My cheating situation didn’t go down as in-your-face as this one did! | Source: ShutterStock

“The other woman” in a cheating situation gets a lot of negative attention and a lot of times girls attack her instead of the actual cheater. But here’s the thing: A lot of times “the other girl” is just as in the dark about a cheating dude as his girlfriend is. I know this because it happened to me!

We’ll call this guy Frank. (I’m changing his name because he may be a cheating douchebag, but he doesn’t need his dirty laundry aired in public). He was my coworker Anne’s brother, and I met him when he came to drop something off to her. Apparently he’d popped in a few other times too, but I never noticed him before that. He started talking me about our favorite bands and asked if I wanted to grab food with him that weekend.

He was cute and didn’t seem like a sociopath, so I said yes–and he added me on Facebook later that day. He didn’t have many pictures up and no relationship status was listed, so I figured he was just a pretty private dude. (I was listed as married to my best friend for five years, so I wasn’t about judge.)

We hit it off and started hanging out once or twice a week after that. We both worked, sometimes at night, so I had no reason to think he was making plans with other girls behind my back. Which is why, when his sister mentioned “Frank’s girlfriend Danielle” at work one day, I almost fell over. We hadn’t had “the talk” yet, but, uh, my name isn’t Danielle, and I was making out with him pretty regularly.

I never mentioned anything to my coworker, because I didn’t want her to feel weird or awkward, so I just acted curious: “Oh, Frank has a girlfriend? That’s cute! How long have they been together?”

The answer? “About a year.” Wait, what? Anne then showed me Facebook photos of Frank and Danielle together. Apparently Frank had a lot of pictures on Facebook–he just blocked me from seeing them. Sleazy!

The next time Frank called me to go out, I told him, “Do you have Verizon too? My phone keeps doing this weird thing where I get calls meant for dudes’ girlfriends.”

I never got pissed at Danielle, because, well, what did she do to me? To this day I don’t know if she ever found out about me, but if she ever does, I hope she knows that I really didn’t do anything wrong–and I’m willing to bet a lot of girls have been in the same boat as me and gotten slut-shamed for it. Most girls wouldn’t date a dude who they knew already had a girlfriend, so if your guy is ever cheating–do us a favor. Be pissed at him.

Have you ever been “the other girl?” Have you ever been in a cheating situation that you didn’t know about? Have you ever been cheated on or cheated on someone else? Would you ever take back a cheater? How’d you deal? Tell us in the comments!

Should this girl give her cheating boyfriend another shot? Weigh in!

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