around the time they started going off in the Middle East (again). I couldn’t really pinpoint what it was. Funny how that happens, how, faced with zero information, our bodies can recognize danger. Funnier still, that it doesn’t happen when our leaders try to hide things from us.
I wondered why I couldn’t find any trace of Married Guy online. I didn’t expect him to have the digital footprint of a world leader, but still. I felt insane. Here I was, doubting the man who was reminding me to eat dinner. Why would anyone care that much about someone they were lying to? I spiraled as good morning texts and news headlines flooded my phone.
A lot of us are used to being lied to. I don’t know if it’s that we don’t recognize the signs, or that we choose to ignore them and live in a comfortable, or unchallenging, lie. We do this in relationships all the time. How many people do you know who have stayed together despite infidelity or moral shortcomings? In politics, the tactics are pretty similar: charm, overwhelm, and if all else fails, blame the leader of another country.
The past few weeks have leaned into the “overwhelm” part of this. When there’s too much to keep up with, it’s easy for things to go unnoticed. The Strait of........