#81 VISITING ENGLAND TO SAY GOODBYE AND MOVING TO MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA WITH MY FIRST EX/HUSBAND, AKA THE FOURTH PERSON I MET AT STARBUCKS

The worst Valentine’s Day and other adventures

Thank you to my new subscribers. I now, rather shockingly, have over 200 subscribers now (Yay!). Sometimes I’m baffled as to why anyone wants to read my very long waffle but I’m very glad you're here and you do (or at least those of you who open your emails and open the app).

Many of my Subscribers have come over via recommendations from

Maya Misikir

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, whose newsletter Life Matters I love. You can read her latest piece here to find out what’s going on.

Also, I discovered a couple of new publications: First,

Katie Delaney

of Learning to be Me. Have loved everything I have read of her incredibly well-written, honest essays, and she does lovely narration, too. To me, she has one of those cool “podcaster” or “TV presenter” voices.

Second, Men on Pause via

Sodaksteve

who restacked

Chris Andrews

' essay “A Dream, Not a Dream” and I was hooked on this devastating tale of a man who had loved her and ended their relationship so coldly and I empathised so much, having been left myself, but definitely not like that. Her comment on my last post made me realise that new subscribers may need a recap of what I’m doing in my Substack.

It’s sort of like a long How I Met Your Mother style ramble meets Sex and the City meets Bridget Jones Diary (I hope) and is all about the people I dated and one I married who led me to my final husband, Michael. He has pinky promised he cannot leave and/or divorce me so we are officially set for life. Thanks for reading.

I’ll record a voiceover at a later time. It has been a horrendously busy time at work and I have a scratchy, sore throat and have been sick for a week and a half. I’d normally take sick leave, but I didn’t have the time and couldn’t leave my team to do the astronomical extra workload that comes at this time of the year. Sigh!

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Quick recap: Right now, I’m writing about my first husband Benoit, AKA the fourth person I met at Starbucks, a Lebanese-American US Army officer who took me to Germany with him. The beginning of the story starts at Chapter 72 with how we met, how he was the most different, and intriguing man I’d ever dated and how he really seemed so into me – and that was intoxicating. Who doesn't want to be wanted and promised this magical future of rainbows and unicorns?

I talk about our first date (Chapter 73), the other guy I went on a date with (Chapter 74) after I’d met my first husband, then there was also another man I slept with from my past (the Air Force Guy – Chapter 52) so maybe I wasn’t quite ready to leave my party-girl messy past behind.

“We” bought a house in Columbus, Georgia (Chapter 75), where Benoit was stationed as an officer at the time, and life seemed good. We got engaged, and secretly married (Chapter 76). We moved to Germany, attended my cousin Pam’s wedding in England, and then the cues of all the ways to be “a good wife” came in (spoiler: I wasn’t cutting the mustard) (Chapter 77). We seemed to have a lovely life in Germany (Chapter 78) with friends and travel, tinged with some not-so-nice bits, the cracks started to appear (Chapter 79), and then he dropped a bombshell (Chapter 80) after our Lebanon trip: he was changing careers without consulting me and we had to move back Stateside, a year earlier than planned. I was, understandably, upset but according to Benoit, not allowed to be upset because my thoughts didn’t really matter.

Benoit and I in our early days. We met in 2012. A couple of photos I took of Benoit around this time: one in Prague and one at the headhunting conference that year (2015).

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I recall feeling utterly exhausted with managing the movers.

Military life has its benefits in that they pay people to come into your home, wrap everything up in paper, pack it into large cardboard boxes, which then go into wooden palette boxes, and put it on a shipping container to go across the ocean to your next destination.

However, you have the logistics of managing the dreaded ‘moving stickers.’ You had to write down an inventory list of roughly what was in each box, including what breakable or precious items you had that you could claim for if they got damaged. You also had to decide what you would take with you until your shipment arrived on the other side because you were about to live out of two big suitcases and a carry-on each for however long it took for your stuff to arrive.

Of course, that’s a generous allowance but I was trusting that shipping container with photographs and some very dear books (dear as in precious and not all expensive) and I didn’t want some mishap to mean that our belongings got sunk to the bottom of the ocean somewhere (which is rumoured to happen).

