I never planned to become the other woman.

That realization hit me somewhere between the ninth morning phone call and the hotel room where I let a married man undress me after four years of celibacy. I told myself it was just a moment. A trip. A vibration. A careless attempt at being the carefree woman the internet keeps selling us—soft life, no consequences, living for the thrill. But the heart doesn’t do temporary very well. Especially not mine.

Before him, there was him.

We were high school sweethearts. First everything. The kind of love that felt written in scripture and sealed with innocence. He was my church boy—polite, respectful, the one mothers prayed their daughters would bring home. For five years I loved him with a devotion that embarrassed me later. He loved me back, deeply, but he was a simple man with simple rhythms. No fire for more. No hunger for building. I would beg, threaten, and pitch small business ideas like a desperate entrepreneur. “If you don’t do something, I’ll leave.” Year one. Year two. Year three. By year five, even I stopped believing my own threats. He knew I loved him as he was. And I did.

Until I didn’t.

Leaving him felt like ripping out a rib. For the next four years I tried to build something stable for myself. Small wins came—some money, some opportunities—but the loneliness was brutal. It sat in my chest like a tenant who refused to pay rent. I stayed faithful to God during that season, or at least I tried. Church had once been my foundation, but I was also carrying old hurts from “church men” who preached purity while practicing something else. Still, I held on to the belief that if I did right, right would come.

Then his mother died.

We reconnected at her funeral. The chemistry was still there, thick as incense. For a few weeks I let myself believe God was restoring what I had lost. Until I found out about her—the “close friend” who had already met the family, who was already positioned. When I confronted him, his words carved something permanent in me:

“I love you… but I respect her.”

He chose her.

The devastation was complete. Months of crying, questioning God, questioning myself. Why wasn’t my love enough? Why did my ambition and standards cost me the only man who ever felt like home?

So I ran. Literally. I took a trip to breathe again.

That’s where I met the married man. He wasn’t my type. Too polished. Too sure of himself. But the conversation flowed like good wine. In the middle of laughing, he casually dropped that he was married. I should have walked away. Instead, when he kissed me, I kissed him back. Deeply. Hungrily. Like a woman who had been starving for touch and attention.

I told myself: This is just for the moment. I won’t keep in touch.

But he called the next morning at 9 a.m. And the morning after that. I got used to his voice waking me up. The loneliness I thought I had defeated came roaring back with reinforcements. When he invited me on a date, I went. We slept together the same day. I had been celibate for four long years, holding onto holiness like a shield. That day the shield cracked. I felt ratchet, reckless, and strangely alive.

I was trying so hard to be a bad girl. To be carefree. To prove that I could take what I wanted without apology, the way the world tells Black women we should finally learn to do.

But here I am—caught between two loves that were never really mine to keep. One man I outgrew because I wanted more from life. Another I entered knowing he belonged to someone else. Both of them forcing me to look at myself.

I still love God. Differently now.

My faith is no longer the neat, church-girl version I grew up with. It’s messier, more honest, and sometimes quieter. I’m learning that loving God while being human means sitting with the ugly parts— the ambition that made me leave a simple man, the desperation that made me run into a married man’s arms, the loneliness that made me betray my own standards.

I don’t know how this chapter ends. I don’t know if I’ll choose better next time or if I’ll keep repeating these painful patterns dressed up as “living in the moment.” What I do know is that Black women’s hearts are carrying entire galaxies of contradictions—wanting stability but craving passion, loving God but stumbling in the flesh, being ambitious but still wanting to be chosen.

This is my slow, honest truth: I am still becoming. Still learning that being carefree shouldn’t cost me my peace. Still trying to love without losing myself in the process.