#77 A NEW ADVENTURE BEGINS: STARTING LIFE WITH MY SECRET NEW HUSBAND, THE SUBTLE CUES OF ‘HOW TO BE A GOOD WIFE’, AND ATTENDING MY COUSIN PAM’S WEDDING
#77 A NEW ADVENTURE BEGINS: STARTING LIFE WITH MY SECRET NEW HUSBAND, THE SUBTLE CUES OF ‘HOW TO BE A GOOD WIFE’, AND ATTENDING MY COUSIN PAM’S WEDDING
Our first trip to England together and meeting my family
I’m going to start voiceovers again because the lovely Dr
suggested it and said that there’s something intimate about hearing a writer read their own words, so you are all welcome to my very muddled sort of mostly American but English-influenced accent. I also did voiceovers on these posts: The “I hate Elaine club” (#25), The diary of heartbreak (#26), that time I f*cked my married professor (#27).This post is long (surprising, I know) so if you’re reading in email, I suggest opening the chapter in the app. Also, since it is long, I suggest listening to this post on 2x speed and you can enjoy me sounding like a chipmunk (actually my favourite way to listen to audio – sorry authors who pour over every gorgeous word, I still appreciate your prose because I read along, too.)
Thanks also to reader,
, who said he didn’t mind my long posts because he viewed them more like Podcasts.I’d only ever brought my High School Sweetheart (HSS) to England with me (or he flew over to meet me here and we flew back to Georgia together one summer) and then Benoit.
HSS and I had been kids then, very young undergraduate students with him studying physics and mathematics and me studying English and Literature. I also had a stick firmly up my arse. I was uptight, nagging, disapproving. The fun police. When HSS came to England, I’d already been there about two months that summer and was running out of money. HSS came over and wanted to do all sorts of fun trips but I just claimed I was tired rather than admit I didn’t have much left to spare. (HSS had a rich architect father so had the funds he needed. His whole family was absolutely delightful. I still think about them from time to time but I imagine that they do not think of me with any fondness as I shattered his heart. Don’t worry! He’s happily married and successful now. I think with a baby? I wrote about that here. See the section about Olivia!)
During our trip to England, highlights included me being teetotal sober and HSS really taking advantage of being legal drinking age in the UK and getting utterly shitfaced, puking up a lot, and trying to get off with my older sister, Jae, which when I heard about I was rather indifferent so that made me realise that maybe it wasn’t the right relationship for me. See, I wrote about how all emotion had been wrung from my body, even when later he tried to get back at me by sleeping with my friends (one felt guilty and confessed to me and I was like, “I know. Have at it. He’s good in bed.”).
HSS and I also did have some lovely trips out including when family friends Jenny, Derek, and Barry very kindly paid for our hotel in London (they were horrified when we said on a visit were going to wing it and/or stay in a hostel) and we had a jaunt to Oxford (we took the Megabus) as well as days out with my Dad, sister, grandparents, cousins, childhood friends, and so forth at various National Trust Properties and places like Saltaire and Harewood House with Grammy.
Introducing the family
So, of my dating life, that’s all my English family had seen. The young man I’d lost my virginity to (that sounds creepy – we were both young – I was not a “cougar” although more power to those ladies – I’ve always liked older men) and then the man I married (first-go-round). Thankfully, they (and most people) didn’t know about the ‘wildness’ in between.
I’d messaged my older sister, Jae, from time to time about people I was dating and she’d kindly commented that ‘you go through men like dishwater’ but she was the only person who probably knew (and my Mama). Also, joke’s on you, Jae, as you know from your New Orleans days, Americans don’t hand wash dishes.
(OMG! Have you seen those meme videos about the world being horrified about the British people who don’t rinse dishes? Who just, you know, leave soap on them in the draining board. I’m not on board – no pun intended – with not rinsing dishes but equally, the best thing Michael ever got us was a dishwasher. Does this confirm I’m a bit ADHD? Or maybe tangents are a normal brain thing?)