Goodbye, bleak-looking but actually very lovely German house in Weiden!

Many seasoned military wives (of which I was not one) had furniture or boxes that contained several of these moving stickers from various moves. Many families simply did not want to deal with the logistics of packing everything and thus decluttered and downsized before every move, which is how I came to own a KitchenAid (may it rest in my imagination as Benoit presumably still owns it) and how Benoit managed to flip cars. Sometimes, military families just wanted rid of the items. It was The Home Edit and Marie Kondo before those were things. I was always far too sentimental and far too much of a mini hoarder to part with things! I’d already done that, after all, with Brittany and my mother before I moved to Germany. I could only expect to do so much.

Before Benoit and I moved to Germany – relatively speaking – we didn’t own that many things and now we’d acquired Polish pottery, Waterford and Nachtmann’s crystal, lots of furniture, and an extra car (after the extraneous ones were sold as the military only ships – quite reasonably – one car per person). A three-bedroomed house worth of stuff plus a massive basement where I hid things that didn’t make the main house look tidy and organised. Although if you’d asked my first husband, his narrative is that I always kept the house looking like a pigsty and I never did anything but lounge around eating bon bons (which is some kind of 1970s American phrase that I can’t fully fathom).

Benoit, to be fair, didn’t leave me all to it. He wasn’t that sort of husband. He was a hard worker. He worked long into the night and once we no longer had furniture to sleep on in our Weiden home, I went to sleep at Victoria’s and I think he slept on an air mattress so he could get up early and run more errands.

There was paperwork and logistics of shipping his Camaro and my Audi Stateside. I think he shipped his car to a port closest to Louisville and I shipped my car to Brunswick, Georgia so that I could combine that trip with visiting my Mum, stepfather, and baby sister in Florida and then Benoit would fly down to Tallahassee and we’d drive up to Minnesota together. A bit of a faff but that made sense to us at the time.

The realities of an international move...and this was just one floor. And look at the beautiful, healthy plants I had to rehome!

A busy, fun Christmas season, a season of gifts

December was a busy month with lots of engagements: Christmas markets with Victoria and her husband Mike; a Christmas party with Erin and her husband Andrew (not to be confused with the person who was Benoit’s best friend I named ‘Andrew’ whose name wasn’t really Andrew); a Christmas party hosted by friend Emily and her husband – what would I do without Facebook memories, eh? And this was just in two days of festivities. There were definitely more. But I gained energy from being around friends so I definitely loved having as many social engagements as possible.

One of the many lovely engagements... These ladies are all very tall. I don’t normally look so vertically challenged.

I also had a lovely night celebrating Orienna’s birthday with Victoria and Emily (and our husbands) wearing Ninja Turtles masks, which I’m sure O got for her husband. My friends always made the best food and we always had such delightful evenings.

I hope the masks are sufficient disguises!

Some other events that December: a music Christmas carol concert with Jayde, Christmas markets, cookie decorating parties, evenings with friends, formal military events, Saber coffees, and a Lebanese dinner organised by Benoit where we filled one entire side of the restaurant with loved ones (and Benoit brought bottles of his Scotch collection to use up).

There were four or five massive tables filled with people. Jayde even pulled me aside that day, hugged me, and burst into tears. I truly adored these people who had been part of my life during this time.

Plus, there was even a farewell party thrown for me at Victoria’s house where everyone bought me a beautiful gift to remember them by. Victoria who is an amazing designer, hostess, baker, party planner, and so much more even handmade the paper flower decorations, the cupcake cases, the party bag gift tags, and even the labels for the tea-bag-shaped cookies/biscuits for the afternoon tea party.

I have never felt so loved and special as I did that day. And each friend selected a beautiful present for me to remember them by and, of course, I still have them dotted around my house – like the Weiden mug from my neighbour Melissa, the German cat-shaped Käthe Wohlfahrt smoker from Erin, the pottery house from Megan, the handmade framed German map from Jayde (with a heart on the town where we all lived), the beautifully bound copy of Huckleberry Finn from Lena (a neighbour who was a lawyer, former Rutgers professor, and who taught at the uni as I did), the earrings and journal from Amy, and so many more gorgeous things. This was, of course, before I became a “no gift” person.

