#80 WHEN MY EX/FIRST HUSBAND DROPPED A BOMBSHELL
When Benoit decided to change our life on a whim without consulting me
I learned a pro tip this week from the very hilarious Stevie Martin (from
) about “doing voiceovers.” Of course, she’s a professional with real equipment and often does voice-overs in studios but I’m now recording this post with a towel over my head. Yes, a towel. That was her tip. Also, she said, please do not suffocate.Does it make the sound better? Do I need to invest in a proper microphone and then put tights in front of it so my Ps and Ss don’t sound so crazy? Why do mics cost £100? Maybe I could branch into ASMR, which is something I adore and my husband thinks is slightly weird. The second husband, not Benoit. Benoit didn’t know about ASMR as it features in my post-marriage life.
Also, in my last voiceover, which is so long I didn’t listen back to every section but the bits I did listen to made me sound A) drunk and B) that I had a lisp. Neither of which is true, by the way, in case you’re wondering. I rarely drink these days. Left that behind in my binge-drinking, black-out drunk uni days.
For those of you who read it the old-fashioned way (with your eyes) – I am more voiceover PLUS reading with my eyes at the same time sort of person (unless it’s an audiobook, which I like to listen to whilst pottering around) – then you won’t have noticed the slurred speech, so please disregard.
Thank you to all those who actually read the last thing or skim-read it. I promise nothing I write again will be that long.
Originally, this chapter was going to be about ball dress shopping in May 2015. Funnily enough (or not as the case may be), I planned all of the main chapter titles out a year ago, so I have pre-planned ideas and notes for just over one hundred and twenty main chapters not including present-day snippets and any ideas that occur to me in-between.
I have no idea why past me thought this chapter should be devoted to dress shopping as I’ve bored everyone enough with my body image issues that were exacerbated by my ex so you can, perhaps, imagine how ball dress shopping for this military ball made me feel. But I had a good night anyway – thanks to my girlfriends.
The military ball also coincided with what would have been my ten-year high school reunion (class of 2005). I attended Berrien High School in Nashville, Georgia, not to be confused with Nashville, Tennessee, of course, or any of the other American Nashvilles (according to Google, there are at least sixteen Nashvilles in various states). Dr
once asked why all Americans use cities and states and this is why!Michael and I plan to go to my twenty-year reunion next year (way to make me feel old!) and I’m having visions of Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion, except I am happy with my life’s direction and I don’t need to pretend to have invented Post-It notes or anything but you know, having a rom-com that may be accepted for publication would be a pretty cool thing. Can I manifest that?
Also, this YouTube movie trailer was posted fifteen years ago. Sigh! I’m older than the YouTube! No, really, apparently it was invented in 2005, which probably meant I didn’t hear about it until 2006 or 2007. I was around for the era of “Charlie bit my finger” (2007) and always late to the party.
I legit liked most of the people I went to high school with and thanks to the old FB I can kinda see what most people are up to. I’m going to be more amused by how my very Yorkshire husband handles people from South Georgia. When I brought Benoit to Yorkshire, I had to act as translator because he could barely decipher a Yorkshire accent and I wonder if Michael will be able to comprehend a Southern American accent (Georgia, USA, not to be confused with South America or anything).
Was Benoit having a mid-life crisis?
Before our marriage imploded, Benoit was clearly having some kind of mid-life crisis (or just past quarter-life?) after his father’s cancer diagnosis in 2015. Because he didn’t communicate with me – well, he did but not deeply like this sort of thing – I don’t fully know what went through his head.
Was it that he’d never make his father proud in the ways he’d hoped? How he’d hoped to make his fortune and prove something? Reach some kind of life milestone? Either way, I think his father’s terminal diagnosis and Bob dying of an unexpected heart attack threw him, which now in my mid-thirties, I can understand but then in my late twenties, I couldn’t fully.
And this year, almost a decade later, I had practically the exact same thing happen to me. A close and much-loved family friend, Derek, who had been the fittest, healthiest eighty-two-year-old I’d ever met (he still played squash and tended to his bees in retirement, just shy of his eighty-third birthday that he was due to spend in Mexico with his beloved wife of sixty years, Jenny) suddenly passed away of an undiagnosed heart event, devastating all who loved him, and then a month later my Father was in hospital and died also unexpectedly (except my Father hadn’t been in peak health for a while), perhaps of something that could have been curable – but you can’t A/B test hospital care or death.
I remember crying in my Father’s lap about Derek dying, Dad stroking my hair, and saying consolingly he knew how much the Leyland family had meant to me. I remember hoping I’d have my Dad for as long as possible, joking with him that he had to make sure he was around. He said he’d have himself cremated and shipped back in a box to Jae and I – and I said how we’d want a service to celebrate his life but he had to live at least another decade more. And life had a laugh and took him too at only age seventy. I was thrown into a depression, which was unusual for me.
