Bouncing with Style: Mistress-B-Gone

By Sandra Beck.

I have been reading the comments on my posts and the email I get from men and women all over the world– I love it.

One of the things that comes up again and again is how awful we feel when we encounter our ex-husband’s mistress – even years later because the wounds of infidelity and broken trust run deep. This is especially challenging when she was your friend. I know this happened to me and it happens to men. I know they tell me feel just as bad as we do when we are betrayed, but I’m a women and I can only speak for me. If you are a man reading this – kudos to you and just slot in the right sex… or if you are a same sex couple… well, you get my drift.  Now,  I will attempt to write this from a unisex perspective.  Here goes…

When my kids were little, I took a spray bottle, filled it with water, added a drop of red food coloring and took a Sharpie marker, and made Monster B Gone. When they were afraid going to bed, they would spray the old Windex bottle around the perimeter of the room, on the door and under their bed.  Monster B Gone worked up until about age 6.

Well, and you know where I am going with this, I got a purse sized spray bottle of Mistress B Gone. I used a mix of drops making it a murky, ugly brown. When my cheating, lying unisex spawn of the devil picked up my children with his conniving, pathetic unisex freak of nature for the weekend, I would open my purse and puff a little mist of Mistress B Gone.

Don’t laugh… it works. Indians have known for ages the cleansing power of smoke. Check out a new age healer or an old age shaman and what do they do to rid bad energy is light up a dried stalk of sage. In lieu of torching the California brush to rid myself of the noxious evil energy emanated by these two “lovers” on my doorstep, I just puffed out a little Mistress B Gone spray.

What did I do with his evil energy? Oh, it followed her right off my property just like he did when I was married. I wasn’t worried about his energy lurking around; it was hers that felt intrusive and invasive.

See, by the time my husband had left, I had had enough from the two of them. If I could have purchased tickets on the Titanic for their honeymoon, I would have mortgaged my house for the thrill of watching them hit an iceberg at 11:40 pm. It’s a funny thing that happens with affairs and divorce.

You don’t want the cheating spouse back. But it hurts like hell when they leave. It doesn’t make sense. At least it didn’t to me. I know my pride took a beating. So did my wallet. But what was really hard for me to do was to look at the other woman who had worked in my house, joined me at Zumba and played with my kids. I once thought of her as my friend. That hurt as much as anything.

I often wonder how she could justify working for me in my home business while sleeping with my husband. I often wonder how we could meet at the gym or hang out at family pool parties. She stood with me at a charity event in the local paper. I look back and laugh. They stood together as a couple. I stood alone. How prophetic.

The mistress violates us in a whole different way than our cheating husbands. I don’t know if it’s the same in other situations. Your comments will have to explain that. The mistress portion shakes our faith in our female friends – in the trust we have in other relationships with women. I think it takes a special type of woman (and not in a good way) to take money or employment from, share holidays and meals with, or attend family events while sleeping with that friend’s husband. I think it takes being one of the lowest forms of life to be able to successfully have an affair in front of your friend with her husband because you are betraying your friend, your own husband, and our familial bonds. It’s like the trifecta of infidelity.

So you can make your Mistress B Gone or your Monster B Gone and spray the heck out of your life. If this were the 1840s and the Gold rush era, I would suggest a shotgun but litigation costs and jail time are not a viable price to pay these days for the satisfaction of shooting either of them in the ass.

I’m so sorry for you reading this for your broken heart. I am so sorry for your shaken faith in friendship and your shattered trust. If you are reading this, know that you are not alone. And for those reading this that tell us to get over it, sod off. And those of you who want to write to me and explain/justify your affair – step off the bus, chickee. You are not welcome here, says Sandra Beck.

Bouncing with Style is about understanding the complexities in our failed marriages, within the family of affairs, and the mysterious ways we recover together. One day you will wake up and the bad dream will be over. One day you will look back and shake your head. Will it always hurt, a little. Will you recover? Better than that… you will Bounce with Style.