Previous chapter note
In the previous post (about mine and Benoit’s elopement), I maybe came out of the gate hot and said my ex lied about things, but of course at the time of marrying him, I didn’t know that. I observed in phone calls from time to time him telling “white lies” but when you’re smitten, you don’t pick up on cues that go against the “this man is everything I wanted and wonderful” narrative.
My older sister and I grew up as only children. She in our Father’s house and I in my Mother’s house (we had different mothers). We had parents who believed us and being different in age, we weren’t likely to get into blaming matches over who broke the crystal vase. Maybe children from big households have to develop the mechanism for white lies. Lies often are for the purpose of avoiding consequences but Jae and I always had fair parents and they weren’t prone to “punishments.” More like conversations. We were “kept in line” by their expectations for us and not by groundings or physical correction so that’s my theory as to why Jae and I didn’t really grow up as dishonest children. But maybe there are other reasons children learn to lie about things.
Benoit grew up in a household with siblings and cousins (not in his house, of course, but there was a huge network). Maybe he learned it through his military training (again, special forces and military intelligence). Either way, it didn’t matter. I thought everything he did was wonderful. I was on a big adventure with my new life partner and we were going to make it for the long haul. After so many failed relationship attempts, I’d finally chosen right!
Side note on new Subscribers
It is very exciting that I have even more new subscribers. Yay! Thank you. Welcome!
I never know how people find me. I guess it’s the mysterious Substack algorithm for those who use the app.
When I get a new Subscriber, I always check out their profile to see if I fancy subscribing back. Some people don’t have posts and those are the gold dust Substack people, right? Most of us on here are writers and I adore this lovely community. It costs nothing (unless you upgrade) to subscribe for free to someone and who doesn’t love subs?
I’d love to support (with paid subscriptions) so many more of the talented writers around here, but the reality is I can’t, unfortunately, but I always try to engage with the posts I read. Popping a heart on also helps my memory so I know I’ve read it.
That’s how I subscribed to Scott Thigpen (or
) an Austin-based illustrator with some impressive credentials and funny stories edited by his lovely geriatrician doctor wife, Heather. They have at least one cat based on their posts (but I’ll assume they don’t own an actual hippo despite a cat-hippo pet comparison).And how I subscribed to
(name anonymous), a 20-something London-based gal who is writing little hilarious shorts about her real dating life that’s happening in real time (unlike mine that is thankfully happening a decade or more ago and also by contrast, in rural Georgia, USA).I haven’t seen another Substack that explores dating life exclusively. That’s not because they are not out there I expect, but that I have only seen a small slice of what’s on offer. So, I loved reading what it is like to be in your 20s now. Some stuff seems cute (the things young people get up to) and some stuff not so much (some seem to favour 50,000 message exchanges instead of going on, you know, actual physical dates). How’s anyone supposed to have a relationship or regret hooking up if you just send each other memes?
I did something unusual with these two – and they may think I’m slightly unhinged – but I read and commented on every post on their Substack. A) Because their posts were hilarious and well-written, B) because their posts are short (unlike mine), C) because I had the ability to read all of their posts because they haven’t yet written a hundred or so (unlike mine). Check out their Substacks!
I very much appreciate my readers because it will probably come as zero surprise that I have written enough words to fill at least two novels (maybe three). Thousands and thousands of words, so if you’ve read, listened, skimmed, supported, etc I am very thankful.
There are other newsletters that I read that give the odd dating mention like Dr
, who is a gorgeous Italian (also millennial) PhD who often writes of her brave adventure moving from her native Italy to Australia for love. By all accounts, it was a good move despite the culture shock and her fun in navigating living with her boyfriend’s family.The talented and beautiful Poorna Bell sometimes discusses her dating life from the perspective of living in London in her 40s post-widowhood and coming from a place of knowing what she wants, what she accepts, and having firm boundaries (love that for her). She also writes very powerful pieces that are not dating-related and as one of the celeb Substackers and journalists, she’s well worth a read.
