#82 WHEN MY EX/FIRST HUSBAND LEFT ME UNEXPECTEDLY…BY TEXT
Whatever I expected for my first marriage, this wasn’t it
The day my first husband left me, I’d been very unreasonably texting him multiple times in the day.
Not even unpleasant things.
Quick recap: Thanks for even more new subscribers. I’m Elaine. My close friends and family call me Lainey. I write about my (sometimes disastrous) dating history – that led to my second husband (hence Why We Met). Currently, I’m writing about my first/ex-husband, Benoit (AKA the fourth person I met at Starbucks).
Chapter 72: How we met – Benoit was Lebanese-American, a US Army officer, a former engineer, seemed super impressive, intelligent, and commanding; he spoke nine dialects of Arabic, French, and Dari; he was handy and could fix anything; he wined and dined me, chased me, and was different than anyone I’d met. I was smitten.
Chapter 73: Our first date
Chapter 74: I wasn’t quite ready to trust something new – and went on a date with someone else – he was very nice but I decided Benoit was the better choice. Choosing partners is complex, isn’t it?
Chapter 75: Our first house in Columbus, Georgia
Chapter 76: We got engaged and secretly married – I never understood why it needed to be a secret, though.
Chapter 77: We embarked on a new life but it was clear I wasn’t quite meeting his exacting expectations.
Chapter 78: We moved to Germany and I loved my life (but endured some not-so-nice bits, too).
Chapter 79: Cracks started to appear, ones I couldn’t pretend didn’t exist.
Chapter 80: He decided to upend our lives and leave his career without telling me, but I tried to be supportive. His Father was diagnosed with cancer.
Chapter 81: That time we moved to Minnesota and I wasn’t excited about it. Things got very rocky and we were both unhappy.
I hope everyone’s had a lovely Christmas and New Year.
I’ve been suffering from some kind of sickness/cold/burnout/rundown whatever-y for weeks but Christmas week was horrendously busy at the old day job.
I was definitely sulky I had to work Boxing Day and I miss working for a company that lets me just have “free annual leave” over Christmas (but equally, I make close to double my old salary).
This is obviously a character flaw in me because my poor husband (forever husband Michael and not Benoit) has to work all around Christmas and, thus, it’s his least favourite time of the year (as a postman).
Let’s hope I get back in the swing of things now that I seem to be getting over the worst of it.
Thanks for subscribing and, again, I truly hope your New Year is off to a brilliant start. I have resolutions of a sort but I’ve learned to approach everything in slow and steady increments as opposed to some big all-or-nothing change that’s bound to fail.
Let’s get back into the story.
I’d arrived at my Mother’s house in Madison, Florida two days after our “lovely” Valentine’s day. My Audi A6 was due to arrive at a port in Brunswick, Georgia. The plan was for me to stay with my family in Florida for however long (I think it was about a fortnight), Benoit would fly down to Tallahassee, meet me there, and we’d drive back all the way to our new home in Minneapolis, Minnesota in my convertible, sharing the drive, a big lovely husband-and-wife road trip montage.
Before I left Minneapolis, I made sure all the moving boxes were unpacked, our house was clean and tidy, everything put away. I’d gone to a new gym a few times. Benoit bought me a Garmin (because he insisted it was better) instead of the FitBit I’d wanted. My Polar watch and heart strap were due an upgrade as the tech was basic (because, you know, my being in shape was of vital importance) and I was very not in shape at the time because the weight of expectations was crushing me from the inside out and my only comfort seemed to be in food. And let’s face it, food is delicious.
Trying to break into publishing in Minnesota
Early February, I’d also gone to meet a publishing industry contact my Uncle Tim knew and met her for coffee.
She said without publishing experience, it would be difficult to break in (sigh). My uncle was disappointed that after all their years of working together, she was not more helpful. Perhaps, my depression at the time just made me less than impressive and sparkling company.
