Ed’s Note: The Other Woman
The Other Woman is a must see 2014 production for every woman and most importantly, cheating men as it may serve as one big lesson. It is one portrayal (or at least from the movie perception) of how women should deal with their husbands’ girlfriends or cheating partners. It is the kind that pushes you to the edge of the seat in anticipation of the next scene — the type that leaves a sweaty brow on a cheating spouse, particularly those fresh from an escapade, whose over indulgence to play the loving husband by spending a Sunday afternoon with his family may not find the playing of such a movie funny.
Directed by Nick Cassavetes, The Other Woman is probably the least on the methodology list most women would opt for. It is an ingenuity display of often misguided attributes to who our real enemy is. A researched abridgment of the movie reads: “After discovering her boyfriend is married, a woman tries to get her ruined life back on track. But when she accidentally meets the wife he’s been cheating on, she realises they have much in common and her sworn enemy becomes her greatest friend. When yet another affair is discovered, all three women team up to plot mutual revenge on their cheating, lying, three-timing man.”
Hypothetically, it sounds absurd for that wife to deal with her cheating husband because she believes it is the other woman wrecking her home. Every woman sets out to teach ‘her’ the lesson of tampering with the wrong husband in town. She unleashes her venom or a wrong target as she defends the man who is playing them both, if not a whole chain, while the real culprit hides behind the veil of having been ‘provoked or seduced’. We forget that this bundle of ‘innocence’ is the very one which goes on a pity party while on a woman hunt with stories such as: “my wife is rude, she stinks, she abuses me, we are not officially married, she hates my mother, we are together simply because of the children” and so on, all to buy sympathy (as if he is the saint). Sometimes they claim singlehood, just to get what they want and immediately throw tantrums when probed to divert attention.
Of course, some women go on a hunt for married men and can’t care less if he meets them once a year. But, this hilarious display of dealing with the real enemy by Cameron Diaz, Leslie Mann, Kate Upton, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau in The Other Woman is something I wish we emulated. Something away from the mundane of taunting the other woman and direct it to the deserving masterminder who will play anybody in a skirt, including the defensive spouse. The moment we shield cheaters by pushing responsibility of their actions to a third party, we lose the plot and just like a serial killer, rapists of pathological liar, he will strike yet again. While the discovered girlfriend is literally stalked to ‘stop’ her from eying or dating our man, he moves to a safer zone, away from prying eyes where he gets comfy and all lovey-dovey until discovered. And the cycle goes on.
What lessons did I draw form The Other Woman? It is pointless releasing missiles to the wrong camp in mortal combat while the actual enemy continues to hit us with rockets, injuring us deeply in the process. It becomes worse when the offended is in denial. Let us not shy away from opening our eyes wide to face the very enemy we have been sleeping with. It is only then we get our target, the real home wrecker.