How gorgeous are all these things? I still have three of those paper flowers on my bookcase.

Side note: it was at a Regensburg Christmas market that very year that I ran into the Chinese American doctor again, which baffled my first husband.

Benoit even took me on a last-minute trip to Luxembourg and Strasbourg, France. I was so sad to leave but it was a memorable last few months.

Strasbourg and Luxembourg - In Luxembourg we stayed in the poshest hotel with Hermes soap.

Preparing for Benoit’s return

When Benoit had returned that November after interviewing for several companies, I’d got the house ready and had a ‘congratulations’ sign waiting for him with three new whiskeys to try – and a card.

That was part of our staircase in the Germany treacheroushouse and boy was it trecherous because the staircase curved and there were massive gaps that led to a drop to the basement below. Good job this isn't another kind of story...being pushed from the top floor onto the cold tiles of the basement below. The card I wrote to Benoit, trying to be excited about the move. I would say I miss my little Audi but now the car Michael and I have is much fancier and has screens in it. Touch screens. It is insane!

Thank goodness I’d had Victoria’s dog, Killian, to dog sit that winter to keep me company when Benoit was away for a month with little communication outside of how irritating I was for wanting communication.

Venturing out into Weiden to get my nails done and buy the whiskey from Vom Fass. Then dog sitting for the most precious Killian. She was the best behaved and trained dog I ever met. Also my Germany front door had been blessed. I think it's a Christmas think. One time my neighbour Melissa came over with a towel on her head (hope she doesn't hate me sharing this) because she'd locked herself out of her house). Once you shut the long bar that was a door handle, you could only re-enter the doors with a key. The doors were on the side of our houses.

I had my nails done. I asked my neighbour’s sister, Chelsea, who was a hairdresser to curl my hair the night before (one of my lovely Germany ladies

Lisa

has her own newsletter, too) so I could look nice for my husband when I picked him up from the airport. Everything had to be perfect for his return, of course. How 1950s of me! You can see from these very sad/pathetic/whatever photos how I was contemplating my outfit, my hair, the shoes, if going braless or not would make any difference in my husband finding me attractive (of course, no, nothing would have made a difference).

Was I ever going to be thin enough or attractive enough for Benoit? The answer is definitely no. There's a free photo for foot fetish-y people. I totally missed telling the story of that one time someone photographed my feet (for their "portfolio") and then asked if I'd wank him off with my feet (even I didn't go for that one). Maybe if I'd been sleeping with him/interested in sleeping with him but no, I declined.

He came home with arms laden with presents for me, too. He showered me with a whole host of gifts to dress me up in, including a couple of handbags: one from Kate Spade and another from Tory Birch with a lovely bright orange wallet/purse to match. A pair of brown leather Vince Camuto boots, a Barneys New York wool coat, and a few other things that I can no longer remember.

I thought things were repairing in our marriage again, harking back to the old times. The gifts were all beautiful and lovely quality and I still wear and use most of the items today and they have remained in good condition. I often look back and think, was he showering me with things out of guilt? A last-ditch effort? A last hurrah? I’ll never know. Much of his behaviour remained then and now rather inexplicable.

The bar was low for my husband making me happy. He was paying attention to me. I thought he loved me and thought of me when he was away and that was brilliant. But it was really the end…

I thought all was okay. We were tired from a busy holiday season and an impending move, but I remember Benoit and I going to the Commissary, which I guess is like a giant Target combined with a Walmart and a mall. It has a mix of high-end designer and high-street brands (think Michael Kors and Martha Stewart, not Hermes or Prada) and basically has all the American goods you’d ever need but on the base and in Germany at American prices.

Benoit had sneakily had a friend buy a Chanel perfume set for me and drop it off at the hotel so I could have a gift to open on Christmas morning (or maybe during Christmas Eve which is my family’s tradition as Grammy’s paternal grandparents were German).

