Menu Dating

When people uncover that my husband is a former hockey player they oftentimes inquire about my personal hockey passion. Immediately they discover that there isn’t one. I have no clue what icing means and only recently after three years feel confident in my definition of a hat trick… however I have little understanding of how difficult it is to get one. I can’t ice skate at all – yes, I’m that girl with the notably adorable hat and mittens, tripping over my feet, laughing on the ground, thinking to myself, who invented this silly activity, and I so hope they spike the hot cocoa at this rink… as Jason (my main course) lovingly scoops me up, again, chuckling and saying something endearing like, “At least you have the cutest hat at the rink, babe.” Love him.

On the flipside, if you ask him if he ever thought he’d be married to a girl who gets a high off finding the perfect vintage dress at a thrift store, dances in the moonlight with no music, could care less about working out and who’s main goal in life is to get people to fall in L-O-V-E and to ride every rollercoaster in the world, he’d tell you that you were out of your mind… until of course, he met me.

That’s the funny thing about love. Or rather about being open to falling in it, anywhere, anytime, any place, about wiping the canvas clean of preconceived notions of what you thought you wanted and instead, just letting love wrap you up in its gorgeous mystery. When you say “sure, why not, you never know” instead of saying “no”, the winding roads you get to travel take you to destinations beyond your wildest imagination.

During my menu dating tenure I took a vast array of applications. That was the point – to be an equal opportunity dater… not erratically, but with discipline and purpose (but of course for fun too!), consciously refining my wants and needs in a relationship, all the while getting to know myself better during the critical getting to know yourself period (otherwise known as my twenties). If I called it at 18, I would have ended up with mint chocolate chip ice cream, but Jason as it turns out is much more of a unique Coldstone combo that doesn’t even have a name. Jason isn’t perfect, but he’s perfect for me. And that is what every self-aware, self-loving single person should seek… and shouldn’t commit to, until they get it.

Today I encourage you to see beyond your comfortable scope. I encourage you to erase the boundaries as you know them. When we limit ourselves to people we have defined as acceptable by say, profession, height, social status or any other “profile” factor, we deprive ourselves of the opportunity to dig a little deeper and explore the actual person, and therefore ourselves as a reflection of them. After all, if asked to describe yourself, would you really define the beautiful person you are by your job, or your looks or where you went to school? Doubtful. So why do it to someone else? I’m quite certain that if I stereotyped Jason as a hot, divorced jock, which is all I knew of him when I met him, we wouldn’t be here today. If we filled out match.com profiles, we’d still be lost in cyber space, dating carbon copies of ourselves (yawn!), not having found each other (which, by the way, is why I dig this new site: Opposites Connect which takes an alternative approach, but I digress). The bottom line is that when you open your mind, you heart awakens… just like that.

Yes, Jason and I have a lot that is different on the outside and of course, we have some similarities too. But on the inside, our value’s, dreams and goals are in sync and there is a deep appreciation, respect and commitment to each other’s individuality allowing for respective and partnership growth. Whereas we may not be two of a kind, we are definitely two of a find.

Live and love largely,

Tristan