WATCH CONFESSIONS: “Divorce made me buy a crazy expensive watch”
Luke BenedictusEDITOR’S NOTE: We recently ran the first part of our Watch Confessions in which Time+Tide began to interview members of the community to get them to share their watch-related secrets. In this second instalment, one anonymous watch lover tells how acquiring his dream watch didn’t turn out quite as planned…
“Men can often do dumb things when they get divorced. They drink or drug themselves stupid to numb the pain. They rebound into new relationships with inappropriate people. They find themselves in bitter fights over who gets to keep the Le Creuset casserole set. I bought myself a $50,000 watch.”
“I was crushed when my ex-wife left me. It really hit me hard. There was the emotional wound of the end of our marriage and not being able to wake up with my kids every day left me in bits. Then there was the whole financial pain. Getting divorced is a very expensive business and I got well and truly screwed.”
“And my ex had never liked me buying watches either. It was just another bone of contention to hurl onto a pile of others. So may be part of the reason I bought that Royal Oak was as kind of a sub-conscious ‘fuck you’ to her. But it was also the fact that I knew she was going to get 65% of all my assets. I had some money stashed away and I thought I might as well enjoy it while I could.”
“I bought it on the secondary market and it was a beautiful watch. I loved the texture of the dial and the way the bracelet glinted in the light. I’d wanted that watch for a very long time and it lived up to expectations when I put it on my wrist. But I still ended up selling it after six months.”
“The bottom line was that I couldn’t justify having that much cash bound up in one watch. After my divorce was finalised, I was financially drained and having to start again from scratch. There I was trying to claw together a deposit for an apartment and I’ve got this $50,000 watch. At that point, it didn’t feel like a validation of my new life. It felt idiotic.”
“After my divorce, as the dust began to settle, a good mate gave me a bit of advice. ‘Try to avoid making any big decisions for the next year,” he said. “Step don’t leap.’ When I look back, that was wise advice. I probably should have applied it to my watch purchases, too.”
This Watch Confessions article first appeared in Time+Tide’s NOW Magazine
