访谈录 Interview 2007-08-10&08-12, 情妇的自述

Victoria Zackheim is the author of one of those stories featured in The Other Woman as well as the editor of the entire anthology. And Argie Allen is a marriage and family therapist. Good morning to both of you.

Good morning.
Good morning.

Now I'm just very curious, tell me about how you found these women. But first let's talk about what drew you to this subject, for you essentially 1 had sort of, you weren't the other woman and you were the woman who had infidelity happened to you. But you were sort of a between.

I was, and it actually started when I was in a car one day and I heard somebody on the radio say the other woman. And being a writer, I immediately thought what an amazing anthology that would make. But then I never dreamt that I'd find authors who were willing to tell their stories. And of course, I found authors who wanted to tell their stories very much.

In your case, your husband had divorced his wife, and you were, er, but he couldn't let go of her. He kept talking about her.

Actually it wasn't my husband. I was in a relationship with a man for several years who had been divorced for many years, and hadn't seen his wife for many years. And the sort of the phantom 2 of the unfinished business in their relationship hung over our relationship until finally it just became impossible.

But it's just a thing about relationships. There is always this issue of business and what needs to happen in here. These women, who profiled in this piece and also you get to talk in your book, reveal quite a lot. So the question is how did you, how did you find them and why did you think they were willing to speak?

Well, I started off asking some of the top authors in the country, and to find out if they even had these experiences. I had no idea, so I proposed to them that that was an anthology, that was a possibility, and if they had been on either side of this, would they be interested. Expecting them to say, gee 3, I'm really sorry. But instead, I've, I got this overwhelming response of yes. The emails that I got back were things like sweet revenge was one.

Well, that make sense for, if you are the woman maybe who had the infidelity happened to you? (Yes) But what about the other women, why were they willing to speak?

It was very interesting because they had a story that they wanted to tell. For example, Susan Shiver wanted to tell the story about the fact that although she had broken up two marriages, and she had her husband taken from her, that as the years went on and she looked back, she realized with great regret what she had done and how she had affected 4 families and her own family as well. So and yet some of the authors were not remorseful 5. They feel themselves that ever like a video that you saw here that although she was the mistress, the young mistress, she felt that she was the one who was almost the wife, and that the wife was the other woman.

So weighing going through all of these emotions, Argie, I think that you know, (Yep) people are really less concentrated on the people listening now, who may identify, understand some of these, how we can help them through this? (Yeah) What will be your best advice if it is someone who is finding herself in this relationship?

Yeah, the inducing thing, and I read some work that Victoria had in her excerpts 6 and when you are talking about the other woman, you are talking about such pain and such betrayal and sometimes shame and embarrassment 7. And the goal here is forgiveness. Forgiveness is moving towards a level of healing. But interestingly, you are talking about how these women wanted to share their stories. It's very cathartic 8 to share your experiences with someone else. In fact, many other viewers that are reading and hopefully they are hearing those stories and they are being moved and healed.