#72 HOW I MET MY (EX) HUSBAND, AKA THE FOURTH PERSON I MET AT STARBUCKS

The guy who swept me off my feet…and later discarded me like last week’s rubbish (but first, our meeting)...

It’s no spoiler that my first marriage didn’t work out since I’m now with my second husband, Michael. 

Like all of my past encounters, this marriage would go on to teach me a lot about many things: love, friendship, marriage, communication, sex, grief, resilience, and so much more. The failure of this marriage allowed me to have a successful second marriage: ultimately, to have the loving, kind, gentle partnership I have with my husband now, but before any of that happened, I had to meet the first man I’d ever want to marry.

All the boys who came before

So far, I’ve written about the following. I did have this list in a paragraph but maybe bullets are easier for readers who are new.

1. My first kiss (who I’d later sleep with in graduate school because I’d always harboured a soft spot for him)

2. My first love (who was my high school sweetheart whose parents and grandparents were high school sweethearts, a fate I did not want)

3. My worst boyfriend (a guy who went to a fancy acting school in New York and the kind of person who would merit me having an MIB-style memory zapper to erase all traces and whatever happened in Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind)

4. Multiple damaging ego bruises (my married professor and my friend’s friend who said sleeping with me meant nothing after he seduced me)

5. A scattering (or is it smattering?) of men who were lovely whom I didn’t pursue more seriously or fizzled out (Air Traffic Controller, the CFO, the rich tech bro, the air force guy, and my old Bosnian ‘International Boys’ neighbour where we had sex on a boat)

6. The people I couldn’t get away from fast enough (like my firefighter neighbour, my old model-esque housemate’s boyfriend, the one who reminded me of Patrick Bateman, and the Scandi Lit Prof)

7. People I was obsessed with fucking (like the Hot Jewish Doctor and the Red-Haired Sex God), who weren’t great for my self-esteem

8. And then the final boyfriend before my first husband who had treated my heart roughly (Captain Thor) and left me with clipped wings

In my (whopping) ninety-nine chapters so far (including regular posts, present-day snippets, and bonus material), I’ve written about forty-six men (I did a rough count) who have had some significance in my life from sexual partners to infatuations to crushes. Connections that never happened (like the lawyer that never was and the second person I met at Starbucks) or long-distance crushes who were a shoulder to cry on (like Mr Kent, Mr Oxford, the boy with the green jumper, and the boy I met on the train). And some fan-favourites like the post about Captain Cambridge (the man with the biggest cock I’ve ever seen – now a Major) and that time I kissed a girl (and had a threesome).

Forty-six is a big number and there are about four more people to write about, so fifty men in total. (Don’t worry re body count police, I didn’t have sex with all fifty not even half that amount – I would say who is counting but past 20-something me definitely was!) According to my actual list of people I kissed and slept with, I kissed eighty men (and one woman, maybe two to three women but some were friends so they didn’t make it to my list). 

I don’t even know how I crammed that many people into my life from age seventeen to age twenty-five, but somehow I did. In my self-assessment, I have a genuinely caring nature and a big, open heart. I have a legitimate interest in people, their stories, what captivates them, what makes them tick, so dating all of these people or getting to know them was my own little anthropological study but not in a cold, calculated, scientific way. Perhaps, I should have studied psychology or anthropology in university instead of literature? I’ve found that humans are so unique. We are all a collective yet somehow so individual. 

Some men had similarities but absolutely everyone I’ve met and dated, even some who have been from the same area, are distinctive. I’ve been attracted to and dated men of all colours and backgrounds and I think, ultimately, it all boils down to the fact that I like people and am fascinated by our points of difference and our points of similarity, of connection.

Not fitting in to dating loads

I came from a northern English town called Oldham in Lancashire – at least for my first ten years of life back in the late eighties and early nineties – before moving to Central Florida (Orlando and Oviedo) and later to South Georgia (Brookfield, Tifton, Alapaha, Ray City, and later undergrad and grad school in Valdosta). No matter where I’ve lived, I never felt I fully fit in, which is something my Grandad Mike always felt, too.