She told me about small presses in Minnesota, which was helpful, and I found that I could apply for internships which, with the financial backing and “security” of a husband, I thought I could do to gain the much-needed experience. At twenty-eight I felt a little old to be an intern but if I had to live in Minnesota, this gave me a glimmer of hope.
Minneapolis-St Paul is actually really lovely so I imagine if I’d been in a different frame of mind, I would have felt differently about it. Absolutely every person I’ve ever known from Minnesota (and I’ve known surprisingly many) is an amazing human – how is that possible? Seriously, they are like Canadians in how nice they are. My Minnesota friend, Megan, even asked her doctor mother to help us when we moved there as we shipped some boxes early to her house so we wouldn’t have to pack everything in the shipping container that could have gotten lost in the ocean.
But even before I knew my marriage would end, the prospect of being a sort of Stepford Wife in Minneapolis suburbia seemed like my idea of hell – again, not because the people aren’t lovely and the place isn’t nice but because I like to be within at least a two-hour radius of some family (and that could have been Benoit’s family or mine). And it just felt so isolated.
Family in Florida
Back to visiting Florida, I hadn’t seen my Mother, baby sister, and stepfather since 2013, when we’d moved away to Germany. It was now 2016. It was a joyful reunion and I was looking forward to having time with them.
My baby sister, Hannah, was so happy to see me, despite having her own bedroom, she insisted on sleeping in bed with me, not wanting to be apart, which was sweet apart from the fact she was in (and sorry for sharing, H) that teenage phase where teenagers smell like feet. But despite threats of she couldn’t sleep with me without showering, it was all good.
I remember Hannah, at ten years old before we moved to Germany, clinging to me so tightly, not wanting me to get in the car, not wanting me to move away.
Before the fateful day (not the above day but the one where Benoit ended our marriage), Mum took Hannah and I1 with her on a business trip to Cedar Key, a beloved childhood family vacation spot, where Hannah and I visited the sugary white sand beach in the crisp winter air and ate in a character-filled shack/cafe whilst our Mama went to meetings that were presumably very boring. (I think this was when she was working as the director of a chamber of commerce.) I didn’t know my life was about to change.
T-minus 24-hours to texting destruction
My cousin Pam was pregnant with Harry (she wouldn’t give birth until April 2016) and my cousin Michelle had just welcomed her first child, Charlie (19 February 2016), but I didn’t get the news (being in the States and not in England) until the next day (20 February).
Things I’d texted to Benoit that day: I asked why I hadn’t heard from him in eight hours. His news for me was general texts about clipping some receipts together (I don’t even know what this means – I guess I stapled them for some purpose? Maybe a reimbursement?) and him losing and finding his Mont Blanc pen, about how my Mum thought I should get a teaching certificate to teach primary school because it would be more useful (and have a retirement plan and time off in the summer). Benoit told me I hated teaching, and asked if I’d decided against pursuing publishing. I wasn’t sure. I had my heart set on publishing and I really did hate teaching.
He told me – and this is the kicker – the moment it all went wrong:
“And I can’t answer much I am in and out of meetings all day.”
Three hours later I randomly texted some pictures of my Mum’s screened-in front and back porches, saying how he’d like it here to enjoy his cigars.
I told him our friend Anna (my beautiful Chinese friend) was having a girl in May, and that Michelle’s new baby Charlie was born.
He ignored me for over twelve hours.
After messages asking why he was ignoring me went unanswered, I said I was turning my phone off. Benoit hated me being uncontactable. He suddenly chimed in about how he tried calling but couldn’t hear anything (can’t recall if this was true or not). Of course, by this point, I was panicking and thinking the worst because we’d never been incommunicado for so long outside of military exercises.
I asked what was going on, complained how it wasn’t “normal” to ignore your spouse, how it was not like I was spending too much money, so I had no idea what I could have possibly done. The fact that I lived in a cycle like a naughty child is rather sad.
He said nothing was going on. He went to the gym, back home, ate, and read. I said he hadn’t contacted me to say goodnight. I sulkily lamented that clearly, I wasn’t important enough to him to contact. Obviously, my language was inflammatory and very un-healed back then.