When Thig subscribed to me, the first post I read was about how disgusting cockroaches are and it had me cackling. I mean having lived in Florida and Georgia, I’m no stranger to the ick that roaches give. I didn’t go out of my way to kill them because I felt badly but one time I did wake up to find I’d squashed one in my sleep, those gross big ones that come inside for food and shelter from the rain, and it’s an experience that gives one the official term of “the heebie jeebies.”
There was also this folklore told about the VSU science lab about how the Madagascan hissing cockroaches had been abandoned and forgotten (not sure how true this was or how ethical) one summer (I think all the lab critters had been taken home with people or something except these) and they actually survived. I looked at them in their box, goosebumps rising up on my arms, and realised, yes, they can survive anything then got back to learning about aggregate fruits and which toothpaste brand actually kills germs.
Non-Americans confused? Yes, I studied Victorian Literature, but American institutions make you take all sorts of classes to be well-rounded, which is why I took biology, geology, geography, ethnomusicology, art history, theatre, Spanish, politics and government, even the dreaded mathematics with my undergrad degree (my poor maths teacher probably wondered how I functioned at my low-level understanding of anything she taught and I spent so many hours in her office trying with all my might to understand something that I think she gave up and gave me an A for effort).
And now back to the actual story…
Moving to Germany
A year after we’d met, Benoit and I were moving to Germany. I was excited for this new adventure and new chapter of my life, the prospect of travel, of love, of life’s new direction.
The problem was missing my family. I’d already lived for close to two years away from my Mother, baby sister (Hannah), and stepfather by this point but now I’d be thousands of miles away.
My Mama has never been an emotional blackmailer of any kind and never once discouraged me or even put the burden of saying she didn’t want me to go. Hannah clung to me like a barnacle when I was saying goodbye. I was sensitive to this fact that I’d left my English family and moved to Florida at the age of ten so it felt poignant that I was leaving her at that very age too. Leaving had always broken my heart and stuck with me. Was I dooming Hannah to this fate too? Thankfully, Hannah is very ‘out of sight out of mind.’ She loves for me to visit but overall she is just a getter on with life sort of gal. Love that about her. But when she was younger, she was very attached to me and I adored her (still do but you get what I mean – now she’s 21).
Packing for the big move
I had moved most of my stuff into our McMansion (I just think this word is funny) but I still had bits and bobs left behind at the townhouse apartment I shared with Brittany. Mum and Brittany helped me have a big declutter, which for me at the time was incredibly difficult as I’d grown very attached to things since moving from England at a young age. Everything was precious to me but even though I knew the military would move absolutely everything we owned (and pack it for us onto a shipping container to be ferried over the Atlantic along with Benoit’s Camaro), I knew I had to downsize some things.
Brittany and I said goodbye to our townhouse apartment where I’d lived on and off for a couple of years with her (with her seeing a side to me she wasn’t all that fond of) – and she was onto new adventures teaching at a university in Milledgeville, Georgia, former home of writer Flannery O’Connor. Of all the people I’d dated, she thought Benoit was good for me, that finally I’d chosen a good one.
We said our goodbyes to my family and friends. We visited Benoit’s sister in Kentucky. His mother and younger brother and family were all visiting from Lebanon so we had a lovely few days there and by this point, I’d fallen very in love with his family too and their wider circle of friends.
On that visit there, we’d even had time for a little ‘wedding planning’ with my Mother-in-Law (not sure if she knew we were officially married already). We viewed Louisville wedding venues, talked to florists, and tasted cake, all for the kind of wedding budget that would be unfathomable to me. Because, naturally, we planned to ‘do the whole wedding thing properly’ down the line. We were planning a big wedding with a guest list of over two-hundred people. (When I married Michael, he had the smaller family, but with Benoit, my family/friends guest list would have been much smaller than his!)