But, I suppose, unlike Benoit, I felt I had a life partner by my side to weather life’s storms. Michael and I (as I’ll talk about in the chapters about him) have faced many deaths together (as sad as that sounds) and we have emerged more resilient and more united each time. I joked to Michael that I need to name one of my chapters “Four Funerals and a Wedding” (except I think for us it has been at least seven funerals).
Benoit retreated into himself and he was lost to me. Was I not a good enough partner back then? Was our bond not strong enough to weather life’s true trials? Were our personalities fundamentally different? The answer is probably yes to all of these.
Either way, whether I was fundamentally bad at helping him through grief or he just perceived it as so, he didn’t think I was a supportive partner. I tried to be supportive yet I didn’t know how. I was young and selfish.
That August, I threw a big, much-talked-about birthday party for Benoit turning 35 (he was 7 years older than me) with the help of many of my girlfriends, especially Megan, who did lots and lots to help me pull off such a party that I think had over sixty or seventy people, lots of alcohol, lots of food, lots of party streamers, and lots of cake!
I think the food was a potluck situation, which is something I love about American culture because it’s easier and you get a lovely variety of food.
A career change is in order!
After our Lebanon trip in July 2015, Benoit decided out of the blue to leave the US Army.
I was devastated. Unlike most partners, he didn’t have the, “Oh, darling, I’m thinking about such and such. What do you think?” type conversation. The decision was done and he was cutting our time in Germany short by one year, a life that I had grown to love, and had thrust us into the unknown.
I had just started the new school year at the Department of Defense Kindergarten as a teaching assistant (it was essentially a private school for contractors and government officials but free to military families), setting up the classroom with the amazing Kindergarten teacher I adored, and getting to know the new students (which sadly, didn’t seem as loveable as the students the year before because I’d grown very attached to them – I don’t know how teachers do it!). This class size, however, was much smaller than the previous year so we were, perhaps, in for a slightly easier year – or at least a smaller “train” when travelling down the hallways.
The job was one of the loveliest jobs I’d ever had and the lead kindergarten teacher was such a joy. She had been in the job for over thirty years. She’d met her husband, the absolute love of her life, at thirty-nine and they had a much doted-on daughter together. She was in her sixties when I worked with her and was close to retirement. She and her husband have retired to Florida after living in Germany for decades together.
I emailed her in September 2015 explaining what was going on and asking for general advice as she was so wise and lovely. She had been such a caring friend during the time I worked for her and I’d wanted to work with her as long as I could (as I said it was one of the most enjoyable jobs I’d had and she was a huge part of that):
Even though we were supposed to remain in Germany until the following September (2016), when we returned from Lebanon, [Benoit] decided he wanted to leave the Army completely and in a hurry. One of the many reasons was that – since it was Lebanon and he has the highest security clearance – it took the Army six months to approve his leave to see his sick father. His father was on his third round of chemo and had had his bladder, kidney, and urethra removed before [Benoit] was able to see him, and it's conceivable his father could have died in that time.
I fully understand that it must have been heartbreaking for him not to see his father immediately when he wanted to but I didn’t understand this need to change our lives completely or be geographically further from his Lebanese family by moving Stateside again.
Another reason is the pay, he can make much more in the civilian world, and he feels he's behind the curve age-wise for the position he is in, especially with the many recent cuts in the Army.
I don’t recall what the cuts were now but I think during wartimes they promote people through the ranks quickly and then sometimes they downsize officers in peacetimes or you get cut after you get to the rank of Major and you can’t go to Lieutenant Colonel and beyond after that so either you stay for years in the ‘lower’ ranking until retirement which leaves people feeling unfulfilled in their career or you finish early and get a civilian job.
Benoit seemed to have had a fairly distinguished military career with extra brownie points from having been enlisted and his additional languages and aptitudes, but perhaps he didn’t fancy his chances and the slower salary progression.
As you can imagine, as the officer ranks get higher there are fewer opportunities available. In 2022, for example, Statista notes there were 27,000 Captains, 16,000 Majors, and under 9,000 Lieutenant Colonels, which demonstrates that not all Captains will become Majors and even fewer people are successful as you go up the ladder to Colonel and there are only 15 Generals.
Long story short, [Benoit] has put in his packet to leave, it has been signed, and we will be moving away between December and February. We are not sure where yet but he has a career conference with a headhunter in November and will be interviewing for some positions in addition to his applying to places in Europe and the Middle East.