That isn’t to say I haven’t gotten along with people or formed friendships, I certainly have, but I’ve never felt part of a “collective.” Not because I think I’m cool and aloof or anything compared to others (that’s certainly not the case). I don’t know if this feeling is true for many people who have moved around often (as my family has been quite nomadic) or if some humans feel ‘part of the group’ and others feel ‘slightly apart.’ Let me know if you’ve had experience either way. Of course, some people are ostracised and ‘othered’ because they are ‘odd’ or ‘off’ in some way (some of those people rightly so because they become murderers or hermits). I hope that’s not it in my case but you never know!

Moving around meant that I didn’t have the same friends since primary school/kindergarten all the way through to university. I wasn’t off holding hands with a bestie and skipping off to undergrad together. Besides Brittany, my beautiful Chinese friend Anna, Chester, and later my Germany ladies (more on them later), I never had that super close type of bosom friendship in my high school days. I had my twin best friends in high school, Sarah and Anna, and we had amazing times, sleepovers, shared reading interests, but they weren’t the kind of sentimental friends I could pour my heart out to as they’d sooner give me shit than let me confide such nonsense as crushes and the like. Besides, they’d have considered their best friend a guy friend, Blake, they’d known since childhood. Anyway, until late high school, I’d have said I was pretty asexual which is surprising considering how I later became very much sexualised and have had a high libido ever since.

I jealously observed girls in middle school and high school who had these sorts of close sleepover, ‘ride-or-die’ friendships but I couldn’t penetrate the circles (is that awful phrasing? Ick!) because whatever difference they perceived in me, it didn’t align with them.

I wrote here about how not only did I not fit in with the ‘preppy’ girl groups in high school and middle school, but I also wasn’t the girl the boys had crushes on which is why when people did start to notice me and chase me in university and graduate school, I went a little off the rails with the attention. I was thrilled yet so damaged and insecure which poured itself out into those ‘relationships’ and sort of ruined them. 

And although I have two sisters, my older sister (Jae) was raised by our father so when I was young I was effectively an only child as was she and my baby sister (Hannah) was so much younger (we share a mother), that I moved to university when she was about four years old and she too grew up as a sort of only child. 

I’m well-bonded with my sisters, but we have as many differences as similarities. We have some collective memories of growing up with our respective parents, but we all had different experiences.

For example, when Hannah was growing up my mother had achieved success in her career becoming the director and/or CFO of several charitable organisations (not all at the same time) and being well-known and well-respected in her small northern Florida community. My Mum’s husband also has a solid career so Hannah simply grew up with more affluence than I had when growing up.

My older sister, Jae, grew up in England and went to a posh private school (public school for those in the UK) and always excelled academically and in the sciences. She and our father had shared interests in science and history and sometimes their shared reference points was like being on the outside of the sort of posh “ibble-dibble” game from The Crown. They weren’t references I understood. But then again, my husband Michael and my Dad also had shared references I didn’t understand because of generational gaps. Dad was always good at engaging with me in literature and subjects I was interested in, too, though, but I always got the impression he thought I was less academic than Jae and more into girly, frivolous things (which is true, really) but was a point of difference all the same.

The friendship and sister background I suppose is to say that ‘fitting in’ is vital for our human sense of connection and community. Even introverts (of which I am not one – maybe more ambivert but I certainly was extroverted until more recent years) need some level of connection and they find that some people drain their cup and they need lots of mental recovery time and some people fill it and they require less. 

Since I grew up in the middle of nowhere in Georgia, when I had an active social component, I wanted people around me all the time. I never wanted to be alone at all, whether that was girlfriends sleeping over or male friends or boyfriends or hookups. I wanted to be out, be seen, be partying, be social, I wanted to have long, ‘deep’ conversations into the night. I wanted to find my special person but I equally didn’t want to be tied down. I wanted to get to know everyone and no one! I wanted to be free yet understood. I was a contradiction, confusing, a free spirit, and a clingy one.

My guy best friend from uni, Chester, said that I approached dating with an analytical mind. I wanted to be on the outside looking in, analysing it, and pretending not to feel, all the while feeling far too much. I was trying to be (or pretend to be) the ‘cool girl’ when I was anything but.

Except not dancing because I couldn’t dance…

My mental space going into meeting my first husband

Social media has a way of making you feel very ‘behind’ in life even though life is not a race and we are all on our own journeys. I saw so many women I went to high school with getting married, looking longingly at the beautiful wedding photos they were taking. I didn’t know if I wanted marriage or children or any of that. I was mostly having fun but it still never feels great to left off the party train, to be behind in milestones that maybe I was ‘meant’ to be achieving. 