He replied: “You wanted to argue with me as if I am on vacation and you have no idea what I am doing. I had enough with arguments.”
Of course, any time he pulled away, I tried to hold on tighter, use my words to talk things out, get reassurance that would never come. He found anything that wasn’t “compliance” as a threat and invalidated my feelings, making me feel as if I was losing it. Always a good way to conduct a relationship, I think.
I said I expected communication and that was what was “normal” in a marriage. He continued that he was at work and didn’t have time for “chit chat” and work was “nonstop."
Let’s face it, you make time to message people that you give a shit about. He wasn’t ADHD or on the spectrum to have a legit excuse mostly to ignore me. Most of us have our phones glued to our hands most of the day and it’s only getting worse.
He retorted in what sounded like an utterly exasperated breakdown, “I am not normal and I don't want to be what you want me to be.”
Gaslighting much? I guess my use of the word ‘normal’ was very triggering.
I said I’d messaged at 8 pm and he was off work. He said he didn’t see anything to answer. Remember I said the baby announcement? Surely that merited some kind of acknowledgement at least since he adored my cousins and we’d only seen both of them pregnant at New Year’s Eve merely one point five months ago.
Benoit went further: “We are not doing well. We have completely different views of life and we have different priorities. You don’t want to live the way I believe we should and I don’t want to live like you want. I am a driven person with ambitions and goals and my job is important to me. You don’t seem to understand that for some reason.”
I guess texting things about my mother’s house (like I was thinking of him – and she’d moved house so he hadn’t visited this house before) and telling him the good news of births was me not understanding his career?
I said it was bullshit and I did nothing but support his career. I got defensive and said I didn’t ask him to come home early from work and asked if he thought I lacked ambition.
It’s good he didn’t answer that one because I’d come to find out what a lazy, useless wife he thought I was.
He said, “I just want my life to be calm and free of argument.”
In his narrative, I spent all my life nagging him and arguing with him, which I did not. But I guess sharing my feelings at any point didn’t seem “peaceful” to him. Not doing what he said was also not “peaceful.”
But you know what, even if I didn’t agree with his assessment of my lack of any merits, it didn’t matter if that was the picture he had in his head, right?
His messages honestly sounded like he was having a breakdown, that he couldn’t take any more of life. It made me defensive. It made me feel guilty. It made me feel as if I’d had this wonderful husband and I’d fucked it all up. Everything was on me.
I tried a new tack: I said I was sorry and didn’t know the messages had bothered him, that I was sharing my thoughts for the day and asked: “What am I not compromising on? I still don’t understand.”
He said: “I told you I am fucking working and can’t have my phone vibrating the whole time. I said that. I sent a message but you chose to ignore it just like you ignore anything I say that you don’t like or don’t agree with.”
I said I hadn’t realised his phone was vibrating the whole time. I just thought his message had implied he’d read and reply later. In fact, it didn’t say directly “Don’t text me” – just that he couldn’t answer. He, of course, made me feel like a loon by saying that all his clients have his phone number and he has to check his phone in case a client is calling during meetings. And implied that my texting during his working hours was so ridiculously embarrassing like I was some crazed stalker instead of, you know, his wife. (Officially, for a bit longer but in his mind for about twenty minutes longer.)
I went in full-blown spiral mode about how I’d been gone three days and here he was deciding he didn’t want me in his life. I apologised profusely.
He said we needed to talk seriously. Has that line ever gone well for anyone ever?
My heart was in my throat and I sat in the sunshine on my Mum’s back porch as he texted me some variation of: “I love you but we’re not right for each other” and “You’re not the kind of wife I want.”
I’m not sure what it says about me that I took a photo of myself crying. Sending it to him made him say that it made him furious and he was crying too.
He told me that he couldn’t keep going like this and hurled the accusation: “You don’t care about me. You don’t care about how hard I work.”
