I'm Haunted By My Boyfriend's Ex-Wife

“By the way, did I mention I used to be married?” Max blurted out 20 minutes into our first date. “Is that OK?”

We’d matched on Hinge just before Labor Day and were meeting at a Manhattan wine bar. It was an abrupt change of subject, but I reassured him it was fine. He noted that Bob Dylan’s song “Abandoned Love” got him through his divorce, and then the conversation moved on. We talked about his annual road trips to Vermont, and he rolled up his sleeve to show me the state tattooed on his bicep. I apologized for being kind of a wine snob. We debated each other’s celebrity lookalikes and traded family stories. Two entertaining hours later, he kissed me goodbye.

Back at home, a little tipsy, I googled his name plus “divorce.” As a journalist, I get a thrill out of chasing down facts, even if they’re useless. I discovered the split had been finalized less than four months earlier, and that his ex-wife and I share a first name. A little weird, but sure? I went to bed.

Max and I kept seeing each other. I didn’t mention my detective work. On our fourth date, dinner at his place, I was bowled over by his thoughtfulness: He’d read my work and had detailed questions and compliments. His custom playlist combined our tastes, mixing girly pop with ’60s rock. On his morning run, he’d darted into five grocery stores to find the right cut of veal for osso buco.

After we ate — and successfully made it through a high-stakes conversation about Israel and Gaza while “WAP” played in the background — I asked about his divorce. They’d both initially been on the fence about having kids, but after Max’s nephew was born, he realized he wanted a family. She didn’t. The split sounded amicable. Summing up the relationship, he said, “I’m over it.”

I left dinner with the beginnings of a giddy crush. Now that I had a few morsels of information, I wanted more. What else could I learn online?

At first, very little. His Instagram was private; his LinkedIn, brief. Combing through strangers’ Facebook profiles, I found him in a handful of pictures, including an engagement shot and two wedding photos. I recognized the solo snap of him in a suit from Hinge, and considered whether it was in poor taste to post an image on a dating app from the day you said “I do.”

I couldn’t resist comparing myself to Sophie 1.0, who was stunning. Blonde to my brunette, she looked earthy-crunchy and laidback, tattooed and fully Seattle in flannel at a rock concert. I was a diehard New Yorker who liked romance novels, platform shoes, and piano bars. In the event of a fire, I’d rescue my Dyson AirWrap. Our body types were similar, which I found reassuring until I wondered if her boobs were a better version of mine.

Then I hit the jackpot: her Pinterest, which was entirely dedicated to wedding planning. I didn’t want to like her color palette, autumnal reds and golds, but I did. There was a board full of pillar candles and tea lights, just like the ones on my coffee table. I learned that we both like shimmery eye shadow and tried to discern what her preference for square necklines revealed about her personality.

The answer, of course, was nothing. Still, I hated that I couldn’t look away. We had just enough similarities and just enough differences to nag at me. Which mattered? Which didn’t? I had no clue.

Over the next few weeks, I fell for Max. Freakishly brilliant, he once casually drew a map of Europe on a cocktail napkin, accurate down to every craggy coastline. He adored my cat, and I got him so hooked on Love Is Blind that he evangelized it to his friends. We regularly talked until 1 a.m., not realizing how many hours had flown by. I hosted a dinner party, where he met my friends and got the thumbs-up.

After we made it official, he joined me on a work trip to the Catskills. It was an outrageous “All Too Well” fantasy come to life: Indeed, we were singing in the car getting lost upstate; autumn leaves really were falling down like pieces into place. When we cozied up by a fire at an inn, I couldn’t have been happier.

But Sophie’s ghost lurked around every corner. When one of my work friends brought up Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour around Max, he said, “Oh, my ex-wife is going next weekend!” On the drive back to the city, I made an immature joke about the town Coxsackie. Looking grim, he mumbled, “It’s pronounced ‘cook-SAH-kee.’ I got married there.” We stopped at an unbearably twee market that could’ve been a wormhole to Brooklyn, which led to the subject of Catbird, the jewelry store on my street. Max winced. “That’s where I bought her rings.”

I decided that the next time Sophie came up, I’d ask him to limit certain details. But I had no real reason to worry about our relationship. Several times, he suggested we meet each other’s parents. He floated the idea of moving closer to me and doing a long weekend in Vermont. I met his best friend at an election watch party, and during the cab ride home, Max said, “He loved you.” We were moving fast, but it felt right.

The next morning, he tidied up his apartment while I watched the gloomy news. He stumbled across a framed engagement photo, one I recognized, and shoved it in a drawer. “Sorry,” he said with a guilty cringe.

I wanted to imagine a future with Max, but the other Sophie seemed barely in the past. She resurfaced often enough that I had a distractingly vivid understanding of him as an ex-husband. I knew, for instance, that he gave her $50,000 in the divorce and resented funding her upcoming trip to Mexico. He’d promised to pay 80% of her rent through the end of the year. They’d been texting about a paperwork snafu over their electrical bill, and he still cared about her. “Not in that way, but you know what I mean,” he said.

Nobody comes baggage-free, obviously. But with our relationship so fresh, I could’ve done without quite so much information. As I was meeting him, I was also meeting her — like an uninvited interloper into our fledgling romance. Long after I stopped digging, he kept the IV drip going. The more I heard, the more frustratingly solid she became.

Here’s the embarrassing truth: I was jealous. Getting married isn’t a real accomplishment — anyone can swing by City Hall — but I fixated on her because she’d gotten something, someone, I wanted, even if it didn’t last.

Max and I didn’t last, either. The day after the election, he broke it off via text, beginning with, “I’m sorry, you’re going to hate hearing this, but…” On the phone the next day, he admitted to being intimidated by my career, even though his salary was more than twice mine. “You’re a woman about town, like that TV character,” he said, grasping for Carrie Bradshaw’s name.

The more he spoke, the faster I lost interest. He blamed me for not asking enough questions to elicit his true feelings about the Middle East, and explained he’d been having doubts yet tried to throw our relationship into warp speed anyway just to see if I’d fail his family and friends’ tests. When I said that wasn’t very considerate, he paused. “Oh. I guess I didn’t really think about how it would affect you.”

After we hung up, I had a surge of empathy for his ex-wife. She didn’t feel like a ghost or a rival anymore, but rather, the person who could best understand what had just happened. The breakup had made Max three-dimensional in the most unflattering way; by comparison, she seemed pleasantly relatable. Just Sophie. I wondered about her side of the story, imagining which of his quirks she’d gotten sick of, and if she felt like she’d dodged a bullet, too. And this time, I wished her well.