Here I was with yet another failed relationship. They’re out here getting married and I can’t even keep a boyfriend! I could get repeat hookups and friends with benefits but no one who truly wanted me (boo hoo and all that). After Captain Thor very much not falling in love with me, despite dating for a year, and not wanting to get close to anything serious let alone marriage, I felt desperate to be loved. I had spent most of my relationship with Captain Thor crying and feeling utterly rejected and unfulfilled but I still wanted him to choose me, for what I’m not even sure.

That is never a good position to be in when searching for a relationship. You know, they say you gotta love yourself first and fix your own insides and be a complete human on your own and all that and I very much was not that. It’s only with lots of hindsight that I can see this.

To me, I was growing so much as a dating human. In my eyes, I kept ‘levelling up’ every time. I was like, “Oh, go me! Each new boyfriend or guy I date is better than the last. Aren’t I growing? Aren’t I making better choices?” And whilst that was a little true, it was also wholly false. But I wasn’t fully alone in my thinking in that Brittany (my grad school best friend and housemate) said that she was proud of how I seemed to learn from each dating situation, and that each choice I made got progressively better, but, naturally, it certainly couldn’t have gotten worse.

I never stopped to think about what I needed in relationships, what fulfilled me, what I wanted. But I don’t think “how to date properly” is really taught. We are just taught to find love, get married, and have babies. Also, make sure you go to university and have an amazing career and don’t be poor! We aren’t taught how you find love or the right kind of love or how you sustain a connection and friendship, what qualities are best for that connection, how you foster emotional intimacy, trust, communication, and so on. Are we supposed to learn it by trial and error, through films, TV, books, osmosis? Observing the relationships we see in our families and friends? Who knows!

Twenty-something me was too busy A) chasing gorgeous, attractive men whom I wanted to sleep with (and sometimes less conventionally attractive but intriguing men) or B) trying to please said men with my behaviour to make them stick around, all the while thinking I was just “too much” of a person (too big, too needy, too intellectual, too poor, too scattered, too insecure) and also “not enough” of a lot of other things (not successful, not thin enough, not rich enough, not smart enough, not loveable enough).

It didn’t occur to me that one could just naturally get on with someone, that someone could just like me as a person without my having to change (besides in healthy, healing ways), and someone isn’t worth chasing if they don’t already like you as you are. That’s where I went so, so wrong most of the time. I thought things were different with my ex, the man who would become my first husband, but I was also wrong about that.

Meeting my first husband

I was at Starbucks grading one time (like I did lots of times) and one day I met the fourth person I’d meet at Starbucks: my first husband. I’ll call him Benoit (my ex husband had a French name and an English-sounding nickname so Benoit and Ben will cover it!).

When my first husband came along it was only a month after the breakup with Captain Thor, which was certainly not long enough to heal a broken heart and I was definitely not sure I wanted to settle. I’d gotten my Master’s degree (finally) two months before and Benoit had seen me at Starbucks a few times as he used to smoke cigars outside. Once, he’d tell me later, he saw me on the phone pacing, discussing a multitude of subjects with my Father as I often did. I went inside. He went to follow, but my beautiful Chinese friend Anna came, and we hurried off before he had the chance to talk to me (we were often either going to the Max Fitness gym or to dinner).

But this was a different day and a grading day. I was wearing a red mini-skirt and an Audrey Hepburn Breakfast at Tiffany’s t-shirt that my Mum had bought for me, probably some knee socks, and heels, channelling a mismatch of Clueless and whatever else. My Mum had also bought the giant Audrey iconic picture that I hung over my bed in grad school. In my mind, I wanted to be like Audrey or Grace Kelly and be refined, elegant, and sophisticated (yes, I know AH played a ‘lady of the night’ in Tiffany’s – that wasn’t the plan, of course). I wasn’t these things but I tried!

The image quality is so low that you probably can only make out the ‘jewels’ that made up Audrey Heburn’s necklace in the iconic image printed on an inexpensive t-shirt, but it was sweet of my Mama to think of me. At the time, I thought the shirt was too tight and made me look too fat because it showed my ‘fat’ arms. That was my flip-phone pre-iPhone.