Side note: classic Chanel and the new Coco Mademoiselle are my favourite perfumes and what Michael calls ‘old lady perfume’ but whatever I still love it and he has to put up with it.

So, even during our last Christmas (obviously unknowingly my last Christmas), he was still surprising me with things.

This time, we were in the hotel on the Grafenwöhr base which was much, much nicer and better than the Vilseck base one we’d stayed in when we first moved to Germany (image in this post).

I had no idea our marriage had roughly fifty days left.

Much nicer Graf hotel than the Vilseck one!

You changed our life and didn’t care: that time I poured my heart out

When Benoit was away interviewing for jobs in the US for that month, I found that I emailed him some of my feelings in a long email.

The correspondence is reproduced in the bonus material here.

I say ‘correspondence’ but it was one-sided. I emailed him my feelings and he did not reply. My bid for attention was rebuffed but I did feel better for having said how I felt. I didn’t realise by displaying human emotion, I was helping put the nails in the coffin of our marriage, though.

A couple of images of an event we went to that December, wearing my new coat from Benoit.

I usually reserve bonus material for paid subscribers but it’s free today because it’s Christmas season and all – and because this week is my busiest week of the year and I am feeling frazzled and overwhelmed. I also have to work on Boxing Day this year because China never takes a holiday (except during Lunar New Year) and I will not stop moaning about how shit it will be to work on Boxing Day.

Bonus material, for anthropologist-y-minded people (or even literary people), is like the “primary source” material of my life but I’ve added dates, commentary, and context sometimes.

Here’s a bit of what I said:

Merely four months ago, you made a life-altering decision on your own without my input – to quit your job – and acted like that was personally fine. You still don't think it was wrong that you never even bothered to talk to me about it but it showed me I didn't live in a partnership where my input was valued. I lived in a dictatorship where decisions were made for me regardless of how I felt about them.

You know or I hope you know I would have sided with your happiness if you were unhappy in your job but the fact you didn't feel I was even worth having a conversation with me cut deeply and hurt me more than you could know. And it's even worse that you cannot see it from my perspective, that you continue to argue that you did nothing wrong at all.

Every single friend I have is shocked that you'd make this decision alone. I know you do not care for their opinions, but despite all their husbands' faults, they would never have made this decision alone.

Even [redacted friend’s husband] when he has been unhappy has told [his wife] I want to quit [the job], but they've talked through the decision together. [Another couple] too. Everyone.

They see their wives as partners and discuss major decisions with them, but the fact that you didn't speaks volumes, and I'm afraid whatever it says about us it is not good at all.

It does speak volumes and also to my delusional and self-righteous arseholery. Their husbands didn’t have “faults.” Most of them still have solid, happy marriages and partnerships so I was the one who had a “faulty” husband in a sham marriage.

In that same email, I basically outlined all the ways he hadn’t supported me, how he made me feel alone, sad, undervalued, unattractive, and deprioritised. How my wonderful Germany ladies valued me and saw me for who I was and how much they meant to me. Ironically, he accused me of being unsupportive to him!

Even in the rain the little town of Weiden was beautiful! You could walk to town two ways from my house: one way that took you trough the countryside and through a beautifully landscaped park to this bit of the old town and the other way that passed the train station, the post office, and went through the new town bit to get to this bit of the old town!

When my first husband left me, I felt utterly blindsided but I shouldn’t have been really. He’d been showing me all along that he was unsupportive, unreliable, and not a man of his word. Just as he expected me to be this idealised version of myself when we met (his pedestal version that was a figment of his imagination and not a real, human person with feelings), I expected him to be the upstanding, honourable person he had presented to be. Neither reality was ever going to happen, for either of us.

BONUS MATERIAL: EMAILS TO BENOIT

Despite having therapy, I haven’t unpacked so many of these moments as they were too painful to face, even a decade and a happy marriage on. I am married to someone who is the antithesis of my first husband, who is just more than I could ever hope for in truly seeing me and accepting me for who I am (more on that later), but the tentacles of damage from my first husband had their chokehold for a while.