Flying from Louisville to Charlotte to Baltimore to Amsterdam to Frankfurt and a bus to the Army base
We checked in six bags which we’d have to live with until our ‘household goods’ as they were called arrived. The whole thing was exhausting, exciting, and more travel than I’d ever done over the space of however long it was. By the time we reached Frankfurt and we were told that we had to wait hours before getting a bus to Vilseck and that bus would take about three and a half hours, I almost lost it. I was so shattered.
I even tried to convince Benoit that we had to leave now and find train or do something because I could not wait more hours. He reasonably said that we don't speak any German and wouldn’t even know how to navigate a train station even if we could find one. We eventually made it to the on-base hotel.
I actually wrote everything out in a couple of emails to Brittany in a sort of diary format so I’ll post that as bonus material for my paid subscribers here. But as those emails total a whopping 7,000 words, I’ll leave that up to readers if they can even be bothered.
Here is a small snippet I wrote to Brittany about one of the many, many flights.
On one of the small internal flights I think I slept the whole time, but on another there was this man who had this really irritating hacking cough. It was relentless, every few minutes or less, and this horrible snot-wrenching-phlegmmy-disgustingness. The sound made my skin crawl it was so disgusting. My throat involuntarily wretched each time I heard it and I’m pretty sure it lasted almost the entire flight. I’m thankful I could neither see this man or woman nor was I sitting next to him or her. [Benoit] said I shouldn’t be so disgusted because this person could have throat cancer. That made me feel a little bad for the person, but when this hack happened again, not so much.
Yes, I feel for people who have cancer but I’d like to think this person was just sick and maybe they were embarrassed about it but it is still very gross.
Then another flight—I think the one from Charlotte [North Carolina]—there sat in front of us, this very large man—you don’t often see very large people on planes, and I felt sorry for him. [Benoit] made a comment—and like the cancer comment—I just said that it wasn’t nice to talk about him because maybe he was self-conscious of his size, especially because he probably got stared at a lot. I was right because at the end of the flight he made a sort of comment to the man who had sat with him about maybe he didn’t have to sit next to such a big guy on the next flight.
In hindsight, this interaction doesn’t bode well, does it? We were already tit-for-tat and lacking compassion for each other. Michael and I may have this sort of exchange after years of being together but always in joke format (Michael has an inability to be serious and always loves to get a laugh out of me) but we’d both definitely agree hacking coughs are not cute and I cannot stand anything to do with the dreaded word ‘snot’ or variations thereof. Also, I’m not fat-phobic and as someone who has felt larger, I have sympathy for people society deems as overweight. People who are overweight know they’re overweight. It’s not a surprise and often people are embarrassed about it and want to change it and it’s not easy to do that. Dieting is difficult and getting back in shape is difficult.
Becoming an American citizen
I talk about my final days in the US (sounds ominous) and becoming a US citizen too, for which Brittany helped me study for the test.
My oath ceremony included a room full of about two hundred or so people from all over the world (literally, some countries I hadn’t heard of plus one person from Lebanon who I didn’t see) listening to patriotic music complete with a slide show of “Americans” dating from the first Irish and English boats to the present, the national anthem and the pledge, a repeated oath chanted by all in the room, a speech on the projection screens from President Obama, maybe about our new duties as citizens, and some talk about the importance of changing our status in the social security office.
The first thing the officials did, however, when they entered the room was snatch away our green cards. You know me and attachment. I was strangely attached to that little card. I didn’t want them to take it from me; it’s like we didn’t have enough time together.
Then there was this bit where they called out every country represented in the room—in Alphabetical order—I thought it would never end and it felt like it took forever to get to U for the United Kingdom. That’s the trouble with England—there’s too many possibilities—England, Great Britain, the United Kingdom. I wasn’t sure which letter they’d choose.
I liked the little flags we were given. That’s probably what all my money for the application went on. Little flags. Stapled to the mini wooden pole. Then I asked some people to take a photo of me with my certificate, and I was done.
