Chapter 10: My issues with…being an accidental mistress

I’ve been an accidental mistress a handful of times. No, I did not just happen to fall, trip, and land on different penises.

One of my many talents, aside from being almost able to clap my feet, has (sadly) been attracting men who “forget” to tell me they are in a relationship, are dating someone else, or have women in their lives who are under the impression that they are their boyfriends. 

Thus making me an…unknowing participant as a mistress.

Being unaware that I was playing the role of mistress makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Who are these humans? The same ones who invented white crayons? (Have those ever been useful?)

Maybe these males failed to be honest about their relationship status with me because I like pineapple on my pizza. Maybe they never mentioned they were living double lives because I laugh at my own jokes before I finish them.

Or perhaps I have been an accidental mistress because I ignored all those damn forward-or-you’ll get-bad-luck email chains we used to get 10 times daily. Maybe I shouldn’t have deleted them immediately.

In any case, nowadays if you’re dating anyone seriously, it’s necessary that you not only ask a guy if they’re single, but you also follow up with questions like, “Is there anyone else out in the world who is under the impression that they’re currently in a relationship with you?” and “Is there anyone who is under the impression that you may be interested in them because you have led them to believe they have a chance?” and “Do you have other friends who happen to be females that you just happen to maybe sometimes sleep with, even when you’re in a relationship?”

I am either wildly naive or dangerously intelligent. I can read a book with one eye on the left page and the other on the right page. (Want to challenge me at Scrabble? Good luck!)

And okay…I’m occasionally gullible when people tell me that and I have no reason not to believe them. (Ha!) And fine, I’m guilty of thinking that male friends who I haven’t seen in years and suddenly pop into my inboxes do just want to be “friends” and feel like “catching up.” Apparently in modern love, if any old flame reaches out to you, they want to fuck you.

It’s actually taken me until mid-life to feel lucky in love. G-d/the Universe finally gave me my happily ever after. Either that or whoever cursed my previous romantic relationships finally decided to chill the fuck out.

I know that My Guy is for keeps, mostly because when I’m with him, I no longer want eight to 12 hours of alone time every day. I want him to be my Valentine on every single V-Day as much as I want a pet groundhog for Groundhog’s Day (What can I say? The heart wants what the heart wants.)

People like to say men are more rational and, generally, are better at compartmentalizing. Not true. Except for those who turned me into an accidental mistress.

I think the first time I realized I was a mistress and not a girlfriend was in my teens. I’d visit my boyfriend’s apartment, which he shared with his older brother. Once, after he buzzed me in, I walked in to witness my boyfriend and some girl sitting on opposite ends of the couch, as if one of them had a restraining order. One of his “friends.” 

But this was 30 years ago. So, no phones to text, “Hi! I just left. Be there in ten,” to give them more than a two-minutes heads up. No one bothered to mention she’d be there, and no one had an explanation as to why she was there or why neither of them looked all that guilty.

I mean, he called me his girlfriend. He never called to dump me. And I don't think he planned to. I think he was hoping I’d never find out, putting me in the role of unbeknownst mistress.

Their sly sexy side glances made me feel like such a third wheel. Of course, I was totally uncomfortable, like when you’re watching a super hot sex scene and the actors are both married…but they look like they’re enjoying their sex scenes just a tad too much. Either that or they’re that good at their jobs.

After five minutes, I left to go home and eat a waffle. I pondered how I had been downgraded from girlfriend to mistress status.

I didn’t need any proof they wanted to be together. Because unless his grandmother had just visited him five minutes before, there was no reason for the red lipstick on the side of his mouth, nor the very new hickey on his neck. (I kind of miss a fresh hickey, don’t you?)

If I can be candid (when am I not?), I left thinking I might’ve just been part of a love triangle. Or a love pentagon? I mean, who knows how many other women were accidental mistresses along with me. 

I wasn’t super hurt because I didn’t like him that much. And also, at the time, well… Have you heard the saying, “She looks good from far, but up close she looks far from good.” 

My “ex-friend,” or whatever he was, was objectively stunning. I figured if I was going to be an accidental mistress, it would be to someone who looked like a Kardashian, in a good way (before anyone had heard of this filtered family famous for being famous.) So, belated thank you, I guess.

I don’t remember being all that upset because there was really nothing I could do about it, and nothing to fuel my anger further (like, say, creep his Instagram). It was so much easier back then, when the only way you could stalk someone was to literally stalk them. Or hire a private investigator. Or call from a blocked phone number — that you used to have to pay for — and hang up. 

