#73 THE FIRST DATE WITH MY EX/FIRST HUSBAND

Wined, dined, lavished with gifts, grinning like a Cheshire cat, the journey began

If you haven’t read the first post about how I met my first husband (aka the fourth person I met at Starbucks), read here.

For new subscribers, welcome! Thanks for being here. That post also gives an overview of what I’ve written about so far (with some links to other posts).

After our first night together, Benoit took me to IHOP for breakfast where I’m sure he was amazed that I could polish off the teriyaki steak tips and eggs along with a stack of pecan and chocolate chip pancakes. I always was/have been an indulgent as an eater (and a little gluttonous – which the spell check wanted me to change to glutinous). Perhaps, it stemmed from being born premature (two pounds and five ounces at twenty-eight weeks gestation) and my parents said they couldn’t get food down me fast enough. My late Father described feeding me as a team effort where they’d both be ready with the spoons to ensure I didn’t have any moment without food. He also described projectile vomiting so I was like an exorcist baby!

Back to Benoit! Unsurprisingly that day, I had more things to grade so I didn’t spend the Sunday with him. At the time, I worked three jobs: as a legal assistant and teaching at two places: as a low-paid adjunct instructor teaching English 101 and 102 at the local university and a better-paid job doing the same at a community college. I won’t go into the differences in the US between college and university but it’s not the same as in the UK. Both work towards Bachelor’s degrees but have varying levels of ‘prestige’ and different levels of cost (i.e. universities cost more).

My camera roll (i.e. now Google Photos) said that the date was on a Tuesday so that Sunday Benoit must have invited me on our first official date in late October 2012. But Tuesday is an odd day to go on a date, right? Funnily enough (for a past over-chronicler of my life), I have zero notes about the date itself but only messages to people later into our dating life about how super-amazing everything was and I was super-happy (of course) and also super-delusional. But past me really bought my delusions, so there’s that. And really I was happier than I’d ever been in a relationship before (the bar was low).

Photo by Ahtziri Lagarde on Unsplash – if you search stock photos for ‘delusional’ it’s just a picture of a woman with a glass of wine…I’m not even sure how I feel about that.

He listened!

Ben had been good at listening. I said I actually liked carnations since they lasted a really long time and were pretty. When he came to pick me up, he presented me with the largest bouquet of carnations I’d seen in an actual vase with a huge red bow attached, which my cat (Jack Jack) later ate. He had gone to a florist (or at least the section of the supermarket with flowers in vases) and I think it was the first date I’d ever been presented with a bouquet outside of prom (I attended five). 

Here’s my bathroom mirror selfie with them (the next morning). (All past images are unfiltered and unedited because A) I don’t know how to do that on my Macbook and B) I didn’t need filters because I was in my 20s. Also, I have no idea why the light was so yellow.)

Side note: I’ve added a bunch of images with captions to this post so if you’re listening to this post make sure to scroll down and have a look at the photos and read the captions (if you want).

Ben took me to the most expensive restaurant in Columbus, Georgia, a place I’d been to with Captain Thor but could no longer afford myself and we had an amazing meal. I wore a strapless bright pink satin dress with embellishments on the pockets. I didn’t even cover my arms and shoulders for the occasion which I was often want to do because of insecurities. He took a photo of me on our first date, which I no longer have (which is a shame). I felt flattered even by that. That he wanted to take my photo – no date had done that before (or since).

I recall generally having a lovely time chatting, smiling brightly the entire date. I couldn’t believe a man who was this successful was into me! He was amazed when I said I didn’t love shopping (I omitted the part where I didn’t love shopping because I was too broke to buy things). 

Whatever I said, he seemed to be more and more intrigued. I was intoxicated by someone being so interested in what I had to say, remembering things I said, seeming to care.

I didn’t question if this was ‘normal’ boundaries. It was new and remarkable! After all the chasing, the heartache, and the rejection, here was someone who would finally accept me for who I am! Someone who treated me like I was fascinating! 