Here’s the citizenship photo. My Dad paid for my application. I think Benoit paid for my hotel and I thought having to get up before 7 am was torture to spend practically a whole day at the centre in Atlanta.
Getting to England
I’ll spare all the details but we settled into life at the on-base hotel for a few days and then took the train to Nuremberg where there happened to be some massive festival going on and we walked around trying to find a hotel. We found one hotel that had a single room with a single bed available but somehow a woman who had gotten a double but only needed a single swapped with us and we had our own room.
I decided to toast our new move with vodka-orange juice (no Buck’s Fizz on offer) except in my tiredness, I’d asked Benoit to take the cap off the orange juice and then shook it again, sans cap, which sprayed his bed with orange juice, which we laughed about but then I tried to dab the stains with water and a towel (unsuccessfully) and then realised the only option was to try and dry the orange stains on the white duvet with an ineffective hairdryer, which also didn’t work.
The next day we flew to Manchester via Amsterdam and I recall having to run through the Schiphol because the transfer times were too short.
We got lost driving without a GPS to find my Dad’s house in Todmorden but we got there eventually after about three hours when it should have taken an hour and a half at most. We had to upgrade the rental car because Benoit was a big man and would not fit in the Peugeot I had booked for us to rent. We saw Pam the night before her wedding as well as my friends Joanne and Kate.
Being late for the wedding
I booked a nail appointment the day before because Benoit thought chipped nail polish was some kind of sin (as in it denoted that the person in possession of offending fingernails was certainly “not classy”). I’d not gotten my nails done in Germany because of fear of mistranslation. And this was before gel polish was a thing (which is a miracle besides it sort of indenting your nails – or maybe that’s just me gouging it off with my teeth – gross I know).
The next morning we had to rush to get washed and ready, pick up our dry cleaning in a hurry, and I had to find somewhere that would do my hair in ten minutes, which we did find a lovely salon on the high street in Todmorden and Benoit gave a 50% tip. The only problem with disorganised chaos is we were going to be late for my cousin’s wedding.
Oh yes! This was also a quality Benoit despised in me. The fact I was practically always late for everything. Ironically, I am now on time for everything. I learned and grew. Was it because of him? Who knows? But back then, I was not on time. Oh no! And it caused a lot of tension. To be fair, cousin Pam and I used to share this quality except she didn’t grow out of it even though she’s in her 40s (LOLs – love her anyway but you can’t ever trust “Pam time” like if she says she’s 20 minutes away, that means she’s not even in her car yet). Here’s a snippet from the email I wrote to Brittany:
By this time [after getting my hair done] we were going to be fifteen minutes late, but I couldn’t do anything about that. We arrived just in time for the reception—and I say just in time, but I later found out that Pam had postponed the ceremony until I arrived—which still makes me feel mortified (yes, it’s true).
[Benoit] was too embarrassed to take a seat, so he lingered in the back whereas I just took a seat on the right side in the second row practically by myself. It was a small ceremony room, but it was lovely and Pam looked amazing. She just looked stunning. Her hair and makeup was beautiful.
Settling into early life in Germany
As I said in this post, I had been tired of dealing with all the things in life but hadn’t realised it. Being busy and economically uncertain is exhausting. Not having a life partner can be exhausting. I feel for all the people struggling with these things. I was there.
Resultantly, I was happy to let Benoit take the reins of everything. He dealt with everything, filled out all the paperwork, took care of all the bills, except our T-Mobile bill (this will come into play later). I didn’t realise that in letting him take charge of everything, which he seemed to want and be happy with, would also mean I wasn’t being a partner to him.
I’d also later learn that most military wives were pros at logistics. Seriously, some of them could have been sky-high-career PR people or executive assistants if they weren’t denigrated to moving every three-to-five years to re-start their lives, manage husbands, families, moves, paperwork, packing, social events, and so much more.
