Crocodile Tears
After a three year affair with a married man should the “other woman,” who is also married, tell the unsuspecting wife? The other woman is angry that promises for the future were not kept by her lover, and now feels sorry for the unsuspecting wife. She has been lied to and could be again. Also, should the other woman apologize to the unsuspecting wife after the affair is over?
Twyla
Twyla, for three years you weren’t sorry for the wife, and you still aren’t. You are sorry for yourself, and you are mad. There is no honor among thieves or liars. There was no reason for you to give weight to a cheater’s words, just as there was no reason for the cheater to give weight to your virtue. Neither of you is entitled to promises kept.
Human behavior is full of mysteries. One of them is why a person will watch another lie to others and not believe they will lie to them.
Tamara
(From the column for the week of June 4, 2007)
A Pound Of Flesh
I have been divorced from my first husband for eight years, but still feel angry at him and have thoughts of revenge. He left me for a woman he married shortly after our divorce.
I am happily married to my second husband and wonder why I still have thoughts of my first. I have since found out he cheated on me during the entire course of our marriage. You know the old adage, what goes around comes around. I wish I could find out his new wife is cheating on him, and he gets his in the end.
Abby
Abby, I once heard an interviewer talking to an older man on the radio. The man being interviewed said, "I had a good life until my wife left me." When the interviewer asked him how long ago that was, he said, "Thirty-five years."
There is much more justice in the universe than we realize, but it is not your job to mete out justice or to be there when it happens. Gloating diminishes us.
Paul Engle, a poet and founder of the famous Iowa Writers' Workshop, once introduced a man he had publicly insulted years before, by saying, "I am small enough to have remembered what I did. He is big enough to have forgotten." Be big enough to forget and move on.
Tamara
(From the column for the week of June 11, 2001)