I’d been absorbed in my laptop all morning in a rare grading ‘flow’ state, getting through the fifty or so essays I had to grade for the English 101 or English 102 courses I was teaching at a university in Columbus, Georgia. I was sitting in an armchair in the corner of the room, the glass windows flanking me on both sides. I had a view of the ‘big table’ in Starbucks, which was the long conference table I’d met Captain Thor on but they’d changed the orientation since then. On the other side of the table sat a very handsome all-American, muscular, tall blonde-haired man, and he also seemed deep in the flow state of work. Every now and then I’d go to order a tea or go to the bathroom and we’d smile at each other and continue to work.

Me being me was definitely interested as he was handsome, tall, and seemed intelligent. After the fifth person or so had come over to talk to me – I was a regular so people got to know me and recognised me and would often stop to chat (probably also the reason why I was never very productive back then) – the cute guy introduced himself as Joe (not his real name, of course) and said something to me like, “You seem to know everyone here,” which devolved into asking Anna (who had shown up at some point) and I out to dinner, and him asking for my number.

Anna was still heartbroken over the end of her relationship with Captain Texas (Captain Thor’s bestie) and wouldn’t get over the breakup for months and, thus, didn’t want anything to do with “Army Guys” so she rejected the idea off the bat.

I gave Joe my number anyway. Joe’s friends Benoit and Joon arrived. Blake introduced us all. Joon had an English-sounding name even though he was from South Korea and his wife was still in South Korea. He’d later move her over to Georgia after some immigration paperwork. Benoit and Joon were flatmates. 

We probably all made small talk. I told the guys that I would be downtown Columbus at the bars later that night and maybe I’d see them there.

I took the random friend Aubrey downtown (the friend I was out with when I had my one-night stand with that hot Captain). I’d simply changed my shirt after showering, added a scarf, and a leather jacket. Did I think blue and black went together because of that one Backstreet Boys album? 

That is a mirror selfie in my apartment. No idea why the light looks green. The outfit wasn't screaming 'sexy.' It was like my first date all over again. I wish my hair was as nice at 37 as it was at 25. I rarely styled or blowdried my hair. It was naturally very long. I didn't appreciate a lot of things back then! I also had to take an obligatory photo with the 'hot bartender' (or bouncer?) at The Tap in downtown Columbus in 2012.

I texted Joe to say we were there. We found Joe, Benoit, and Joon at The Tap and Joe proceeded to ignore me the whole night. As if I didn’t exist. I was vaguely disappointed but Benoit was talking to me instead and we were seemingly hitting it off.

I learned that Benoit was from Lebanon. He’d done a degree in mechanical engineering for undergrad and then worked with a US special forces unit as a translator. He spoke nine dialects of Arabic, English, French, and Dari. Before that, he’d worked in Saudi Arabia as an engineer, making money. He came over to the States to study petroleum and natural gas engineering at Penn State. He had joined the Army as an enlisted soldier to gain US citizenship and worked his way up to become an officer. 

He had three siblings: two older sisters, who lived in the States, both successful businesswomen in their own right and married to Lebanese doctors, and a younger brother who was an affluent businessman back in Lebanon married to a beautiful former Miss Lebanon and television presenter. His older sisters each had three children and his brother at the time had one daughter (but he’d later have a son as well).

Although Benoit wasn’t my typical choice aesthetically as he had a shaved head and wasn’t as obviously muscular on first impressions, he was 6’1” and a physically massive man. I always go on about how I am big for a woman and he made me look small. (Turns out, he did have some abs and was 230lbs of muscle underneath but he had a ‘huskier’ build.) I found his background intriguing. I’d really never met anyone like him so I thought why not take the chance?

I always thought these first pics of Ben and I were awful. I've since learned that my right side is not photogenic! I had an old friend from childhood say once that it was something to do with which side you parted your hair on and the side with the most hair looks better. Not sure how that works now with the Gen Zers loving 'middle partings'?

This photo from the next year shows our size difference a little more clearly.