Again, I could never win a counterargument because he didn’t seem to comprehend anything I ever said.
He went on about how I spent too much money (remember I earned close to half his income?) all the time and spent 42 days in England that one time (very specific – it clearly bothered him that he recalled this exact number of days) to which I replied that was two years ago and he was still blaming me for it.
There were lots more messages and lots more dramatic, devastated replies from me. And him also acting sad and saying that I should come back to Minnesota and he’d help me get on my feet and he hadn’t planned this (ending our marriage) and he’d just had enough. It reached a boiling point and so on.
In hindsight, I think he had planned it. And I have no idea if any of his words, reactions, or seeming emotion was genuine or a way to manipulate me into feeling I had fucked up everything and thus, wanted to exit the marriage as quickly as possible not to ruin his life and finances further (which meant I didn’t get a divorce lawyer – more on this later).
A clue may have been that before we left Germany, he’d bought another set of wine glasses – and I vaguely recalled in Minnesota a flippant comment that horrible February about how if we ever split, he could have the new wine glasses and I’d take the old ones – was he testing the waters to see if I’d decide to bow out of his life?
Here are the wine glasses (his set) and the most delicious wine I’d ever had (up to that point) where we’d bought cases of the stuff from a wine-tasting event. This wine will factor into my story later. The old wine glasses were some heavy Waterford crystal ones (twelve each of red, white, and champagne flutes – a total of thirty-six glasses – the number merely representing the ridiculous overconsumption and not anything particularly significant).
When anxious and avoidant people fall in love
Years later (as in last week or so), I found this Instagram reel about avoidant personalities (Benoit) communicating with anxious ones (me):
That video was perfectly illustrious of mine and Benoit’s communication styles when combined. I know I’ve grown since then. I hope he has too.
He accused me of not putting in the work in our marriage, of not compromising, how I didn’t act like I wanted a life with him. I did what I wanted without regard to him. Instead of feeling as if all of these accusations were absurd, I was left feeling both like the rug had been pulled from under my life and as if I had truly done something wrong, that the fault lay with me.
And then he delivered some dramatic line about how he will now focus on work and home, home and work. The grind of work and home. He will forge ahead like a single man. I had ruined him for all other women as clearly women (or when you choose the wrong wife) are far too risky. He levelled that I couldn’t “seem to understand what marriage requires other than what works for you.” Oh, the irony!
Wait? He loves me but I’m not the right kind of wife and I don’t understand the requirements of marriage. I see.
“Elaine, I wish you wanted to be a wife and I wish you wanted to really share a life with me and not just say that you do,” he said, split infinitive and all.
He said he didn’t have any expectation of what he wanted a wife to be but it wasn’t me. Then proceeded to give me a picture of how I failed.
“I don’t have a specific picture. I always thought of marriage as a partnership. Each person will contribute what they can and both sides will make it move forward. Contributing can be thought anything,” he messaged on WhatsApp.
I wonder now who was feeding him these lines. He really hadn’t suddenly become some kind of philosopher and marriage guru.
He continued: “I know that if I mention that you did not clean or cook or anything like that you are going to say that I am not being equal in chores because you consider yourself a feminist. But how come feminist only works when you want it but not the other way? What about working 14 hour days and busting my ass?”
Did he have a direct line to the tate school of man that was to happen a decade into the future? Was someone replacing Benoit with an anti-feminist robot or was his true nature, thus far hidden, coming out? Was he about to start spouting words like “high-value female” and then his head would spin off its axis?
My young and not yet fully developed brain (age 28) was actually eating this up as if I was truly failing. I didn’t see it for what it was: utterly ridiculous.
I mean anyone who has a cleaner knows that you have to pre-clean before they come. You can’t just present a house piled high with things and say, here you are. For example, our amazing cleaner in Germany folded the laundry but I had to do the laundry first. She cleaned the kitchen, but I did the dishes and tidied everything off usable surfaces. And was he really saying that I didn’t cook at all in our almost three years of marriage? He was simply delusional. If nothing else, I hosted dinner parties and afternoon teas.