Being a military wife is no joke. I wasn’t cut out for the sacrifice of it but I didn’t know that at the time. And I think these ladies are often very underappreciated for just how much they do because they are often ‘non-earning’ – but boy do they work and manage all sorts without the luxury of financial independence. Plus, some of them are also expert budgeters and manage whatever their husbands bring in – the true 1950s housewife sort of model.
In the email to Brittany, I also talk about counting calories and losing weight because I’d reached my highest weight ever. It was amazing! In a year of being with Benoit, I’d stopped going to the gym six days a week, stopped being too poor to eat as much (you know ‘relationship’ and ‘happy’ weight), and had gained a stone, which was subtly told to me was not okay.
Also, it was not okay to look like a bog creature. I was being given subtle clues that Benoit expected his wife to be the Amazing Amy of Gone Girl fame. You must be thin (or as thin as your hulk frame can carry, Lainey), put together, well dressed, and under no fucking circumstances can your nail polish be chipped (that is just so so tacky and cheap – Benoit actually said something along these line about how he hated chipped polish. LOLs. See above.).
This was a bit before we left the States and we were in Kentucky meeting Benoit’s brother’s new baby and Benoit’s brother had the most perfect-looking wife and even after giving birth, not a hair was out of place. Again, there were subtle cues that this was what was expected of me. Sadly, I was never this sort of polished person. I’m always a little bit messy, my hair will always be that little bit unkempt, I’ll forget that my nail polish is chipped or my nail is broken. I’m too distracted by life and living. I always wanted to be one of these women but just as I want a super perfect tidy house, I don’t want to devote countless hours to these tasks:
I didn’t get to see the baby [Benoit’s brother and his wife’s] until later in the day, but he was precious and so small and I got to feed him. [Benoit] and I picked up some flowers that were planted in a teacup at the hospital gift shop, which was a pretty crappy gift shop and only a few balloon varieties to choose from. Inevitably, we picked a balloon that the baby had already received, but there were no other options. It’s amazing how [the glamorous former Miss Lebanon/TV presenter sister-in-law] can always look nice. Why do some people always look so together? [Benoit]’s sisters are like it too. Those “together” pretty people. I have those moments when I look together-ish—my hair is never in place—but I try, and then I have those moments when it looks like I was hibernating in a cave.
Take yesterday, for example, I woke up and [Benoit] mentioned that my hair was kinda sticking up all over the place because I’d left it in my side braid all night with hair clips in too. That plus my old, smeared makeup didn’t make me look together. Anyway, I digress. I just hope that I look okay after I have a baby, and that whilst I’m pregnant, I don’t gain a ton and have to eat only/mostly lettuce before, during, and after pregnancy like [glam sister-in-law]. I think I would get very tired of lettuce. I like hot food too. I don’t think I ever saw her eat chocolate once.
I was amazed that basically she seemed to eat nothing whilst pregnant and I was shocked how anyone could exist without eating chocolate. These standards are SO unrealistic for women to maintain. Some women are ‘normal’ and will not ‘bounce back’ like Victoria’s Secret runway models (didn’t one or two of them have babies five minutes ago and then pop back on the runway back in the day?).
I just knew I’d fail at this task and perhaps, that’s why I never did have a baby with him – or anyone.
Before I had my two jobs in Germany (working as a kindergarten teaching assistant and teaching university English classes at night), I tried to settle into my days with basically one friend and nothing to do, which, if I’m honest, was lonely and rather boring.
It seems like it’s a lovely idea to have nothing to do all day but read (and write) and now that would be a great idea for me because I have a social network but people need people and I was sort of floundering. And the fact I spent my days doing nothing productive (i.e. not making myself presentable, not tidying up, not having dinner on the table), meant I was displeasing Benoit.
Here’s something I emailed to Brittany:
I pretty much spent the day uneventfully eating leftovers, too much chocolate, a can of Coke, lots of water, some hot chocolate, and watching 30 Rock for most of the day wearing the same clothes I’d worn the day before and the same clothes I had slept in too.