They wrapped around me and told me I was all the bad, worthless things Benoit thought I was. That I was only good if I changed and became some magical perfect version of myself that was never attainable. And my therapist said I was giving my ex power that he didn’t deserve, power through the years still to hurt me and control me, and I needed to snip those threads with all my might, not least of which because I am truly married to someone wonderful yet the grip and single thread remained for far too long.

Our final time in England

We left Germany on 29 December 2015 with a million suitcases in tow. Thankfully, we were renting a car and Benoit was amazing at spatial awareness and fitting things inside cars.

After he flew to Minnesota to get us started, he rented me a car from 10 January until I was going to move to Minnesota on 23 January. Selfishly, maybe, I wanted as much time as humanly possible with my English family because I had no idea when I’d see them again.

I was moving away from any family I knew and away even from Benoit’s family. We had people in Florida, Colorado, Kentucky, Rhode Island, England, and Lebanon and we were going to the frozen North of America – where all the people I knew from there were absolutely lovely but it felt very isolating – and I was very much not looking forward to it.

We spent time driving around everywhere to see my niece, my Dad, my sister, my brother-in-law, Grammy, Grandad and Grandma, and my cousin Pam and her family as well as my cousins Leigh and Michelle.

We stayed with Pam (she has her own story about getting the room ready that involved a mattress not being delivered on time by John Lewis but she spared us any of those details at the time).

We had New Year’s with Grammy and the cousins. All seemed okay. I mean, Benoit was fairly sociable but he did spend time doing some odd things such as my cousin and her husband (Pam and Dave) were redecorating their dining room (before they moved to their very posh Saddleworth house – I mean I always loved this house that they lived in that January in 2015) and Benoit decided he’d spend his time helping out and doing the DIY, which in hindsight was odd.

I can't find the full photo of Benoit and I. I cropped the photo because I thought I looked fat. Benoit had conditioned me to think that because this dress from my friend Kate's boutique had been difficult to zip and I had gained weight that I was disgustingly fat and my body was unacceptable (all madness really). I remember Pam taking that photo of me and me being unhappy with how I looked. Photo of two of the four OGs (the four original granddaughters, i.e. those of us who were born in the 1980s before the 00s babies came along) with our Grammy.

My cousin Pam was pregnant with her first in her second wave of children (i.e. her oldest, Callum, was in his late teens and then she had two younger children, Harry and Eva). It was like he was not only not spending time with me but also not spending time with my family. So, instead of going to a ball pit (also known as ‘soft play’) with my niece Caroline and I and visiting my Dad that one day in early January, he did that instead. However, we went out for a family meal for Pam’s birthday the next day.

Pam's birthday meal plus some cute pics she sent me of her pregnancy that year.

Was he trying to avoid me or just trying to do something physically as he thought about his dying father, thousands of miles away? Again, I’ll never know.

He did go to Temple Newsam with Grammy and I and it was odd that that was the first stately home/National Trust property I’d taken him to in our entire marriage because I love that sort of thing and he found it interesting and unusual.

Fur boots from my old brother-in-law (Benoit's brother), new coat and bag from Ben. Image with my beautiful Grammy who will be 89 next March! (For context she was 79 here – practically a spring chicken!)

On his last night before he flew out on the 11th of January, we had a big farewell family meal at a family favourite Italian restaurant, Bellavista, and my niece, who adored Uncle Benny, insisted on sitting next to him.

He could have stayed in England longer with me but he chose not to.

My niece at the farewell meal with some of the presents we got her that year. First pic of her looking shattered. Wand pic with my late Grandad Mike in the background.

I also have memories of being distinctly sad to find out about David Bowie dying that year (10 January 2016) and Alan Rickman (14 January 2016). Of course, Benoit gave me no sympathy when I shared my odd sadness. David Bowie more so because my Mum and Uncles were huge fans and he formed part of my childhood. And Alan Rickman for obvious reasons and because Truly, Madly, Deeply was one of my mother’s favourite films and we watched it together and cried.

We used to be rather emotional together when I was younger and learned to become a lot less emotional – for the better or worse I’ll never know. I still privately sob at films and books, though – but in a room with people I’d definitely try and hide it.

