And sometimes, apparently, it’s surviving a neighborhood barbecue with your dignity intact and your rival’s cookies returned in a gold gift box.
The Lesson I Took From It All
People often assume that when another woman targets your husband, you must either fight her or fear her.
They expect jealousy, screaming matches, public accusations, and a wife desperately trying to prove she is still desirable.
Vanessa expected that kind of reaction from me.
She thought I would panic because she was younger, newly single, and determined to make herself the center of my husband’s attention.
She believed that seventeen years of marriage had made me complacent and that my husband was simply waiting for someone like her to offer him a more exciting life.
She was wrong about both of us.
I didn’t win Irvin by being more beautiful than Vanessa, by dressing better than she did, or by proving that I could compete with her on her own terms.