And then sometimes, including the times before I realized I was the mistress and not the prize, I’d lie on my bed for hours, waiting for a boyfriend, or someone who had the potential to be my boyfriend, to return my call (with no iPads or iPhones or Netflix to distract you. Talk about torture!). Actually, with no technology to distract you, you really did just lie there doing nothing. It was a simpler time.

But this actually is one of the reasons I believe many women my age now suffer from anxiety attacks. We have deeply repressed those memories of us waiting for that special ring tone — which took forever to find and download — that indicates our crush is calling. A crush who left you in the dark about their relationship status… 

Guys will feel guilty changing barber but will cheat on their partner and go home as if nothing happened.

Before I get into the other ways I was an accidental mistress, I’d just like to add that I think we should bring back the way my grandparents’ generation dated — you know, with obvious courting — because there was no denying when someone was interested. It really was so much less complicated. 

Sure, mistresses always existed, but I feel like most mistresses in previous eras at least knew they were mistresses.

In my grandparents’ generation, if a boy liked you, he would bike to your house and linger around your front lawn. If you didn’t like him back, you’d shut your bedroom blinds. And that was that. If you did like him, you’d run downstairs and go grab ice cream together.

It was THAT simple.

But when it comes to modern love, we have to deal with this B.S. — relationship status. Suddenly, everyone wants to know what box you fit in: “single,” “it’s complicated,” “married,” “in a relationship,” and sometimes, if you’re lucky, you’ll come across that someone who is “in a relationship with an avocado.”

Whenever I see someone check “It’s complicated,” I’m like, I’m sure it IS complicated. Either you like him and he doesn’t like you, he likes you and you don't like him but you’re not ready to rule him out, or you’re waiting for an ex to come back (“We broke up. But we might get back together. Or we might not. But in the meantime, I consider myself single, since I found out he was still seeing other people after we had the ‘we are serious’ chat, and now I have to decide if I want him back, so I’ll just keep him on his toes.”)

The second time I found myself as an accidental mistress was short-lived — about five weeks. I thought, “I kind of like this guy. Maybe this could turn into something.” Now I will say, in this incident, I was completely naive. As stupid as a baby who really thinks your face disappears when you play peekaboo. 

No, I was even more naive than that. More like my brother, thanks to me, who believed the plastic packaging of those individually packaged triangle cheese slices were edible when he was a kid…for an entire year. This, too, was before phones.

You know, it was once easy to catch someone cheating on you — just grab their phone while they’re in the shower. Now, phone engineers have made it so difficult to break into other people’s phones that most of us have collectively agreed, “Why bother?” You need your fingerprint, three passwords, and a blood sample.

All these security measures were probably invented by a sexting/flirting male who spends a lot of the time on the toilet deleting any evidence of his communication with other women. Because he just loves you too much.

Anyway, back to the dude who made me a mistress. When he first invited me to his house, which he had recently moved into, what immediately caught my eye were the kitchen drapes; they were covered in pink and yellow flowers. I also spotted a box of romance novels. When I asked about his Danielle Steele collection, he told me he had bought them at one of those mystery book boxes at a garage sale for $5.

It sounded real. People do this. But the biggest mystery was that one day, he stopped returning my calls — now widely known as “ghosting” someone — leaving me to experience panic attacks because I used to lie on my bed waiting for him to return my calls for hours.

It was more upsetting to be ghosted back then because “he just stopped calling” didn’t make sense to anyone. It still doesn’t, but now when someone says, “They just ghosted me,” it’s like they’re talking about something as regular as what’s on the menu. People are so accustomed to being ghosted that it’s become normalized.

I became an accidental mistress this time because I learned that he had a wife of seven years, who had just given birth to their first child six weeks earlier. They were moving into their new home in three weeks.

Um, is it just me, or do you not think this is something a male would remember? Married, newborn baby and wife — who likes floral prints and reads romance novels — about to move into their dream home in a couple of weeks.  

When it comes to modern love, the question you need to also ask is not why do people lie, but why do people have such a hard time telling the truth?”

I found out I was a mistress after I made one last-ditch attempt to call him. He picked up, and I heard a newborn screaming in the background. He then kinda told the truth, like you know the kinda truth your teenager gives you when they blame their red eyes on the fact that they were sobbing over the death of their class hamster? Even though your kid is in grade 12. Yeah, no — they’re stoned AF.

