The Time I...Met My Husband When I Had a Boyfriend
This is my love story. It’s my favourite story to tell. It is the one where God told me exactly what was going to happen. The year was 2016. I was about to turn 30. I had a boyfriend for one year and we were about to move in together. He was fine ( read flatly, not like “he was foine.”) He was what we call good on paper. Handsome, good job, liked to golf with my dad. Like I said, I was about to turn 30. Which a Vancouver 30 is different than a New York or LA 30. Vancouver 30 means all your friends are likely engaged and on their way to baby town. New York or LA 30 is is just another number. It feels like no rush! It feels like focus on your career! Travel the world! But let’s be clear, I wasn’t living in New York or LA (yet, spoiler alert) so I was a Vancouver almost 30 year old. A Van30 feels like a game of musical chairs and if you are single and someone else is it must mean you are supposed to date. If it seems bleak it’s because it is.
I met Bob (name changed for privacy reasons) through a mutual friend. Sparks did not fly and I am certain that I knew then and there that he was not the one but hey, I had the Van30 goggles on he was fine (not to be confused with foine.) We were together for one year and in that time we did cool things that the previously single me always dreamed of— weekends surfing in Tofino with other couple friends, grocery shopping and cooking dinners on the weekdays, KAYAKING! Looking back I can see it wasn’t him I liked, but it was partnership that was really appealing to me.
So naturally we decided to move in together because two people paying separate rents in Vancouver is crazy if you don’t have to. He breaks his lease, he buys a car and I secure a very sweet oceanfront coach house in Deep Cove. At this point I am going through the Van30 motions. Meet guy, date guy, move in with guy. We were on the trajectory all my friends were on so I wasn’t second guessing it. I was however, pushing down the subtle controlling patterns Bob was starting to show.
“I just wanted to let you know you are talking a little loud.” He tells me one night at a restaurant. It is as if he thinks he is doing me a favor. Halfway through the same dinner he brings it up again, “You almost hit the server while you were talking with your hands.” It was always these little things. A gentle please stop doing that. Until it became like please stop being you. They were always subtle enough but they were slow chips. Chipping away at who I was. All the reasons he said he loved me for in the beginning— free, independent, outgoing, funny, driven became used against me.
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