Rising Phoenix: Seeing the Other Person for What She Was

When Someone Enters a Marriage and Takes Up Space They Didn’t Earn

This post is part of an ongoing series written by “Rising Phoenix,” a woman giving an honest account of how she’s learning to rise out of the pain and destruction of betrayal. Read all her posts by clicking the Rising Phoenix link above. To read all her posts chronologically, start with her first post and then click the “Read Rising Phoenix’s Next Post” link that appears at the bottom of each article.

Naming the “Other Person”

I’ve spoken about the affair person in another post, but there are a few things I need to clarify here. What I’m about to share took me a long time to see, and even longer to feel. So this isn’t something I arrived at quickly. This is something I grew into.

Before I go any further, let me explain why I keep saying person instead of partner. At the beginning of this painful journey, my husband couldn’t bring himself to call her a partner. That word gave her too much value, too much weight, too much meaning — and she didn’t deserve that. At the same time, completely dehumanizing her didn’t feel right either. So we landed on person.

Not elevated. Not erased. Just… a person.

And that distinction matters.

Because when we talk about the person who enters someone else’s marriage, it’s easy to turn them into the villain — to make them larger than life. Disgusting. Powerful. Threatening. 

The Trap of Comparison After Betrayal

And then the questions start flooding in: Who was she? Why her? Was she prettier? Smarter? Sexier? Did she have something I didn’t? And eventually, if healing happens, the truth surfaces. The answer is: absolutely not.

But that clarity doesn’t come right away. Betrayal rewires your brain. It distorts your sense of self. It makes you question things you never questioned before, and see yourself through a lens you didn’t choose and didn’t deserve.

I wasn’t comparing myself to her because she was extraordinary. I was comparing myself to her because I was trying to understand something that made no sense. When something shatters your reality, your mind searches desperately for order, even if that means grasping at lies, worst-case scenarios, or self-blame.

When the Nervous System Is in Survival Mode

Comparison becomes a survival tool—not because it’s true, but because your nervous system is in shock and searching for safety. Betrayal trauma throws the body into a constant state of threat detection. Your brain scans for meaning, for patterns, for explanations that might make the pain feel containable. If I can understand why, maybe I can survive it.

So the mind starts comparing. Not as a form of self-criticism, but as an attempt to regulate chaos. The nervous system is trying to answer impossible questions:

Where did I lose safety? What do I need to fix to prevent this from happening again?

In that state, your body doesn’t care about logic or truth — it cares about control. Comparison gives the illusion of control. It creates a storyline, even if that story is cruel and inaccurate. And slowly, as the nervous system settles, as safety is rebuilt piece by piece, the comparison loses its grip. Because once the body realizes it is no longer in danger, the mind no longer needs lies to survive.

The Affair Was Never the Threat

The truth is: she was never special.

She wasn’t a prize. She wasn’t an upgrade. She wasn’t a threat. She was simply there. She appeared at moments of disconnection, vulnerability, and unhealed wounds—your unhealed wounds. That’s not romance. That’s not destiny. That’s tragedy. That’s avoidance. That’s human failure.

And this is the part that matters most: She was never the threat to me, and she still isn’t. You were. Your unhealed wounds. Your unwillingness, at the time, to look at yourself honestly and choose to heal.

That was always the threat. Not her.

Where Avoidance Took Root

She was there when my body was broken after my accident, and you couldn’t handle watching me struggle—physically first, then emotionally. I had never been broken like that before. And instead of facing that pain, you used her to hide from it.

She was there the weekend we fought and I asked you to come home. I cried on the phone. You asked me not to cry. Then you reacted in anger. When we hung up, she was there. Guilt and shame were hitting you hard, and you grabbed her hand —not because of her, but because you needed relief from what you were feeling.

She was there in the moments you looked in the mirror and didn’t like what you saw. The moments you told yourself you were unhappy and convinced yourself it was because of me. That narrative made it easier not to look inward. Easier not to take responsibility. Easier not to heal.

Those were the moments you told yourself I didn’t give you enough love, enough validation, enough somethingeven though you couldn’t name what that something was. But the truth is simple: She wasn’t the solution to any of it. She was just… there.

And she was there for her own reasons, too. Revenge. Escape. Validation. A free pass. Anyone who needs lies, secrecy, manipulation, or the role of a side piece to feel alive is not operating from wholeness.

