HUSBAND UPGRADE
HUSBAND UPGRADE PART 1 WITH SUSIE MEISTER 60
was not the marrying kind. I was the girl who flirted blatantly, but charmingly with everyone, but had no intention of being that girl who married young and followed the ordinary path to nowhere, or what I perceived as nowhere. I wanted to be someone. In my quest for stardom I ended up traveling the world on one of the ubiquitous MTV reality shows. While it wasn’t the big time, I was at least leaving the zip code and saw it as the start of even bigger and better things. I began my college career and for a few years, I felt like I was beating the odds of my blue-collar background quite nicely. But then I met him. The moment I laid eyes on him, I became literally and metaphorically afflicted with tunnel vision. He was The One. He was everything I wanted to be, and he was my professor. I had seen enough Saved By the Bell: The College Years and Indiana Jones to know that the professor was at least supposed to be older, wiser, and certainly not like the frat boys drinking cheap beer out of a hat fashioned with straws. This wasn’t an “I’ll-do-anything-foran-A” situation. We started dating, fell in love, and at twenty-two I was walking down the aisle to a divorced man ten years my senior, and the father of an eight-year-old. Life as I knew it was over, but I was over the moon. I embraced my role as the devoted wife and stepmom in our suburban life. Even though I hadn’t expected to marry so young, or at all really, I was swept up in love and it was good, really good - until it wasn’t anymore. Even under the best circumstances being a member of a broken family is a challenge. Although I’m not a parent myself, from what I hear about those people is that they really love their kids. This is evident by the numerous status updates about potty training or their kid’s strep throat. I get it, but I don’t get it. And my ex-husband is a great dad, but I was not really cut out for that line of work. My idea of being maternal was begrudgingly going to see the latest Pixar installment. Things weren’t pretty when immature step-mommy and child were competing for daddy’s attention. And let’s just say adolescence doesn’t do any favors for familial bonding. Cue my resentment. I always question the judgment of people who think having kids is going to cure their marital woes. That might be the most backwards logic I’ve ever heard. What parenting did in my marriage, and I think for many people, was place a magnifying glass over our problems. While I understand that age isn’t that important, my husband and I were at two totally different stations in life. I was still an undergrad serving beers at the local watering hole to earn cash, and he was a published author and successful professor. And I was sassy in my youth. My family used to call me The Bulldozer. Perhaps you’ve seen some of the work of my persona on MTV—whatever it takes to win a couple of bucks!
After seven years of marriage, we broke up. As anyone who has been through a divorce knows, the “whys” really don’t matter as much as the reality that what was supposed to be forever isn’t going to be anymore. My divorce, as personal as it is to me, really represents what happens to so many people entering their thirties. I felt like I was living someone else’s life. From the time little girls are old enough to walk we are showered with tiaras, princess dresses, Easy Bake Ovens, and play kitchens. This isn’t just our land of makebelieve; it is our destiny. Or so we’re told. Sure, we can go to college and have careers, but we’re not asked what we want to be when we grow up. Instead, we’re asked if we have a boyfriend or a prom date. I think when I was getting married at twenty-two part of me accepted this image of what it means to have success as a woman. But what does a 22-yearold know about life?
and tell him that I loved him. He. Never. Spoke. Finally, at the wrap party, I scampered over and said, “Are you ready for this?!” Apparently, he was. Then it was so long to the single life for me. Don’t judge me! What was I supposed to do? Just leave love on the white sandy beaches of Phuket? Forget it, this Brit was coming to freezing cold Pittsburgh, and fast. And I don’t know about you, but I say anyone willing to move to the other side of the planet for love must be commended. So I married him a year and a half later. This was my Husband Upgrade. But let me be clear. We’ve all heard tales of the “Starter Wife.” She is the woman who is canned for no good reason after being an accessory to her husband’s success for years. Once he hits the big time he leaves his loving, but aging wife in the dust and trades her in for a new model. So when I use the phrase Husband Upgrade I am not implying some sort of female
“The Upgrade is the one who is a participant in the life that you’re meant to live and who will grow with you along the journey that is yet to come.” Supposedly, the human brain isn’t fully formed until we are 25-years-old, and from what I see in our Facebook pictures, I think it is evident in our behavior. You might love those stripper heels, but once your brain finishes its lengthy gestation period, you often realize that the life, or shoes, in which you find yourself in do not always match who you are anymore. After a month of weeping, watching “Rock of Love” marathons, and eating bag after bag of Tostitos “hint of jalapeño” chips (Seriously, what the heck is in those things they are ah-may-zing), I took off my mom jeans and dove head first into the life that I was really meant to have. I often perform stand-up comedy, and one day I realized that the despair was going to ruin me if I didn’t choose laughter. I didn’t go out searching for a replacement husband. Even though I was teetering on the brink of my thirties and single, I wasn’t going to send in my application to be on “The Bachelor” just yet. I was getting my doctorate, still worked in television, and wanted to giggle, frolic and travel for a minute. Enter Prince Charming. I travelled around the world to Thailand to compete in another “Real World Road Rules Challenge” (I know this is cheesy programming, but it pays the bills!) and stumbled upon Great Britain’s most eligible bachelor. Holy Moses, this guy was a dreamboat. The only obstacle was that he was on the production crew, who are forbidden to even speak to the cast. Now this became my “challenge” within the Challenge! For six weeks I asked him where we would go on our first day
vengeance where we dump our loyal, loving husbands for some fly-by-night-Stella-got-hergroove-back adventure. That’s just tacky. There was nothing wrong with my ex. He’s wonderful in many ways and I wish him all the happiness life has to offer. The Upgrade comes in finding the person who is truly meant for you. Not the one who is the logical choice, the one who has the most money, or the one you just happen to be with. The Upgrade is the one who is a participant in the life that you’re meant to live and who will grow with you along the journey that is yet to come. Suburbia, white picket fences, and stay-at-home mommyhood are perfect for some people, but they aren’t meant for me. I want a life that is outside of that traditional range where on Monday I might be buried in books working on my dissertation, and by Friday I might be in Italy sipping vino for a weekend getaway. That’s living and that’s the life my Husband Upgrade facilitates. He makes me an even better version of myself and I hope I do the same for him. I always thought the actresses who swore up and down that life in their thirties was so much better were just trying to convince themselves not to jump off a bridge because they got crow’s feet. It turns out our thirties can be a reward for surviving the ridiculousness that is our twenties. And my reward is a 6’2” Englishman who makes me tea and toast every morning and frolics with me all over the world. Upgrade.
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