Husband Number 4

Husband Number 4 was the intellectual giant of the Five Husband Experience. Unfortunately, the experience of high intelligence combined with his scathing sarcasm left me with a distaste for intellectual men, and led therefore to the low brow experience known as “Husband Number 5″ or “What was I Thinking?”

Husband Number 4: CL/5 years (again, I am a little fuzzy on the exact length of the marriage)

How We Met

We knew each other for years before we dated. I met him shortly after I graduated from law school. I thought he and his wife were very cool. I liked, and admired them both and they seemed to have it all. Fast forward several years. I was looking for work; I called him to see if he knew of any jobs. He did not (later on I figured out this was because he didn’t work much, but I am getting ahead of myself). He told me he was getting divorced. I had always thought he was adorable and so smart and so funny. I had been single for about a year and a half and was looking for someone to date/marry.

He had a very sad story. I fell for it. Don’t I always.

We fell in love in a whirlwind. He lived downtown in a really hip loft. He could cook. He was deadly smart; we had conversations about everything from books to politics to art to religion. He loved my boys. It certainly looked and felt like the real deal. He had come out of a marriage he described as an emotional wasteland. By the end of our marriage I was convinced that she had shut herself off to shield herself from his passive aggressive fury. But I get ahead of myself again.

High Point(s)

The early months were wonderful. He seemed to have money and took me lots of wonderful places. We went out to dinner, drank good wine, laughed and did lots of things with my boys. Son No. 2 adored him; they would stand next to each other in the kitchen and banter. When I didn’t have my boys I stayed at his place; when I did, he started staying at mine.

One of the things I used to do, sort of a talent, was to make up very long, very witty songs. When I was happy they rolled out of my brain and they were amazingly funny. In the early days I was singing all the time.

Low Point(s)

The good times slowed down when it came to meet his family. Husband No. 4 was even more of a wasp than Husband No. 1 and it became clear over time that my multiply married status, not to mention my Jewishness, was going to be an issue. He was also the baby (and, as I came to discover later in the marriage), the buffoon of the family. The evening after the wedding reception we walked into the hotel where everyone from his family and friends were staying - they were all in the lobby chatting - they went silent. Later I learned that his sister Jan had been regaling everyone with stories of how awful my children were.

I learned this a couple of months into the marriage when we visited his step-sister, a world class bitch. We had just had dinner with her and her husband, when, after several glasses of wine, she informed me that she didn’t approve of me, that Jan had told everyone how horrible I was and that Son No. 2 was the most obnoxious child she, and her friends had ever met. She wondered aloud if he knew what he was getting into.

Husband No. 4 said nothing in defense of my 6 year old son who worshiped the the ground he walked upon.

I went into the bathroom and threw up.

Breaking Point

Husband No. 4 was verbally abusive. Mean beyond mean. The more dysfunctional he became, the more abusive he became. He stopped working. I went into his office and found months and months of unopened mail. He was in therapy but, due to his large vocabulary and ability to wear a suit, he had his shrink and his therapist fooled. I told on him. He was relieved but declined to be hospitalized. He did an outpatient program but pretty much snowed everyone there too.

I left him; he barely noticed.