I guess at least I knew his perceived reasons. Of course, when he was away for a whole month that November, he didn’t want me to go with him even though I could have and he acted irritated when I tried to get in touch with him or asked him to send pictures of his outfits.
I decided that if I wasn’t going to put the Kindergarten teacher in too much of a bind (I did really but she was able to recruit one of the mothers from the previous year’s class into the job and I think it worked out better – she was older and more reliable than me anyway), I would just work the university teaching job two nights a week instead of spending my final time there overworking and exhausting myself, which, of course, Benoit wasn’t a fan of. He wanted me to work as much as possible.
I recall him losing his shit (technical term) at me because I’d been offered a short four-week class over winter (a usual semester at this university was ten weeks but in the past, I’d been used to teaching sixteen-week classes at traditional two-semester universities) and I was unsure if to take it – even though I think it paid something like $4,000 – because I didn’t know how I’d have time to fit all of the grading papers and the logistics of the class and all our social engagements and seeing people. I don’t recall him ever shouting at me like this before but it was the kind where spit froths from the corner of one’s mouth about how he worked so hard and did everything for us and I couldn’t even do this to help out financially.
I may have even cried but I’m not sure because I wasn’t much of a sobber in arguments or at any time really. But as it turned out, the admin emailed back and said it wasn’t possible to squeeze an English class in such a short space of time and had retracted the offer anyway. If I’d been smart in my marriage, I’d perhaps not have been so open about sharing everything. If I hadn’t wanted to do it, I didn’t even have to tell him about the offer, but that was my stupidity.
It has nothing to do with you!
I remember Benoit saying something along the lines of why did I care what he did for a job or where we lived because it was nothing to do with me, as if I was just some sort of accessory that was not on the life journey with him.
Clearly, all was not well in the state of Denmark.
I couldn’t articulate it then but I had an utter sinking feeling. I felt so sad, angry, upset, annoyed, but I also knew I couldn’t express myself honestly and fully to my husband because he didn’t like that. He did not like me to have true feelings. I had to align myself with whatever he wanted. I did try and express myself but any protest fell on deaf ears.
He said that I didn’t like his erratic military schedule anyway and he’d be home with me more and I hated how the military owned his life and he could be called away at any time for any length of time and whilst these things were true, I had wanted to be consulted about major life changes. If I’d dreamt of him leaving military life, it hadn’t quite been like that.
Trying to come to terms with change
After the initial shock, I tried to be supportive and think of the possibilities. Maybe we’d get to move to Europe or the Middle East and I could still be close to my English family. Maybe we’d have more adventures and it would be lovely. I wasn’t happy about the sudden change but I was trying to be resilient.
Benoit said that he found out he could use the GI Bill to do another Master’s degree and it paid $1,500 a month plus he could get VA Disability benefits plus his new salary and that we would be set and not have to worry about money. (Not that I ever worried about money then.)
Oh, I don’t think I ever mentioned that once before he knew me, Benoit got shot by a ricochet-ing bullet in Afghanistan when he was working with special forces and I used to run my fingers over the bullet scar on his back. He was incredibly paranoid, probably had PTSD, and when we’d go to a restaurant or be in a room, he’d want to sit in the corner to observe everyone. Before we could talk or enjoy our meal, he’d clock and memorise all the faces and keep a keen eye out for any changes in the environment. He couldn’t relax in that way. He was always worried about safety and control.
I said it would be nice to settle and live in a place for five to ten years and have my husband home every night. I was trying to frame it as a positive thing. I was talking about having my husband home for the future children we’d have. (All garnered from voice notes which I did revisit sparingly for my own peace.)
Recruiting for a new job
The headhunter he worked with loved him. He set him up that November with multiple interviews. The conference was held in the DC area and companies came to the conference to interview candidates. Benoit had multiple interviews and multiple companies made him offers, all for eye-watering six-figure salaries.
I really wanted him to take a job with Michelin in Texas of all places (sigh) because it had the potential to move to France. He even did part of the interview in French. I remember him telling me about it as if they were testing if he could truly speak as many languages as he claimed and were surprised at his proficiency.
I said he could apply to a company in England (with hope of hopes he’d listen). (But he always said English jobs didn’t make enough money, especially if they only paid about eighty thousand pounds per year.)
He was very excited about a company in Minnesota and I was very much not excited about that. The downsides to this company were the retirement benefits, he said – though the salary was excellent – the cold weather, and being so far from our families.
Listening to my voice notes to him at that time and his replies, as much as he thinks I wasn’t supportive, I really was.
I said to him something along the lines of how when weighing up options he seemed to keep returning to this Minnesota option and he seemed most excited about it and I thought he should go for the job his heart was pulling him toward. I tried to advise that if there was movement and promotion potential, he would perhaps be happy with this choice. He said the company seemed to love him.
