At university, I almost exclusively had male friends. We were ten to one, male to female, so there was absolutely no reason for women to hang out together.
So we didn’t.
Which already gives you a clue who the mistresses will be when they grow up: they’re the ones who hang out with the boys.
And the wives are the ones who come out of nowhere to start hanging out with your boys.

By that time I had already selected my college sweetheart, and we would stay together until we were way over thirty. But every year at least one of my classmates would get into a relationship.
And we, I, would get to witness it.
Which was downright excruciating for me, because I couldn’t stand how those men gave away their power so fricking easily. They didn’t even TRY to stand their ground!
For Christ’s sake.

I know that whenever I tell women I am a mistress (don’t worry, I ve stopped doing that at least within the borders of the Kingdom of the Netherlands) I see women wonder, worry, go over in their minds:
“Oh my God, could my man be having an affair as well?!”
Short answer?
NO.

Not if you could barge into his messy bachelor cave, give his stove a proper scrub, clear out his closets, rearrange his furniture, and dump all his sports medals and souvenirs in the basement where he can go visit them on Sundays.

I did admire those women for their forwardness. My boyfriend was a little messy, but I didn’t foresee how bad it would get. Hoarding is a spectrum, and expresses itself by not having a system to manage your things, because you can still see the value of the object or how you might one day need it.

I met my boyfriend when we weren’t even twenty yet. He just came out of a relationship with his girlfriend from high school with whom he had practically been living together. At her place.
His room had not been used much until he became single and then became my boyfriend.

Initially he was very much into taking proper care of his things. He bought paint and new carpet. And even though he had to do everything by himself, and it was pretty hard to paint or put carpet in a small student room, when you have no place to leave your stuff:
He did it.
He really made himself a home.
He made it, not me.

So of course I was impressed and assumed that he could manage his life. And maybe his mental health did deteriorate later on, and that was the reason he started to create stacks of things and papers, unable to clear them out.
Or maybe it had always been his weak spot but didn’t become apparent until he was well into his twenties.
But no matter how bad it got, I never went through his things. And when we were living together I simply claimed my own room or my own desk, where he wasn’t allowed to put his stuff.

When our relationship stranded I confessed that it had worried me that our house or life would be taken over by his car parts, his tools, his old school books, his twenty ashtrays, and so on. That I had no idea if there was some kind of mechanism that would switch on if it got too bad.

Turned out that mechanism was called NEW GIRLFRIEND.

The woman who came after me was like a decluttering force of nature. I was impressed with how she handled it. This was a man in his thirties with a whole house to clear out:
It was completely next level compared to hooking up with my university friends when we were still in our early twenties and had few possessions.
This was impressive!

And right now I can so see that’s how it was meant to be.
“Those” women are such a blessing for men who drive themselves and others crazy by not being able to organize their lives.
And my boyfriend was very dutiful when it came to work, he had a stable income. He didn’t drink, he didn’t do drugs, he didn’t get into fights.
And he was a nice and fun person to be around with.
So it wasn’t like he wasn’t a wonderful partner: he was.
But he needed someone to take control over his life, and I had not done that in the fourteen years we had been together. Nor would I have ever done that if we had stayed together for fourteen more.
Because a mistress doesn’t do those things.

It’s so strange, because I didn’t know I was a mistress until I became one. But even this aspect, the way I behave versus the way normal girlfriends behave when handling a man’s stuff, speaks volumes on how we’re different.
Although I was emphatic, I never solved his problems for him.
The only thing I did was be clear on my boundaries.

Normal women see a problem they know how to solve, they take over that part of your life and do it for you.
And normal men let them and are probably very happy with it too. Giving up their sovereignty is a fair price to pay because together they can now achieve things they could not achieve on their own.
Manage a household.
Have children.

I was relieved my former boyfriend finally got someone who could help him cope with that part of his life. I saw she was asking a big price, for example he wasn’t allowed to see me anymore. But I didn’t take that personal.
If they ever breakup he knows he can contact me again. No hard feelings. Not at all.

She helped him out in an area where I had felt powerless. But the fact that she was jealous or suspicious of our friendship?
That was totally unnecessary.
Like I said: if you can barge into a man’s life and take over the wheel?
It’s not a cheater.

Now I do risk having to eat my words here, because “bad” men or “cheaters” are susceptible to women promising to save them from themselves…
And hand in their entire deviant life at the promise of being tamed.
But that is usually so short lived.

It is far more likely that a cheater is the one, who does stand his ground. Who didn’t get hitched in college but stayed single or swayed in and out of relationships until he was way over thirty.

The next time a woman wonders if her man is a cheater, I should probably ask:
“Would you dare clear out his closet without asking him?”
If the answer is “no” you should probably worry.

<3LSH
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

{ to keep these little gems aka blogposts from hijacking my day I set the intention to write them in sixty minutes.
This one was written in written in 1 hour 45 minutes;
Plus half an hour of watching Sex and The City on Carry Bradshaw colonizing Big’s apartment by leaving her toothbrush and hairdryer. A story I ended up not using! 😀 }

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In episode 11 of Season 2 Carrie colonizes Big’s apartment by leaving a blow dryer and a toothbrush. Which Big then casually returns to her!
lol
Anyway, I couldn’t find that one on YouTube
But this one has toothbrushes in it as well.
Pro tip: if a man keeps new spare toothbrushes in the house, he’s a player.
You should probably keep him 😉