But that’s your lot with this kind of husband: they only notice all the things you don’t do, not the things you do!2 (Ever had a manager like that?)
He continued in a semi-lecture form where it was clear that he considered himself very enlightened, “Contributing can be in ways other than financial.” But I also contributed financially until he moved us thousands of miles. What was going on? Was I in some kind of Twilight Zone?
He was on a roll: “I felt like I was on a boat and paddling by myself, just going in circles.”
I laugh now but at the time I was devastated and thought he was right about everything. I felt deeply ashamed at having failed at this test, this test of true wifehood, a test I didn’t know I had meant to revise for and now the pop quiz had come and the teacher failed me without letting me know which book I needed. Maybe this weird metaphor didn’t work?
I said he expected too much of me. I was happy with what he showed me at the beginning of our relationship and he had wanted to change me into his sister “beautiful, fit, successful, high earning, cleaning (although she has a cleaner), and doing everything perfectly,” I tried to argue. A bit weird in hindsight.
All throughout my marriage, I told no one that I was anything other than perfectly happy. You see, I thought I was the problem. I failed at being the right kind of wife on all fronts. My sisters-in-law were the right kinds of wives. My friends were the right kinds of wives. I wasn’t.
My friends had dinner on the table for when their hungry husbands got him. They kept their houses neat and orderly without complaint. They looked beautiful, thin and stylish. They represented all the things I couldn’t. Truly, what was wrong with me?
Then he said in lovely terms that “No one should have to tell you if you have a working horse that ploughs all fucking day to make a living for the family. [I guess family here was just us two people] Maybe you feed the fucker in order to keep him going to put it in the lamest terms.”
My deep failing was working two to three jobs, earning money, having to commute, yet not also putting dinner on the table every night without fail, as well as not going to the gym enough, not being thin enough, not looking twenty-four forever, not having a career, not supporting him, “arguing” with him, disagreeing about anything. The list was utterly endless.
The only problem is that you kind of need to tell people as you go along when you’re unhappy with things but who was I to “cause arguments”?
I retorted he never told me when he was going to be home and how I got frustrated with being starving, having cooked, and waiting for him to return – or asking when he’d return and him telling me he didn’t want dinner now because we’d “argued” about it. I said I couldn’t change the past but I could make future improvements (bargaining to save this marriage – sigh). Then he explained how nagging after his long work days was never a good thing. I’m not exactly sure what he had constituted as nagging. I guess asking about the dinner thing?
I told him, “Always look presentable. Never complain. Never ask for anything. Always have dinner on the table. It sounds like out a fucking 1950s guide.”
He said, “And that’s exactly why. Feminism in one direction” as if he’d made a brilliant argument.
Sponging off my mother: not the happy reunion I’d wanted
Six days later, he said he was going to Lebanon in March. I told him to send my love to his parents.
Also only six days later, he told me:
“I would like to know your plans.”
As if having my marriage ended not even a week before, I’d have some kind of spreadsheet together of what I’d do with my life now the rug was pulled from under it.
My stuff was stuck in Minnesota. I had only just re-opened my own USAA bank account after realising I hadn’t had one but I had no money, no job, and was in limbo in Florida, unable to sleep, and reverting to teenagehood, snapping at my lovely mother, being moody and either in bed, mindlessly watching shows on my laptop, or out walking (my new hobby), and spending hours on the phone in the middle of the night crying to my Grammy (mother’s mum).
I asked if he mentioned Lebanon because he wanted me to go too (stupid and wishful thinking) and I said I couldn't stay at my Mum’s forever on $300. He was being ever so generous, of course, with the money he was giving me now that I was unofficially no longer his problem. He said he would give me another $500.
Thankfully, this was before Florida charged $8 for a head of broccoli and $10 for oranges – and things were still relatively affordable. I do remember a magic time when America seemed so much cheaper than the UK but seriously no longer.