I was not upset about this guy either. Sometimes, when unbelievably bad things happen, you at least need to laugh. Even at your own expense. And I found it beyond funny that he thought he could hide this forever.

I mean, at the very least, give me the option of being a mistress or not. I didn’t even get a choice. And what really pisses me off about being an accidental mistress is that I never got any of the perks that mistresses get: expensive handbags, jewelry, shopping sprees, vacations, plastic surgery…

There may have been a couple of more times I found myself as an accidental mistress. One was with a man who was incredibly knowledgeable and super fun. We had met at a party, and shortly after he sent me a book in the mail that we had been talking about but I hadn’t read. Now, I thought this was just a friendly thing to do.

After I had read the book, we ended up at another party together. I was single. We ended up back at my place. 

To his credit, he did tell me he was separated and still living with his soon-to-be ex-wife, but not to his credit, he forgot (or failed) to mention that they had decided, together, that neither of them would get involved with anyone — not even for a one-nighter — until they had both moved out of their house.

Thanks to that experience, for an entire year, people in certain circles believed — and maybe they still do — I cheated with this guy. As if it was somehow my fault that he didn’t mention his pinky promise to his wife.

Another time, the guy was cheating the entire five months we were “together.” We even went on a vacation! But it did seem weird that after I returned from an out-of-town writing assignment and stopped in to see him right after my plane landed, he was changing his sheets at 9:00 a.m. Trust me, this was not a man who throws in a load of laundry — especially linens — into the wash on a Saturday morning. 

He told me he wanted to make sure his sheets were fresh for me, which sounds romantic. But in reality, the sheets needed to be cleaned, because I would learn — after a screaming match — that he was, and had been, fucking half of Toronto. 

Ah, but this time, iPhones were everywhere. I texted him right when my plane landed, so he had more than enough time to get ready.

This one kind of hurt, not because I cared that, yet again, I found myself as an accidental mistress, but because I also genuinely thought I inadvertently made other women accidental mistresses, if they thought him single (which he quickly became).

I should have told him, “I’m glad you thought of me as just a mistress. I hope you find a girl to give you all the things that I couldn’t, like an STI.”

After all, I made it to middle age without any STIs. Had I had stayed with him, there was an extremely high chance he could have passed one on. And, honestly, making it to my age without an STI? I wear it as a badge of honour.

Okay, so another time I was an accidental mistress…

We all know that a half-naked woman on a profile pic with no mutual friends is not a real person, right? That was like this guy. He had no social footprint. And he lived in a gorgeous penthouse. But, ah, I missed the signs! 

Like the fact he did not have a doorbell and refused to get one. He acted like he was on the run. Turned out he was still seeing his ex-wife, who was really still technically his wife; she just wanted space from him (it’s complicated). Back then, I did manage to sneak into his phone because it didn’t have facial recognition or a goddamn haiku to get in. 

So, he was basically cheating on his wife with me? 

Was I the accidental mistress, or was his wife, who wanted a divorce and had moved out, the mistress? Were we both accidental mistresses?

Following this incident, I might’ve found myself in another accidental mistress situation. I know, talk about talent, right? He turned out to be in a long-distance relationship.

And then he ghosted me — but not before asking for his key back, and explained that he “kind of sort of” was in a three-year-long relationship…and his girlfriend was moving to Toronto be with him…in three days.

I thought, “Ah fuck it. I’ll just remain single since, thanks to my naïveté, I’m so great at ruining my life. Obviously, the kind of guy I want to be with is currently out of stock.”

I once heard someone talk about “men’s math.” Basically, if you cheat on your girlfriend once a month, that’s only 12/365 days, which means you’re still 97% faithful. (And according to my nine-year-old’s report cards, a 97% is an “E” for excellent.)

Maybe “Whoops, forgot to tell you I have a family” or “Whoops, forgot to tell you my partner and our newborn are moving in!” kind of men really are better at rationalizing their behaviour. Meanwhile, I’m thinking that eating pizza wasn’t cheating on my diet; maybe going on a diet was cheating on my pizza. (That’s how women rationalize their behaviours!)

But that's in the past, when I used to read men the same way I read recipes. Not well. Does it make sense to you now why I was never so gung-ho on marriage?

Thanks to dating apps, I’m pretty sure, there are a lot of us accidental mistresses out there. 

At this point in my life, after having found my happily ever after in mid-life, what I’ve learned about being an accidental mistress is that relationships and true love aren’t that fucking complicated.