I always pictured her wearing a black lace dress. Long, all the way to the floor. She would be wearing heels. Hair long and wavy all the way to her back. A weave. Her long nails were painted red. Her lips were red too and her big eyes almost blackened with eye pencil. Her perfume was so strong, you would smell her long after she left the room.
If she ever looked at your man, he was hooked. If he ate in her house, you would never see him again. She worshipped the devil and cast spells on men trying their hardest to be good husbands and fathers.
This was the image I conjured up of the other woman. I had an active imagination as a child plus my eavesdropping skills bordered on lethal.
The narrative was the same. From the women who visited our home, shared their problems and attempted to pray, fast and bind her away to now, this new century when you would think we would have looked at all this whole fictitious tale more objectively.
It all boils down to blaming the woman for everything. It has always been easier for society. Fault the woman for having sex, for not having, for having only female children, for not having any. For not getting married, for getting married and being divorced. For an affair. Literally for everything.
So back to our other woman. I think I have mentioned it before, a friend once said to me that every woman, knowingly or unknowingly, will be the other woman in her life. It did not make sense to me because the other woman was basically a witch who trapped 'innocent' men.
By the way, this is not an article campaigning for the other woman. It is basically the musings of a woman over 40, ready to take ownership in some of my relationships. It is not easy by the way.
A prophetess (a well-meaning relative took me to her because “you can't just leave your husband to that woman!”) once told me that the other woman wanted me dead. She could see coffins flying around my head (eye roll) and they had been sent by that other woman who wanted my then husband. Of course I remembered my image of the other woman and for a brief second (very brief) thought that the husband snatcher was upon me. Coming to reap where she had not sown.
Let me tell you Maina, the hole I almost dug for myself! Thank goodness for sense kicking in. It just came to me, if this woman had gone to a witch doctor to cast a death spell for me, the cause of action was very simple. Either go to the witch doctor and pay more to reverse the spell or write a letter of release and she could have the bugger since that was the point of contention. Both of these are jokes, I know some of you will get it tomorrow or not at all.
Seriously my fellow women, why do we think men are chicken waiting to be picked by whoever? That a woman minding her own business suddenly decides it is your husband she wants and he has absolutely nothing to do with it?
I think this narrative of the other woman was first coined by a man who was busted and needed a get out of jail free card: “She blackmailed me” “I do not know what happened” “She tricked me”.
Meanwhile, that mongoose was in her DMs, calling her incessantly, referred to you as his cousin/roommate or whatever other creative roles he could come up with. He has sold a tale of loneliness, which may be true, but, comes to you and claims a whole big man, sometimes educated, with a reasonably functioning brain was tricked into starting a whole new relationship. Tricked for several years.
The other woman on the other hand sometimes is a decent woman who may be fell in love with a man who is the real trickster. Who presented fraudulent information and now she will get the blame.
Let us be honest with ourselves ladies, you cannot make a man do anything. Otherwise, we would have monogamous men who would be carrying babies on their backs and rubbing our feet whenever we ask.