Of course, I was so utterly blindsided at the time – even though I should have seen it coming – that I don’t recall just how much sponging I did off my mother at that time (sorry, Mum – who stopped reading around Chapter 7).
I messaged Benoit to say I’d barely spent anything, wagging my little puppy tail – only $75 to get the car from the port in Brunswick and $20 for fuel (oh to have fuel at those prices) – so that meant I was definitely just letting my mother pay for everything which was a bit shit really.
36 days in Florida
As mentioned, I also spent lots of time walking around my Mum’s lake anywhere from five to seven miles or more per day, walking in obsessive circles, blistering and bloodying my heels, allowing my heart strap to dig into the soft flesh under my breasts forming welts and listening to my new favourite podcast, “Guys We Fucked” which probably inspired this Substack years later.
I also rather randomly remember watching Jessica Jones, which Chester had recommended being the comic book nerd he is. (Love you, friend.)
Years ago whilst I was in this disastrous marriage, I recall watching seemingly perfect marriages like that of Mr Kate (Kate Albrecht and Joey Zehr), Fleur de Force (Fleur and Mike Bell), and Jim Chapman and Tanya Burr (obvs they are now both very happy in their second marriages and have children to boot) and wishing I had something like that, realising that whatever I had, it was not that.
Yet, I wouldn’t have walked away. I was determined to go down with the ship, even if my happiness, confidence, and mental health deteriorated with it.
That time I went to the hospital
Also in March, I ended up in hospital.
I had some kind of food poisoning and could not keep anything down (or anything not spewing from the other end). I drove myself in the night to the hospital in Madison, Florida (where my Mum lives) feeling utterly sorry for myself and alone in the world, not wanting to wake my family in the night.
Of course, my family was incredibly supportive but you don’t think like that when you're losing a husband (or wife, fiance, partner, etc). Society is set up for coupledom and losing “your life partner” feels all-encompassing and dramatic, even if life truly will work out in the future.
The “benefit” was I finally had my old body back. Or closer to it than I’d seen in a couple of years, at least. I had lost twenty pounds. Yay! What I always dreamed of.
Maybe this would be a way to win Benoit back. I’d be the perfect housewife just as long as I could stop shitting and could even keep water down…
I didn’t exactly have a long-term plan (another way I failed, obviously, a week after my marriage was ended via WhatsApp) but I thought I’d go back to Minnesota at some point and try and figure it out.
How to fail as a wife…
How did I not know my marriage was a disaster? I try and think about this now as many of my friends from that time said I seemed like the “happiest wife.”
Despite having a supportive, loving family and a lovely childhood, did moving to Florida at age ten, feeling torn away from my English family, leave me with an anxious sort of attachment and continual sense of loss? Perhaps!
I maybe viewed any form of stability as a safe haven and I needed to Severance (TV show reference, very good if you haven’t seen it) my brain myself so that I ignored any evidence that wasn’t “rosy.” No one would have ever known any of these things were happening. Perhaps even I didn’t. Perhaps I thought being secure was enough and I didn’t truly question my own misery.
When
in her new book, I Do (I Think), discusses her ex-fiance, it felt as if she was discussing my ex and I. I could hard relate! She said everyone approved of their relationship. She didn’t rush in (I did after only nine months of dating, so we differ there). She thought her ex had the qualities she wanted in a partner (ditto for me).She says she distinctly remembers thinking that this fiance was a good choice. I’m sure I had similar smug thoughts.
I’d grown up. See previous chapters for evidence. I was no longer chasing a partner based on an electric sex life or pursuing someone noncommittal. Here were all the things I wanted – and Benoit wanted me back.
Allison concludes, “And yet, I was left sobbing on the bathroom floor while he packed a backpack with my returned engagement ring in his pocket.”
It was in the shower for me and I was the one doing the leaving and having to pack my stuff (I still have the engagement ring, though. I never thought to return it tbf. I did try and sell it on but I didn’t think the pittance of resale price was worth it. One day, I’ll get the gems re-set as a charming “fuck you” ring or if I’m feeling generous: “goodbye to my old life.”)