Random early nights out: pictured with Anna; Benoit (striped shirt); I couldn't resist a pic with the hot bartender (in the t-shirt, which was always a theme); a drunken night out with Ben (where my face is almost cut off); and the first night I went out with Ben (pictured with his friend Joe who I'd been initially interested in complete with his neck break injury in plaid).

He was charitable

One night, we went downtown, perhaps after a night out and he took $20 from the ATM and gave money to a homeless man and one of his coats from his car after I said, I liked to buy the odd meal for homeless people or give them money.

I remember once picking up a homeless man to take him through the McDonald’s drive-through at Jacksonville Beach when I was around 21 which my Uncle Steve thought had not been a ‘safe choice’ (as the gentle parents say) and another time buying a bunch of stuff for a man who came into Starbucks and setting it on a table where he had been sitting whilst he went to the toilet. I’d wanted to give the stuff anonymously but he’d returned to the table and then moved because of all the bags and cups now placed on his seat and I had to go and grab the stuff and tell him I’d bought it for him. 

I often did this sort of misguided thing in my twenties. I realise now, it would have been kinder to give people a choice instead of buying a bunch of things I liked (a sandwich, cakes, pastries, water, tea, etc) and assuming the person would like them too.

His family was warm

We spent Halloween together going to The Tap downtown where I dressed up as Supergirl. He didn’t wear a costume. We had Thanksgiving with my family in Florida (he bonded with my baby sister), Christmas with his family friends in the DC area, and New Year’s with his sister and her family in Kentucky.

I loved this costume but was also insecure about my arms, which I see now were not fat at all (sigh). I had Brittany take these pics at our apartment and that's probably why I can't stand brown wood panelling. There's a pic with the hot bartender (was that super disrespectful in front of a new boyfriend? Probably!). Benoit in the grey jumper who didn't dress up. Was it a coincidence hot bartender dressed to match me? He had an equally hot girlfriend. He once invited me to the bar for a drink and he then said something about wanting to be with his girlfriend and I respected that. She looked like a model. This was also when Halloween was cold in Georgia. I've since heard they don't get much seasonal differentiation now.

During Thanksgiving, we went to St Augustine, a place I’d loved when young and that my family often visited to go to Columbia’s restaurant, and he took me on a horse and carriage ride which I found incredibly romantic.

Click to enlarge photos: In St Augustine and at my Mum's house in Florida. He got on really well with my family and everyone adored him and I loved that. He took me to the beach too (it was cold but lovely). I was also wearing his jumper like the cool girls do in films. He also let me get two slices of pie, which that kind of thing would later be frowned upon.

Expensive gifts and lavished attention

Like all people trying to impress you in the early days, he pulled out all the stops. He wined and dined me, took me on nights at hotels, bought me expensive gifts (coat, handbags, perfume, a new iPhone – my first one ever) and lavished me with attention. He also warned he hated public PDA but would sometimes indulge a public handholding (hmm). 

Also, should I have picked up on the fact that he told me his super successful nurse ex had always wanted him to buy her a Coach handbag and, thus, he bought that for me – about a month into our dating and a week after I’d slept with an old fling because I’d still not slept with Benoit. Was my body telling me I wasn’t ready to settle down yet? (Or did I just have a problem or both? Probably both!) To read that story, click here entitled, ‘the Air Force Guy who almost ruined my marriage.’

Did Ben think I was ‘wife-material’ because I’d held back on sleeping with him? To be fair, I’d never done that before. That being waiting. I was a very ‘give-me-everything-now’ sort of person.

The gifts (the Coach bag and matching purse) and the perfume (to be fair, I've always worn Chanel perfume since I could buy my own). I love it and Michael says it smells like 'old lady perfume' (which is not a compliment). And if my new iPhone selfies are anything to go by, Ben should have had an idea of my 'housekeeping skills' as I clearly had a pigsty bathroom and made his once very very very very tidy apartment super messy (I'm guessing that was a pre-gym selfie from my bad side in which I most definitely only saw all my flaws and jiggly bits despite working out with a personal trainer two days a week and six days at the gym total). (I told you I liked to eat!)

