Hi Ladybugmaam. I'm sorry you are going through this. I am an OW. It was quite a few years ago and I have worked pretty hard. While I did have something of a fascination with the AP's wife, it isn't something I've thought very much about or explored. So I will try to think through what was going on in my head several years ago, in hopes that it will help you, and I imagine at the same time it will help me, because it's one of the few parts of infidelity that I have not thought about that much.
My interactions with the AP lasted for about six months, with the first three months being inappropriately friendly and the last three months sexually explicit (some sexual touch but mostly messages). I knew the AP and his wife from a local organization. I knew the AP more, because we were on the board of the organization together. I didn't like him for the first couple of years and didn't have an opinion about her. As far as I know, she never knew anything happened. My husband had an extremely strong preference for not telling her which I went along with. That's a long story for a different thread. I think the default best step is to tell the OBS.
At the beginning of the six months I didn't think about her at all, all I thought about was the engagement with the AP, the attention, the validation. As it became more explicit and frequent, and especially when it all came crashing down at my house, I did think about her. I wondered about all the details of her life, what her home looked like, how she dressed, her history. I wondered what their time was like together. I imagined that I was better than she was, I would be better at satisfying him than she was (not just sexually) but I also was worried about her strengths. It was exhilarating when he would compare me to her favorably, or complain about her in any way. It was a competition in my mind, one where I could define the terms in a way that made me the winner. (I realize how twisted all of this sounds). I kept an interest in her life and would sometimes look her up on social media far longer than I was interested in the AP's life, though in part I think that might be because I was rigid with myself about not thinking about or looking up the AP, so perhaps I was drawn to her as a kind of side door to thinking about the AP. It took me a long time to get healthy. The more healthy I became the less I thought about the AP, or her. At this point the best I can do is to leave her completely alone, pray for her when she crosses my mind, and be prepared to tell her whatever she needs to know if my husband decides it's time to tell her or if she finds out somehow.
If I were to guess, I would say that there was a point during the affair that she felt superior to you because she had the sneaky attention of your husband, and that inflated her ego. And the persistent stalking is trying to get back to that place, she is trying somehow, anyhow, to imagine that she's in that place that felt good to her. It doesn't make sense but she's not operating from a brain that makes sense of the real world.
One of the quotes that was very important to me early in my journey toward becoming more healthy was from M Scott Peck about the importance of clinging to the truth as a way to preserve mental health (quote below). At the same time, I was learning from Maia (another OW) about God as Truth. It was the hardest thing I've ever done to let go of the false reality that I had constructed to preserve my ego (my husband called this my "baroque mental structures") and face the ACTUAL TRUTH of what I had done and the implications. It was the hardest thing I have ever done and I don't think it ever would have happened if I had the choice to avoid doing the work. (I guess I could have avoided it by divorcing my husband and stalking the AP, but I wanted my husband and marriage).
You can, of course, do anything you need to take care of yourself and your marriage. But if you wanted to do something helpful for the OW, which might also be good for you, I would suggest being crystal clear with the truth while avoiding being harsh if possible. That might be you and your husband approaching her together to tell her or write a note to her that you don't welcome her presence. It might be telling a couple of close friends so that they convey that message for you, or telling people in charge that you understand they can't ban her from the gym but that they could say as non-official humans that it doesn't seem right to them that she doesn't give you clear space. In other words, you, your husband, the community around you, drawing together to let her know that what she is doing is being seen and it is not good. That message, clear and unambiguous. She can of course turn that into whatever she wants, but it gives her the opportunity to engage with the truth about what she is doing and what other people think about it.
M Scott Peck on truth (bold added):
What happens when one has striven long and hard to develop a working view of the world, a seemingly useful, workable map, and then is confronted with new information suggesting that that view is wrong and the map needs to be largely redrawn? The painful effort required seems frightening, almost overwhelming. What we do more often than not, and usually unconsciously, is to ignore the new information.
Often this act of ignoring is much more than passive. We may denounce the new information as false, dangerous, heretical, the work of the devil. We may actually crusade against it, and even attempt to manipulate the world so as to make it conform to our view of reality. Rather than try to change the map, an individual may try to destroy the new reality. Sadly, such a person may expend much more energy ultimately in defending an outmoded view of the world than would have been required to revise and correct it in the first place.
This process of active clinging to an outmoded view of reality is the basis for much mental illness. ...
Truth or reality is avoided when it is painful. We can revise our maps only when we have the discipline to overcome that pain, To have such discipline, we must be totally dedicated to truth. That is to say we must always hold truth, as best we can determine it, to be more important, more vital to our self-interest, than our comfort.
Conversely, we must always consider our personal discomfort relatively unimportant and, indeed, even welcome it in the service of the search for truth.
Mental health is an ongoing process of dedication to reality at all costs.
[This message edited by Pippin at 12:23 AM, Thursday, February 12th]
