The Psychological Aspects of Being a Mistress

By the time a woman makes a resolute decision to be a mistress, there is a psychological quagmire and warfare she has had to go through. It is usually a very tough decision, one based on a foray of considerations and choices. There are some key factors that determine how the whole episode plays out until one finds herself a mistress. These factors constitute the psychological reasons for being a mistress, from the mistress’ perspective.

To begin with, there are four conditions that lead a woman to accept to play the role of a mistress to a married man. First, love. A woman will accept to a proposal of being a mistress, to a man she loves wholeheartedly. There are times that a woman will fall madly in love with a married man, which no other man single or otherwise will equal no matter what. This man might be in circumstances that may not allow him to get a divorce or even he may be unwilling to get one, but the woman will accept to be a mistress if only to have a piece of the man.

The second reason for which a woman will readily become a mistress is, if by being a mistress to the man, she will secure her chances of getting married. A married man, who promises to get a divorce soonest possible, will use his wrecked relationship with the wife as an explanation for the philandering. Then he will of course require the relationship to continue as he works on the divorce. The other woman will hung on, albeit as a mistress, waiting for the slot soon to be vacated buy the wife. In her thinking, she is only a mistress for a brief moment. This is the most common of all psychological reasons of being a mistress.

The third reason is that of wealth. Money is a motivator of many things in our present age. A woman will accept to be a mistress of a man, if by being a mistress she will secure her financial status and forge ahead. These prospects might at times be so luring that if the man is rich enough and ready to spend, the arrangement will be sustained long enough for the woman to get the cash and move on. This motivation is largely devoid of love and it is mainly a means to an end.

Fourthly and lastly, a woman may be motivated by the desire to elevate her social status. In history, most mistresses transcended lower social class stratus and became royalty material, by the mere association with a man of class. This is not directly motivated by monetary returns, but by social prestige and related benefits. If the married man has a prestigious standing in the society, the prestige rubs on the mistress, and by association she acquires an importance and social acclaim that would have otherwise been impossible. This in most cases is in situations that the man cannot get a divorce and marriage is out of the question. The best that the woman can hope for then becomes the status of being a mistress.

When one becomes a mistress however, it rarely is a bed of roses thereafter. Across the world, there is a lot of negative criticism in the society for mistresses and they are actually referred to as ‘home breakers’. It is viewed that they are responsible for the trouble between a man and his wife, irrespective of whether those problems were there before she came into the picture. This stigma and negative perception is one hindering psychological reason for being a mistress, and which makes it even more complex.

Being a mistress presents with it a challenge. For one, it is very hard to know whether the man is using you for the time being before he moves on, or whether he is serious. If it were an open relationship, proposing marriage would solve that problem since there will be confirmation of the seriousness of the relationship. But in mistress relationships, the doubt is always there. Again, the relationship is intoned by the wife’s resentment, anger and jealousy. The relationship is mostly consummated in privacy, and any resultant children have to grow without a father most of the time. These are the psychological problems that plague every mistress.

Being a mistress also makes the man to be unanswerable to the woman. In most cases, the man only belongs to you partially, up to a certain time, to certain people and nowhere else. Mistresses are kept hidden and unpublicized to the world, making the man more free and untamed. For a woman who would love to have a man for herself, being a mistress is totally out of contention. That sense of exclusivity and righthood goes out of the window the moment one concedes to being a mistress and not a wife.