Pick your status: Wife, mistress, lover?

Women have many roles. Unfortunately, we must pick one and live with that, maybe not forever but for a long-ish while. Until we get very tired or he gets very tired and then we change status.

Let’s talk about marriage. You decide to marry him and become his wife. Hey, you are so in love, so crazy about the guy, there is no other alternative. "If you don’t want me to marry him, I’ll die," my mother claims she told her father. It describes so well the way she felt. My father also probably felt the same way because he offered a diamond engagement ring to prove his love. So they married and lived happily for two years until I was born and the Japanese came and killed him.

Among the three options offered, wife is the strongest position because you have legal identity. You marry and you stay happy from anywhere between two and four-and-a-half years. That’s according to USA statistics. Then, the romance is gone and you have to work on keeping the love alive. You probably have at least a child by then so there is one reason to stay together: for the child. Furthermore, you legally carry his name. He is obliged to support you. By law, you belong to him. Both of you vowed to love each other for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, till death do you part. Marriage is cyclical, good, and terrible times, you just need to stick it out. You, the woman, decides that, I think. Every man I have met is happy with his wife and has decided to stay with her until one of them dies, just like his father, grandfather, great-grandfather did before him. He will stay with his wife because he loves his children, then because of his religion, his duty or he loves her. It’s too much trouble to leave her. Why should he leave her? Only she wants to leave or is asking him to make some kind of decision because she, the wife, maybe suspects he has . . .

A mistress is someone you met much later, after you married your wife and found yourself bored with her. This is not to say she is boring, but you need someone new, someone who stimulates you and excites you and, oops, your mistress has a baby and another one. You are often with her, but you never sleep over. You only sleep over with your wife. The tension in your situation as mistress makes your life more exciting than being married. He supports, even indulges you, buys you things you want. You are spoiled because he realizes he must keep you happy or he might lose you. Depending on how powerful you are, you will be given an inheritance, which may be bigger or smaller than the wife’s. This mistress relationship is like a second marriage. Should the first wife die young, the mistress demands marriage and then the happiness begins to slip away. Wife and mistress are two different things. Someone was telling me about a man whose real wife finally died and one of his mistresses demanded that he marry her. He did, but then he began to take on . . .

Lovers or Significant Others are interesting relationships. First, they don’t talk about marriage. Maybe it’s because one is married and doesn’t want to un-marry or maybe it’s because one is very gainfully employed and is not interested in compromising career. Anyway, no marriage on the agenda, only fun and laughter. You don’t want to bear his children, though you keep trying to make them albeit with precautions, so you are sure to fail. You see each other when you have time, but you have no expectations. You know that neither one of you will live or die with the other. You try not to worry about that, pushing away the thought every time it haunts. Nothing you can do. Just don’t expect anything except a few really wonderful times. At the end, no financial settlement, nothing much is left behind for you, except perhaps memories worth keeping, memories that soften you when you’re sad. Then you are grateful that you knew him and wish . . . but no . . . nothing was ever going to come out of it. You knew from the start you’d neither be at his funeral nor he at yours.

Okay, now make a choice. Which one do you want to become? First, I was a wife. I got married at 18 and I was not pregnant. To this day, I don’t understand why I married then. Nevertheless, I did. Then we broke up and I became somebody’s mistress. Lovely relationship in the beginning, ended very badly. Since then, I swore off those types of relationships. No more marriage for me or any relationship that vaguely resembles it. I seem to be allergic to that institution. Lovers? Okay, let me try. Significant Others? Is that what they’re called now? Why not? Let me see.

Oh, my, what a tedious life! Are there no other options? Finally, I discover another one. Get to know yourself. Get to love yourself. Get to enjoy yourself. Single Blessedness, I think they originally called it. Now at last, that’s me. It’s the best choice I have ever made. Among the many roles women play, I think I have finally, happily, found mine.

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