When I say "the other woman," I don't mean the girl who went after your boyfriend knowing he was dating you. I'm also not talking about your ex-best friend who made a move on the boy that she knew you liked.
No, what I mean when I say "the other woman" is the girl who doesn't owe you anything at all and had absolutely every right to go after him, whoever he may be. She is the girl who played absolutely no role in your life until she started to play a role in his.
At one point in our lives, we have all either been on the receiving end of hatred for being the other woman or have hated another girl ourselves, at least I know I have. The other woman can come in many different forms. She could be the girl who he dated before you, the girl he made out with at a bar in front of you that one time before you were exclusive or the girl that he rebounded to after things ended between the two of you. Regardless of how she played a role in his life, as girls, we usually hate her before we know the full story. But honestly, hating this girl is a huge waste of everybody's time.
I mean think about it, hating this girl isn't going to make your ex-boyfriend want to get back together with you. It is only going to make him think you are even crazier than he probably already did.
- Hating her isn't going to make your current boyfriend like you anymore than he already does; it is probably just going to annoy him.
- Hating her isn't going to make your old hookup decide to text you out of the blue one day, it's probably just going to make you look a little clingy.
- Hating this girl is only going to make you crazy. It is going to make you do and say things that you normally wouldn't do.
- You will spend hours stalking her profile pictures, her Instagram, and so on, searching for a flaw that you can latch on to in order to make yourself feel better.
- You are going to go on a rant about that one time her eyes looked a "little too close together" in a photo and how you cannot believe he would ever be into her.
- You will swear on your grave that you are not intimidated by her, in fact you think it is funny that he was ever into her, but we all know that isn't even remotely true and eventually you will be exposed.
Whether it is with an accidental double-tap when you are 48-weeks deep on her Instagram (a rookie mistake that is unbelievably hard to bounce back from) or a drunken confession made to the wrong person at the wrong time. You will be found out. Then you will have to attempt to do damage control, but honestly, in most cases, the damage is already done.
I know it is easier said than done, but there are always going to be other girls, and you are always going to want to hate them. But you shouldn't. Nothing good comes from it. Why go crazy over something that you cannot control? The sooner we learn to stop hating the other woman, the sooner we are going to have full control of our sanity.