[Benoit] got so upset and worried about me when my phone was dead and I hadn’t answered for a couple of hours that he drove home from his twenty-four hour staff duty (which he wasn’t supposed to do) to check that I was okay, and he was really upset and I felt he overreacted to the whole thing, but I guess he was worried (and I illegally combined too many elements of a sentence together).
He did bring me some hot chocolate for the Keurig thingy that he bought, though, so that made my night more enjoyable. And it was nice to be able to give him a hug today even if it only was for a few minutes. Just for the record, 30 Rock is less fun without you.
So, I didn’t answer my phone (because I was too lazy to go upstairs to charge it whilst watching TV on my laptop downstairs) and he got ‘so worried’ that he drove home. In hindsight, this is super controlling and possessive. A) Did he think I was having an affair with, um, the bin man? I didn’t know anyone yet or B) Did he think I had been murdered? Or C) Something else? What could he possibly think had happened to me that he had to drive home from work? And here in my naivety, I’m just like “oh I got to hug him” and “oh I got some more hot chocolate yay!” Also, I was never allowed not to have a charged phone ever again.
Here’s a random email from Noah (Starbucks Guy #2) which if I’d listened and paid attention to could have changed my life because I actually did work in marketing after I’d moved to England (in 2016) and it could potentially have been done remotely and started a freelance writing career:
You had mentioned your desire to get out of teaching and your other marketable skills. Well, you're an excellent writer – of this, I have no doubt.
OMG so sweet!
Have you considered getting into creative marketing for companies? What about working for marketing consulting firms where you could do research, writing, and/or creative writing for client projects? Or, working directly for one of those clients, in the marketing department at a large company, to help their products?
Why that would have been a bloody brilliant idea if I’d pursued it. And back then I would have been early to the game as the market was only just starting for this sort of content-based marketing. Sigh!
I think a consulting job in this area would be very exciting and challenging, and up to your abilities. What about looking at some of the top consulting jobs, like Accenture? They often do hire liberal arts majors. They look for a specific type of person along with their skills. Not necessarily having a certain degree.
I ignored the idea and waffled on about how I secretly wanted to write a book instead – big sigh. And it’s also taken me until this year to write a whole book so I’m very slow on the uptake (i.e. over a decade too slow). Four more books on the go! Maybe by next year, I’ll have written more but this Substack is shaping up to be about three books’ worth of content (word count wise) but from my very limited experience of writing a book (no doubt a shitty first draft), it’s hard work to keep dialogue, plot points, characters, etc on the go and very different from waffling on about your past and re-framing it.
But watch this space for when my personality evolves even more in the next half-decade or so. (I figure or hope these things have a half life as in it took me a decade to get to where I am now and hopefully only half that time to the next juncture.)
During this period, things seemed lovely. It’s a time I always remember with the air of the idyllic. We settled into a life of travelling, good food, and making friends, until I had one of the best networks of amazing girlfriends I’d ever had in my entire life.
Thankfully, I’m still in touch with most of them and they are the most beautiful, intelligent, warm, kind ladies. More on them later. Also, of course, I couldn’t have male friends. I could only know the husbands of my friends!
Benoit was a wonderfully attentive husband. My family adored him. Everyone counted me lucky. Our friends felt he did more for a wife than any husband did, and it was true. We adored each other. I didn’t pick up on the controlling undertones then or the tendency towards white lies (as I wrote about when we got married here).
But the Army life wasn’t without strain, the constant time apart and my dependence on friends and family for emotional support as my husband’s emotional support waned would leave its toll on our marriage.
I just finished
’ s new book I Do (I Think) and I probably needed this book back then. Maybe I wouldn’t have listened, though. She says (and let’s hope I transcribed and paraphrased it correctly as I don’t have the print edition):“A limitation of picking a potential spouse is we don’t know who they are on the first date” or “we don’t meet the whole person in the beginning.” It simply takes time to get to know people – and often you never get to know a whole person, parts of people are always unknowable. “You can know your partner so much as you know yourself.” Your partner can’t share of themselves what they don’t know and understand or can’t access – and parts of our own selves haven’t been accessed either.