Then, Allison says her healing may have been easier if she’d learned people had questioned her choice of partner but everyone in her life had been baffled and had thought they were a great couple (same, girl, same). But as you see from what I’d written so far, I maybe hadn’t been honest with myself when selecting.
But I forgive past me because she was making the choices she thought were better than previous ones; she was growing and learning, but unfortunately, sometimes things don’t work out and even if those things that don’t work out seem heartbreaking and earth-shattering, I’d like to think mostly things work out for the better.
In therapy recently, my therapist said that in leaving me my ex gave me back my freedom, my choice, my autonomy, the ability truly to create the life I actually wanted, which I have now and there’s so much to be said for that. I was living someone else’s life and I thought I was happy because it was “easy” but was it really easy?
Benoit may have thought I was unwilling to compromise or go along with his vision for life, but in reality that’s all I was doing. The essence of me was so smashed into bits trying to fit in the mould he wanted yet I was still failing.
Reflections
I admire women like my mother (and Benoit’s sisters) who do it all. My mother was an executive director for years of a charity in Florida that serves the local elderly community (as well as that stint for the Chamber of Commerce) and for years before that, she served as the CFO and she still came home and cooked dinner, baked, did impeccable laundry, helped in the garden, and cleaned the house, and took my baby sister to endless marching band practice, science fair competitions, and whatever other functions she had for school. Now my Mum has a slightly easier job as CFO of another charity and yet she continues on. She always said caring for her family was a way of showing love.
But I thought the drudgery of that every day felt soul-crushing – and I still think that! It’s not that I didn’t love Benoit, but it was just that I was never that kind of person in spite of and because of my mother who did it all for me. I’ve lived a life where my intellectual pursuits and fun and relaxation and whatever else was always put in front of domestic duties.
It’s a “failing” of my character to many, especially Benoit, and I’m better now in my late 30s (re domesticity) but I certainly wasn’t then, fresh from grad school and only twenty-five. But I wasn’t as completely useless as Benoit made out, in my defence.
Grammy once said that she read some kind of feminist text when she was in uni (yes, my grandmother has her master’s degree with a dissertation on Shostakovich and I’m very proud) that said something along the lines of no one ever says, “What kind of man would leave a house in a state like this?” No one considers it a failing of men if they can’t wipe the surfaces to a good standard of cleanliness or if they don’t clean the crumbs out from under the toaster or if they don’t remember to wipe the baseboards from time to time. Or if they have a wife who figuratively brings home the bacon and raises the children, why he doesn’t have dinner on the table when she returns home from a hard day at the office? Why was I expected to do these things when I never promised to do them? Thanks, patriarchy! (Obvs, I know not all men because now I’ve married one.)
And here was this man, Benoit, seven years older, self-sufficient who wanted a working, perfect housewife, a vision I’d never live up to, resenting the fact that I wasn’t “the kind of wife he wanted” every day. Imagine if I’d had to live in Minnesota suburbia forever. I could only envision myself as lonely, friendless, in this cold tundra of a place, with children to boot, and all the ways I’d fail at being a mother, worse than I failed as a wife. Sadly, I don’t think he’d have left me if we had had children and I shudder to think of the kind of life I’d have had.
As much as I loved him, wanted to please him, was devoted to our marriage, and would’ve wanted to make it work (sadly), that life would never have made me happy. Our “on paper” “perfect life” and the life I thought I’d been happy in because I was comfortable and taken care of couldn’t fulfil me any more than I could fulfil him.
Everyone said how lucky I was to have a husband who loved me so much and who would take me travelling and surprise me with flowers – but sometimes, tragically, love is not enough. And in the end, he didn’t love me enough because he couldn’t love me for the reality of the person I was, only the idea. I thought loving him was enough but he wanted more than I could ever give.