The Illusion of “What Could Have Been”

You don’t invade another woman’s marriage, borrow someone else’s commitment, or build “fun” on deception unless you are trying to escape something inside yourself. 

That kind of attention isn’t connection, it’s anesthesia. It’s a way to feel chosen without being known, desired without being accountable, wanted without being responsible. And while it may feel intoxicating in the moment, it’s hollow by design. Nothing rooted in deceit can ever grow into self-worth. It only delays the work of facing the emptiness it’s meant to distract from.

You told her you would never leave me. She even asked what it might look like if the two of you had never met your current spouses—if you had met each other instead. And you were clear, repeatedly, that you would never have noticed her in real life. You told her that anything outside of secrecy and deception would never work. That anything real, anything grounded in truth, would never work. You never imagined a life with her. Not openly. Not honestly. Not in the light of day. You never saw her as a partner in any way. 

Does it make me heartless that I don’t care if that hurt her? Maybe. I can picture her hearing it, sitting with the sting of that truth. But affairs aren’t real. And when they’re forced into reality, they almost never survive it. You never envisioned a real future with her—not even for a second.

Because in the end, this was never about love, connection, or fate. It was two wounded people using each other to avoid themselves. 

Reclaiming What Was Always Mine

And understanding that—slowly, painfully, layer by layer—is how I reclaimed my sense of self. It’s how I stopped asking, What did she have that I didn’t? and finally understood the answer was always: nothing.

I thought I had lost myself, but the truth is I was exhausted. I needed rest, space from the noise and the damage, and time to turn inward, to choose myself and my future. I didn’t lose. I held my integrity. I held on, sometimes by a thread, and I kept my power. The other person was never part of that work.

For the first year, and even the second, I kept hearing that forgiving the affair person was necessary for healing. I disagree. I don’t need to forgive her. She made selfish choices rooted in her own brokenness. That’s hers to carry.

Forgiving her doesn’t erase pain.

But I do ask for her healing—deeply. For her sake. For her children. For any future relationship she tries to build. What she does not deserve is space in my mind, body, or soul. And she doesn’t deserve space here—not out of hatred, but because she is not instrumental to my healing.

Clarity in the Flesh, Not Just the Mind

Not long ago my husband and I ran into her unexpectedly while biking with friends. It was shocking. As I looked at her - I searched myself for emotion: anger, pity, embarrassment, rage. There was nothing. 

My husband and I looked at each other and felt… empty. No anxiety. No charge. Maybe I gave him a look that said, Seriously? WTF were you thinking? He caught it immediately and answered with a quiet, knowing look: Yeah. I know.

When she saw me, her smile vanished. She turned her body away and huddled with her friends, and for me in that moment, what she felt didn't matter.

That moment showed me something undeniable. I had always known I didn’t need to forgive her, and I had always known she was never a threat—not to me, not to us. I understood that truth intellectually from the beginning. But there is a difference between knowing something and standing face to face with what was once tied to so much pain. 

When Knowing Becomes Embodied

When you come back to that moment years later—after the healing, the unraveling, the rebuilding, and everything you’ve learned about yourself—clarity arrives in your body, not just your mind.

When you choose to heal, what belongs stays. What never belonged loses its grip. She never belonged here.

But me? I’m still here. Whole. Grounded. Holding my own power. Knowing my worth. Free from the weight of something that was never mine to carry. 

The Quiet Work That Changed Everything

Healing, for me, didn’t look like instant clarity or forgiveness or rising above it all. It looked like slowing down. Sitting with discomfort instead of outrunning it. Letting my nervous system settle after living in survival mode for so long. It meant telling myself the truth, even when that truth hurt, and learning how to separate what was mine to carry from what never was. 

Healing looked like rebuilding trust in myself first: trusting my intuition again, honoring my boundaries, choosing rest over reactivity, and learning that my worth was never up for negotiation. It was quiet work. Unseen work. But it was real.

And for anyone reading this who still feels threatened by the affair person—who compares, spirals, or fears they were “better”—hear this: they were never the threat. The unhealed wound was. The wound that avoided accountability. The wound that sought escape instead of repair. The wound that reached outward instead of inward. 

And once healing begins, once honesty replaces avoidance and self-awareness replaces blame, the fear dissolves. 

And comparison can’t survive where clarity lives, and threats disappear when the real work is finally done. 

You are not replaceable. You did not lose. And nothing that required betrayal was ever worth keeping.

That clarity — that peace — that healing - is yours too.