I think there was a limitation in what Benoit let me see of him and what he knew of himself. I was also young and figuring myself out. I was thrust into a new kind of life, a new kind of role (that of wife), and I was trying to figure out what that meant for me and how I should behave. But equally, I was trying to reconcile that with the sort of person I was (certainly not a model for the 1950s housewife).
Allison also says:
When choosing the right person you have to see how people handle themselves (behavioural observation) to semi-predict how people will react to various things life throws at us.
When Benoit and I were in Georgia, our life had no complications. Our relationship hadn’t been tested or strained. Germany was the first time things had been tested as I was depressed when we first moved there because I only had a single person to rely on for all my social and emotional needs.
When I developed my network, I was incredibly happy but even in these early weeks, he couldn’t handle the contrast between the person I had been in Georgia versus the person I was evolving into in Germany until I’d finally “snappped myself out of” the low mood. Another red flag I didn’t spot. He wasn’t going to be there to support me unless I was the version of a wife that was pleasing to him.
Allison’s book notes when choosing a partner examine these things:
“Look at the evidence of how they behaved in other areas of their life.”
“Can I trust this person to meet my emotional needs?”
“If I’m merging finances with them, can I trust their ability to manage money?”
“If I want to have kids, what kind of parent would they be?”
“Is this person able and willing to compromise?” – it doesn’t matter if they don’t know how to be a partner and share their life with you
Avoid people who say they’ll change a behaviour and don’t, who seem to want to fill an emotional hole, and if they are possessive – outside of any abusive notions – and people who are consistently unfaithful
In hindsight, the evidence I’d seen is how he abandoned partners if they didn’t fit his needs. He couldn't meet my emotional needs. I’ll talk about finances later (but I stupidly put all my money into his accounts) so yes, he could manage money, but no, I didn’t have control of that money. Thankfully, we did not have children. He seemed good with children but my biggest fear was always being that type of mother who did absolutely everything and had nothing left in her cup for herself (which as I’ve observed is the plight of many women). Could he compromise? I wasn’t sure yet as we were following his life’s narrative. He seemed to lavish me with everything materially and do so much for me, but was it real or for show? I didn’t realise he was a little possessive, controlling, and jealous.
But I can’t stress enough that I thought everything was just rosy. I really did. When people are powerful and controlling, they do it so subtly that any blip outside of the ‘norm’ you explain away because they’ve shown you already that they are so lovely, wonderful, amazing, so divergent narratives ‘do not compute.’
Coming up next, a deeper dive into our Germany life together.
New here or haven’t followed from the beginning, why don’t you catch up on the other seventy-six posts I’ve written, including the one on why I’m writing these chapters in the first place – with the odd “present day snippet” of what is happening in my world lately. (Spoiler: things are much, much better.)
Did you ever think you were living in a fairytale only to discover you weren’t? Just me? LOLs.
Aww thanks for the shout out! So fun also to hear about the stories of your love life and how you got to the stage you currently are at- it’s all an adventure! :)
Wait, let me comment AS I READ before I forget things. First: omg a double mention? I am so honoured and listening to you was such a pleasure!! Really!! 2: clicked on every recommendation because I know I can trust your taste. 3: I often thought about my Aussie citizenship and how a lot of it was about sharing the values of the Australian people, which I did and still do (freedom, respect, fairness, and equality of opportunity). How did you cope with having to pledge allegiance to something you might not believe in? I am thinking individualism and guns... 4: hearing you mention the army wife expectations and the chipped polish deal is making me shiver. I guess it must have felt so different and 'secure' compared to your past dating life, more chaotic and where things happened as a consequence of your own choices. Now most choices were made for you and there were little negative outcomes, actually there was leisure time and the luxury of getting bored! 5: those are some HARD questions that Alison is asking and I am glad you addressed them (even years later). These are important conversations to have!