Benoit would occasionally send me an update of what he was doing, a video of a house he was interested in for us, or a gym selfie, but I was too absorbed in enjoying my family. Maybe that was always my downfall.

I normally wouldn't 'reveal' so much but this pic with Caroline and Benoit where he has on one of her tiaras is too precious. Obvs I like to preserve people's identity and I think I said that he was tall and bald anyway! He actually wore a wedding band sometimes which was a miracle really and just as he was about to take it off, too...

The final goodbye with Germany ladies

I think to get the final flight paid for by the US Army, I had to return to Germany so Benoit had arranged for me to meet my girlfriends Orienna, Megan, Jayde, and Victoria in Nuremberg, have a final night in a hotel, and enjoy a last meal at my favourite sushi restaurant. This was the end of January and I was due to arrive in Minnesota on the 24th of January. Jayde, in a surprise selfie photo, announced she was expecting her first child, a daughter. We were all surprised and delighted and that night I felt wrapped up in love with some of the beautiful ladies I’d shared my time with in Germany.

Arriving in Minnesota

Arriving in Minnesota at the end of January was a blur. We moved into the basement rental house of a professor temporarily and I remember being utterly depressed. I mostly lay in bed all day, wondering how to pass the time as Benoit went off to work, drinking the American sensation drink La Croix which was not delicious, and generally had an air of what a disappointment I was.

The snow!

I remember having some vague argument with Benoit about how I should do things, get out, explore things, and I sort of asked how when we were in suburbia, far from anything, and I had no bank account and no car and it was snowy and depressing. I cried in the bathroom of the basement flat and Benoit shouted at me because the “landlady” might hear me being unhappy and that would sully the perfect lovely image she had of him because apparently before I’d come they’d had lovely chats and she barely even spoke to me, even though I’m sure I’d have found her interesting.

Sometimes I ventured up to the baby gate in the kitchen and petted her dog.

I found a random email where I’d helped Benoit fill out a questionnaire the new company secretary had sent me via a realtor about our hobbies, preferences, and types of neighbourhood we were looking for. A local realtor helped find a new rental house that Benoit didn't really love (not big enough, not attractive enough, not the right location). It had three normal bedrooms (one of which had a corner door that I set up as an office, in which I imagined myself penning a novel – a vision that was never to be) and a mezzanine level that could be an extra bedroom or one of those extra living rooms and two bathrooms.

One of these was the actual rental house. Renting was all very strategic on Benoit's part.

We slept on an air mattress at first as our household goods hadn’t yet arrived. I remember discovering

Jojo Moyes

for the first time, reading a copy of Me Before You that I’d picked up at the airport, and crying my eyes out. Maybe I was crying my eyes out at the story but also at not really being loved.

Reading and tidying was all I had to do all day without a car, in the dead of winter, snow everywhere, and an angry husband who had started a new job.

We went out for dinner with some of his work colleagues and I was so down that I imagine I did not impress anyone with my sparkling personality. I don’t think I was actively rude but maybe not engaging.

We went to an ice palace sculpture place with another couple. It may have been ice skating or ice slides? It was pretty and lit up very magically but I was not feeling magical. I was so far from family, so unaligned in my marriage, and away from all the Germany ladies I’d loved.

This was the office. Everythign was weirdly very brown/beige with wood trim everywhere and I very much was not in love with the wood trim and the whole vibe of it all.

Darling Valentine’s Day

Once on a visit to Oldham’s Toby Carvery (don’t judge that I genuinely love a carvery, and it doesn’t have to be a posher pub style one) one year, they were renovating and selling off all the ‘random crap’ they shoved up on the walls. Benoit had been fascinated by some servant’s bells from a former house in the area (probably Victorian-era) mounted on a piece of wood on the walls and asked the manager if he could buy them. He said yes! Benoit bought them for the princely sum of £10. We always planned to put them up somewhere in our future home.

By some miracle, I found a low-quality photo of their extraction from Oldham, England; however, you can barely see the bells in question.