Drunk running

Remember I talked a couple of times about dates who drove me home drunk: Ethan, Captain Cotillion, et al? The man who would later become my husband drove me home on our first night out. I don't think he'd had a lot to drink, but I certainly had. Benoit had continued to buy me Long Island Ice Teas (my signature drink which obviously contained lots of liquor) – as many as I wanted. When we were walking to his car, I'd decided that it was a good idea for us to run. I had a tendency to think drunk running was a good idea (maybe harking back to my running track days). Once I thought drunk piggyback rides were a good idea too. I had a friend’s brother give me a piggyback ride after lots of indulgent drinking at a house party (Theo’s house party) whilst he ran downhill on a tarmacked road and we both fell spectacularly and I got a massive hip bruise from an incident that didn't go well with my bikini at the beach that Spring Break; however, Brittany and I were only reading Jane Eyre on the beach anyway and not off tanning or at some foam party.

As I was drunk running holding Benoit’s hand, I tripped over my own feet (also a common occurrence) and this darling, strong man yanked my arm and pulled me up just as my head was about to collide with the pavement/sidewalk. That would have been a very short romance indeed!

Instead, I escaped with very scraped up flats – yes, I was even wearing flats – and bloody knees. I felt seven all over again. I still bore the knee scars through our marriage. He invited me to go back to his apartment and I agreed.

When there, he carefully bandaged up my knees, and then proceeded to blow my mind with his mouth, making me see stars. I'm pretty sure we didn't have sex for our actual first month of dating, which was incredibly unusual for me, but I was already hooked. Not just from him going down on me but how into me he seemed. I drank in how he treated me better than anyone had ever treated me in my life.

Ben revealed he’d seen me before and orchestrated our meeting

The day I met Ben was not the first time he had seen me at Starbucks. He’d maybe spotted me at least once or twice before and watched me from afar. But I didn’t know any of that the day I met him, of course.

In contrast to his flashy car, I equally had a distinctive car in that it was distinctively shit. After Dorian crashed my Camry, I was reduced to buying a faded red Mustang that was many, many years old since I was a broke grad student and then a broke university adjunct instructor (who probably make less than waitresses). One day when we were curled up in bed, Benoit later admitted that he had spotted me one day in Starbucks and just as he was about to talk to me Anna came in and we drove off together. He memorised my car and licence plate and when he saw my car parked at the Starbucks the day we met (when I was there meeting Joe), he had told Joon that they needed to drop off the groceries at their apartment (as they’d been shopping together) and get to Starbucks ASAP because he spotted ‘that girl’ again.

When we’d all gone out that night, he’d told Joe to back off because he’d seen me first and because he was quite an intimidating presence, Joe had barely spoken to me, which left room for Benoit and I to hit it off, just as Ben had wanted. It turns out, though, that Joe would have been exactly my usual kind of choice but most likely bad for me as he was the type of man who had a ‘flavour of the week’ woman. Maybe she’d last a few months but all the women he dated were more on the friends with benefits scale and he was emotionally unavailable. He was also from Texas! (What is it with my attraction to people who ended up in Texas or were from there?)

Joe later dated an absolutely stunningly gorgeous woman from Columbus who became part of our friend circle and years later she’d visit Benoit and I when we lived in Germany and we’d all go off to Prague (we being a new Army officer she was dating who was not Joe). Joe also had an interesting fact in that when I met him, he’d been recovering from a broken neck. He’d broken his neck in CrossFit that I think involved a barbell, a step-up box, and misstepping and his body rolling over the bar in a spectacular (and almost fatal) flip (ouch!). To be fair, Joe was a lovely person, gave amazing massages, but I was definitely happy I ended up choosing Ben over him!

Unlike so many men who made me chase them, who didn’t fit my needs, it was intoxicating and flattering how into me Ben was. I didn’t stop to think that maybe everything was too intense too quickly. I just felt swept off my feet.

I hadn’t realised that these qualities attracted me but Benoit had status, power, and money – and I was into it. He seemed charming and caring and we had a wonderful first date. He hadn’t been what I’d been looking for. He didn’t necessarily meet my ‘list’ but my list had not served me well thus far and I thought I’d take a chance on someone different.

Coming up next, the first date with my ex/first husband.

Don’t forget to check out the other seventy-one posts I’ve written, including the one on why I’m writing this newsletter/blog in the first place – and the odd “present day snippet” of what I’m up to lately.

I covered a lot in this chapter from feeling like a misfit to moving around a lot to meeting my first husband. Did anything resonate with you? Did you ever feel wanted and swept off your feet? How did it go? Did it last?