The fact that his ex was a nurse will come into play later as well – and the fact that every one of his siblings bar one (the brother) was married to a medical professional.

Plus, Ben bought me this expensive new Calvin Klein coat (as mentioned). I was with him when he chose it with him pretending he was getting something for his sister before our visit. I later found out his sister was a US size 4-6 whilst my body was a US size 10, so this was implausible but he ‘omitted the truth’ and said that we were ‘roughly the same size’ (reader: we were never the same size). I thought this surprise was super cute but in hindsight, is it? This was also the start of him dressing me like a doll in things he wanted. He did have good taste, but I went along with it.

Our Washington DC trip and my new coat. Maybe he legit didn't think my options were sufficiently warm but maybe it was something else too...

I fell in love with his big, warm, impressive Lebanese family. His nephews were gorgeous, intelligent, and precocious. I loved watching him wrestle with his nephews, how much they loved Uncle Benny, how he built a snowman with them in their garden (of their massive, gorgeous house).

My family had been that close once and now we were all spread out between different states and countries and it evoked a nostalgia in me. I could see myself being part of this world (like Ariel! LOLs).

The in-between Christmas and New Year time with his sister and her family in Kentucky. I still miss those nephews (there were three gorgeous, amazingly behaved, clever boys). I loved how much they all loved each other and how they embraced me too. Since I taught, I had time off and since he was military he had time off. Otherwise, most Americans are lucky to have a couple of weeks off per year.

He was intelligent and talented

He was different from anyone I’d met. I was impressed by everything he did. He seemed to be able to do any handyman thing and fix anything, including the time my computer power cord stopped charging my computer. I did not have the money to buy a new laptop and he fixed the power inlet bit and it worked again! His brother once told me of the time he made some sort of elaborate whirring Christmas lights set up out of old washing machine parts.

His credentials were impressive. We both had Master’s degrees. He was clever, resourceful, a reader, financially well-off, came from a family of siblings who were even better off than he was (a point of contention to him as he felt never good enough), and had grown up in a wealthy family  – not that that mattered but people who grow up like that are different, they see the world differently, they approach life differently. They know how to make wealth, invest, and delay gratification.

He seemed perfect. He was attentive, thoughtful, caring, and kind. I was utterly smitten. Although I hadn’t felt an initial strong attraction physically, the way I had with others, he was handsome (just not my usual type – some said a more Jason Statham look when I generally liked the more pretty-boy look) and he grew on me – and I did utterly fall for him.

After my official boyfriend lineup of the past: high school sweetheart, Captain Thor, and the boyfriend I’d rather forget (the Stella Adler Academy Actor, Dorian), Benoit seemed like an utter dream. Even though I had dated some lovely men (and some not-so-lovely ones), I had this impression that people didn’t love me when they knew the real me, where I could be myself, and it felt as if I’d finally met someone who accepted me for me. 

Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash – not Benoit and me in case anyone gets confused…I’m not blonde and he didn’t have hair!

Swept up like a romance

I felt like I was being swept up in a romance novel (not that I read anything of the sort at the time – I was a serious literature major after all) with the attention, gifts, and compliments. Falling so hard and so quickly in infatuation (and love), of gaining his affection, only made the losing it portion of our story feel all the worse. This, however, is only the beginning: the rosy good bits.

But before I could get to this stage, when we’d only gone on a date or two, I went on a date with another man and didn’t tell him. After all, I couldn’t give up my frenetic attention-seeking ‘player’ tendencies so, so easily.

Coming up next, the guy I went on a date with after meeting my first/ex husband.

Don’t forget to check out the other seventy-two 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.

Have you ever had a string of bad boyfriends/girlfriends and been swept up by someone who seemed too good to be true?