I thought because I was an ‘open book’ and told him everything he would understand. I did try and email him concerns but they weren’t addressed and to him, it clearly wasn’t worth fixing. Better cut and run. Instead of seeing anything I wrote as a reasonable justification, he saw everything as a slight, an argument, a challenge to him.
Sometimes these old fears crop up even now. Was Benoit right that I’m lazy, useless, overweight, not that great at domestic skills, not high-earning enough, not compromising, not supportive, selfish, ambition-less, and the list goes on but then I realised those aren’t the measure of success or happiness to me.
Spoiler: my new mother-in-law may have a spotless house but that does not mean she expects mine to be. I’m embraced as I am.
Double spoiler: my husband now loves me for me, our strengths and weaknesses complement each other; we have learned to work as true partners. Having known the inverse of that, I’m even more grateful. As always, more on this later.
In leaving me, Benoit gave me the gift of the final eight years of my Father’s and Derek’s life. The remaining six years of my Grandfather’s life. Time with my sister, niece, cousins, cousin’s children (who call me ‘Aunty’ now), and my Grammy who will be 89 in March.
Endings are certainly often painful and devastating, especially divorce, but if you’re able to rebuild like a phoenix, your new feathers will be ever so much brighter. (Or maybe I’m just wishy-washy and hopeful, but life has been better for me.)
Coming up next, some bonus material which includes things I emailed to Benoit during my heartbreak and his reply (to one email – because you can’t think I didn’t email my thoughts to him when I was so filled with feelings – and given my history) and my solo road trip from Florida to Minnesota, how I tried to get Benoit to reconcile.
New here or haven’t followed from the beginning, why don’t you catch up on the other eighty-one 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.)
If you’ve ever been divorced, had a broken engagement, or a bad breakup, do you feel you came out of it stronger in the end even if you couldn’t see the figurative forest for the trees back then?
Need to catch up on the Benoit saga? Check out some past chapters:
#75 BUYING A HOUSE IN COLUMBUS, GEORGIA AND GETTING ENGAGED: SHOULD I HAVE NOTICED THESE RED FLAGS?
Technically “me” is correct but I think “I” sounds better to the ear. Did the rules change or am I just completely ignorant despite actually being an editor and having a degree in English?
Just the other day (last week?) I had a not-so-great moment with Michael when I had an absolute meltdown that he put my bone china Betty’s mug (that Grammy bought Pam and I in Harrogate one year when we went for afternoon tea at the famous tea shop) in the dishwasher – AH-GAIN! He hadn’t run the dishwasher and said he had forgotten. I saw it (briefly) as a sign that he didn’t care about my special things but then became entirely more reasonable. I went and sat on his lap and apologised and said, “What I should have said was thank you for cooking, thank you for unloading the dishwasher, thank you for cleaning the kitchen and reloading it – and please try and remember about the mug but it’s not a big deal.” I find it cute that every afternoon when he comes home from his rounds, he pops some Fortnum and Mason’s loose-leaf tea in a 1960s metal teapot that was my Dad’s, gets the strainer out, and drinks a cup of tea from my Betty’s mug that he’s deemed appropriate for the job (sometimes with a slice of cake). I did buy him his own Betty’s mug but he likes to use mine. I felt like a twat about the cup but thankfully Michael is very forgiving – and always makes me laugh.
Thank you for this Elaine! There’s so many things I resonated with, yet again, but the GIF with ‘this is Benoit’s vision of what I do all day’ had me cracking up. 💞 (I love swimming too!)
Everything that looks good on paper most of the time it is not in real life. Life is lived between people, we all have our baggage’s and energies, some people we are able to work with and others we are not. The one thing I am immensely thankful about is walking out on my marriage, because everyday reminds me how right I was walking out. Its one of the most disastrous event of my life, as a people pleaser I totally forgot who I was in that marriage and then on top being with a narcissist partner it just broke me in ways I couldn’t fathom, until I walked out 5 years ago and started my therapy. So hundred times yes, I have regained myself and this journey was worth it.