Not having the suitcase room or a way to transport it to Germany, we’d left them at my Dad’s house. I think before moving to Minnesota, I transported them somehow from England to Germany to Minnesota. In the intervening time, the wood had become rather unsalvageable so Benoit and I on Valentine’s Day went to Home Depot to get some new wood for them and for some coat hooks that I’d bought somewhere with lovely ceramic bits on the end. I don’t know – something I’d hoped to turn into a welcoming coat rack in an entryway. Neither project was completed. Benoit got the bells. I still have the pretty coat hooks somewhere.

We went to the very American Chili’s for dinner because everywhere seemed absolutely packed. It had been years since I’d been in the States now and was fascinated by all the things I’d forgotten about America like buzzers to wait for your table but also the new things that happened like iPad-like things on the table and ways that you could pay now. (let’s not think of how many people don’t wash their hands after using the toilet.) Like self-service tills. You barely had to interact with your server now. You could order and pay and do everything right on the table. How fun and odd.

I think we had an okay time at dinner but I saw that he bought me a card and there it lay on his bedside table. So much of our marriage now a question mark.

I remember there being a bedside table by that point and no longer the air mattress on the floor. Somewhere in that time our furniture had arrived and I’d set up our house. Washed all the dishes. Organised things. Put them away. Set up all the rooms. Shoved bits I couldn’t be arsed setting up into massive closets.

It was definitely not the most attractive of rentals! I hated the black/brown sofas that Benoit had already had when we met and the black plates he already had. I set up house not that he'd ever have appreciated that. I remember almost giving myself a lung problem from removing some odd stain from the master bathroom shower with oven cleaner (hack from the internet). No pics of our Valentine's date probably says it all...

I tried very subtly as not to anger him ask if he thought that maybe we could, you know, have sex like other married people and it being Valentine’s Day and all and probably because I probably hadn't been touched since we had another miserable time in the basement flat where I was on top and he was lying back and thinking of Lebanon. Or his dying father. Or what a disgusting disappointment I was.

Oh, and thanks to apps having your data for, like, forever I can see that we had sex once in January on a Tuesday. That time just described where I felt miserable and predatory yet again. We had zero sex in all of February or March (to be fair I think I was in Florida with my mother – more on this later). Three times that previous December, our final time in Germany.

And seven times in April (goodness knows what was happening but also I’d suddenly dropped twenty pounds – I’ll obviously tell you why it ramped up in another chapter), once in May, and once in June. I was going to say twice in June, but spoiler, that second time marked on my calendar was Air Force Guy. (Double spoiler: I had sex over fifteen times in July and you’ll find out with whom later. Obvs not Benoit.)

As you can imagine, Benoit did not take this suggestion lightly. He got angry with me. I’m sure I slinked off and cried silently somewhere. I didn’t realise I was mere days away from the impending day. The day Benoit declared we were over.

Like anything, it wasn’t about the card or the sex, perhaps. It was a bid for attention. The only attention I got during that winter was bearing the brunt of his anger and frustration.

Before I finish this chapter, I’ll leave you with some random segments and thoughts that haven’t yet fit into part of the narrative in other chapters.

I barely have any photos of this time but I was even cooking something for when he got home from work like a dutiful wife. And we were drinking a bottle of wine that we'd bought by the caseload after a wine tasting party hosted by the Kindergarten teacher's friend. It was the most delicious wine ever. Remember this wine as it'll feature later.

The pigeon-cafe anecdote

Once in Amberg, Germany, Benoit and his friend and I – and this was a friend I adored who was kind of lovely to me – went out for breakfast at a cafe. It was like the La Pere frühstück in Weiden and I, thinking I was some kind of Disney princess, decided to feed my crumbs to the pigeons. I want to melt into the floor at this memory because in hindsight it was stupid and embarrassing.

The waitress from the cafe came outside and explained to me, “Please don’t attract the pigeons” waving her arms warningly. Back then, in our early German days, Benoit just laughed at my absurdity. If I embarrassed him or the friend, they never said, but I am sure I turned bright red and in memory I can still feel myself blush. I was trying to be kind of birds and not attract a swarm of cooing pigeons which when gathered en masse, sounds rather threatening.

