"If You Were My Employee, I'd Fire You", Elon Musk Told First Wife (Image:twitter/justinemusk,elonmusk)
The essay written by the Canadian author Jennifer Justine Musk, ex-wife of the Tesla CEO Elon Musk, in 2010, is getting a phenomenal attention these days after the recent launch of Mr Musk”s biography.
Ms Musk wrote the essay for the magazine Marie Claire in 2010, after her divorce with Mr Musk in 2008 and elaborated how her despondent marriage impacted her life. As she mentions, Mr Musk even told her that he would have been fired her if she was his employee.
The essay, titled “I Was a Starter Wife”: Inside America”s Messiest Divorce“, was published by Marie Claire on September 10, 2010.
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Reeve Musk published his biography, crafted by Walter Isaacson very recently in September 2023 and the book soon rocketed to be the second best-selling within a week of its initial release.
But the business magnate”s life comprised book is now getting compared to his first wife”s twenty three year old essay, on which the mother of five sons described “warning signs” even on the nights they were married, reported NDTV
Ms Musk in a deep despair narrates the incidents of their wedding eve in which the newly married danced in rejoice but Mr Musk told his wife “I am the alpha in this relationship”. She was not able to process the complete meaning of what Mr Musk pointed at that time but understood later.
Read the Essay here: “I Was a Starter Wife”: Inside America”s Messiest Divorce
“I shrugged it off, just as I would later shrug off signing the postnuptial agreement, but as time went on, I learned that he was serious”, Ms Musk recollected.
According to Ms Musk, her ex-husband retains all that he learned and experienced from a male-dominated or patriarchal South African Culture. It was that way of life which made Elon Musk to strong enough to compete and dominate at a successful business world in a magical and extraordinary manner. This also impacted on their marriage life.
The essay reads; “This, and the vast economic imbalance between us, meant that in the months following our wedding, a certain dynamic began to take hold. Elon”s judgment overruled mine, and he was constantly remarking on the ways he found me lacking.
“I am your wife,” I told him repeatedly, “not your employee”.
“If you were my employee,” he said just as often, “I would fire you” “.
The essay also looks back on how Elon Musk pressurised his wife on silly matters like colouring the hair, and how their relationship went into shear strain and tension. Situations got worsened once they lost their first son, Nevada, to SIDS. The couple then gave birth to twins and triplets.
“Nevada”s death sent me on a years-long inward spiral of depression and distraction that would be continuing today if one of our nannies hadn”t noticed me struggling”, she wrote in the essay.
As NDTV reports, the couple got a divorce in September 2008. Elon Musk told Page Six that he had offered Ms Musk a settlement “equivalent to a pre-tax income of $80 million,” which she rejected, and he pays all expenses for their kids plus $20,000 (after taxes) per month. She also got the family home in Bel Air.