I tried to say that Minnesota had publishing companies and maybe I could get into publishing, which had long been my dream, but I never knew a way to get there. I was trying to be excited about the future and he promised how we could build a house. I let my imagination run wild with the kind of house I could have in snowy suburbia.
Plus, a small handful of really cool people I knew including a close friend and fellow military wife Megan and one of my old professors Dr Kinney had been from Minnesota and it seemed to produce lovely, intelligent people. The average household had a decent standard of living, no huge rich-poor divide, social programmes in play, and so forth, all maybe rare for American cities, so I tried to be on board.
I said to him that he wanted to work for that company, so let’s make it work.
He accepted the job and that’s where we were going!
Thanksgiving and “the big announcement”
This was my turn to spend a holiday – Thanksgiving – without my spouse. I had a lovely dinner at Jayde’s house with another military husband whose wife was also away. The four of us had a lovely potluck dinner. I made the dessert, Jayde and her husband made the turkey and potatoes, and the other guy made the veg. None of us had children at the time (Jayde later did as did this other officer and his wife).
I also had Halloween alone then with another party at Jayde’s house. I drove Benoit to the airport at the end of October for his month-long absence. I also had dinner parties, time out with girlfriends, threw a baby shower with Orienna and Victoria for another friend, Marta, and a pumpkin festival in Ludwigsburg with Amy that autumn.
The day before Thanksgiving, I posted this on my Facebook:
“I'm excited to announce that yesterday my husband accepted a job as a Project Manager for an automation company in Minneapolis, Minnesota that builds robots – he will be in charge of teams of mechanical engineers (like him) building things. We will be moving in February. I am sad to leave behind my life here in Germany, especially my amazing friends, and my ability to travel with ease to family in England, but I look forward to what life has in store for us.”
I got lots of likes, naturally, and comments of encouragement.
Schloss Neuschwanstein visit
In October 2015, Benoit’s friends visited Germany from California – we’ll call them Thomas and Ava. We met them in Munich for Oktoberfest and we visited Neuschwanstein Castle with them. I remember having to take last-minute leave from the Kindergarten job to go on a random weekday but we had a lovely time.
It wasn’t my first visit as I’d taken Dad and Grammy there the summer before.
Ava and Benoit had attended Penn State together and were both in the engineering programme. Ava was herself from Pennsylvania. I’m not sure how they’d met but they both frequented Bob and Karen’s scotch and cigar lounge and had become friends somehow.
Ava looked as if she could be a model – or straight from a 1940s pin-up and she even did sort of victory roll hairstyles and wore gorgeous gowns from time to time in her photos. And she liked to drink scotch and smoke cigars, so she was an interesting character. Gorgeous but could be one of the lads sort of girl.
I’m not sure if Benoit ever harboured secret feelings for her but she was one of those people that you meet and even though they are perfect you can’t help but like them anyway. She was kind, intelligent, humorous, and interesting. Her husband, Thomas, was from Yorkshire. If I remember correctly around Harrogate and since I hailed from the North of England, too, that was a point of common interest. Ava was around my age and Thomas around Benoit’s age.
It was the first time I’d met them but they were a magnetic power couple. I think they are both engineers of sorts and I want to say Ava is part of the SLT at her company now in California and she juggles that with still looking fabulous and having two gorgeous children (but they didn’t have children back then) – and travelling the world together.
She was probably another mirror held up of perfect womanhood to Benoit, a mirror I didn’t reflect, and more ways I failed at being “the perfect wife.”
Even looking back on the photos, you can see Ava and Thomas’ body language is strong with each other, arms firmly around each other in photos, leaning towards each other, whilst I can now see Benoit starting to pull away.
In conversations – and this was before he was recruited for and interviewed for positions – he made “I” not “we” statements. He wanted to learn to become a pilot. He wanted to go back to grad school. He wanted to earn more.
He wasn’t envisioning a future for “us”; he was thinking of his own future. I just didn’t see it at the time. How I felt or what I wanted didn’t factor into anything.
Coming up next, visiting England and moving to Minneapolis, Minnesota followed by another chapter on when my first husband left me unexpectedly…by text.
New here or haven’t followed from the beginning, why don’t you catch up on the other seventy-nine 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 have a sudden life change that you weren’t prepared for? How did you handle it?
Need to catch up on the Benoit saga? Check out some past chapters:
Great story. Hope you expand it into a book at some point as it seems chock full of experiences that many women can relate to and more details would help in understanding how you came to be where you are now. Love your writing, pics, gifs… All of it. Thanks for sharing your story.
Great post, Elaine. A little short… 😂