Ballet barre class torture with the sister-in-law

Back before we left the US, I went to ballet barre class with Benoit’s sister. She was my favourite sister-in-law and I thought she was amazing at everything. Beautiful, kind, full of life, an amazing mother to three gorgeous sons (with a nanny), wife of a surgeon, successful in her career in her own right (part-time). I looked up to her and wanted to please. She said she had a free pass to her ballet barre class. I was lifting three days a week at this point, doing regular cardio, so I thought why not try this class? How hard could it be?

OMG! I have never endured such torture from such tiny movements. Childhood me imagined that I’d be the sugar plum fairy in The Nutcracker, dancing around to a videotape of London’s Royal Ballet, imagining I was as graceful and beautiful as them. (Thanks, Mum, for forever letting me live with the nickname “fairy elephant.”) I thought that the forty-five minutes of this class were never going to end.

What was worse was I was sore the next day from this class. My sister-in-law was hardcore and she sympathised with how hard it was. Was it a test of endurance? I’ll never know.

Random fun: US Army soldiers

I love this soldier's Instagram account. Tyler Butterworth who is apparently part of the Virginia National Guard. I can’t tell if this guy was or is a “real soldier” or just a former one who is now an internet personality. Either way, he did remind me of that time in my life. This is a funny video of him trying an MRE (meal ready to eat), which I was never brave enough to try even though my first husband did have some in the basement.

butterworthdasyrup

A post shared by @butterworthdasyrup

Did my ex truly like women? What about the men around me now?

Ever since I read this piece by

Celeste Davis

, I’ve been pondering this point. What men do I have in my life that genuinely like women? My first husband adored his mother and sisters and respected them. He respected some of my friends who were women but did he truly like women? He certainly didn’t respect my opinion and didn’t genuinely like me or my contribution. I only served a function in his life and that was to serve him and his needs – and look a certain way or maybe that was only in the end.

Some of the men I’ve dated have liked women and been truly lovely humans. Even some of the men who weren’t good to me seem to have gone on to be good husbands and fathers. Anyway, it’s something interesting to ponder at least. Do the men in your life truly like women? If you’re a man, do you?

The men who like women and the men who don't. Yes we can tell.

My forever husband, Michael, now genuinely likes me as a person. He goes to my sister, his mother, my cousin, my Grammy, and me for advice often. He talks to me about everything. He’s a loving, thoughtful partner because he likes women and he respects their contribution. He’s probably unintentionally feminist and believes in basic things like, you know, human rights and the right to healthcare and better conditions (things that Republican men like my first husband aren’t always about, perhaps unwittingly – maybe that’s just American life?).

But for now, this bit of the story is about Benoit. Thanks for reading or listening.

I hope you have the absolute best holiday next week, whatever you celebrate, however you celebrate. Love and best wishes always!

Coming up next, when my husband left me unexpectedly via text.

New here or haven’t followed from the beginning, why don’t you catch up on the other eighty 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.)

Do you have past memories that when examined show up in a different light? Should I have seen the end of my marriage coming? Maybe but I felt utterly blindsided.

Also, I think I was in denial and felt devastated that someone could spend time being married to me and love me less over time, like I was as broken and defective as Dorian and Captain Thor had made me feel (as they, too, were unable ever to love me). Was High School Sweetheart and his suffocating love the only person who could love me? If so, what was wrong with me? Was I inherently unloveable?

Need to catch up on the Benoit saga? Check out some past chapters:

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

#73 THE FIRST DATE WITH MY EX/FIRST HUSBAND

#74 THE GUY I WENT ON A DATE WITH AFTER MEETING MY FIRST/EX HUSBAND

#75 BUYING A HOUSE IN COLUMBUS, GEORGIA AND GETTING ENGAGED: SHOULD I HAVE NOTICED THESE RED FLAGS?

#76 THAT TIME I GOT SECRETLY MARRIED: OUR COURTHOUSE ELOPEMENT IN GEORGIA

#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

#78 MY GERMANY LIFE WITH MY EX/FIRST HUSBAND

#79 THE CRACKS THAT APPEARED WITH MY EX/FIRST HUSBAND

#80 WHEN MY EX/FIRST HUSBAND DROPPED A BOMBSHELL