Author: Alexandra Norris

My Valentine’s Day Despair and Triumph

by Alexandra Norrisin DATING ADVICE, LOVE1 Comment on My Valentine’s Day Despair and Triumph

It’s a sunny February afternoon in Santa Monica, around 3pm. I am on my way to a meeting and then to meet up with the man who makes my heart stop. I walk a razor’s edge with him. I have never been this excited by another human’s presence who was also enchanted with mine. I stack my lovingly wrapped gifts in the trunk and just as the lid slams down, I do the kind of double take only the gut-that-knows-more-than-your-lovestruck-distraction could muster and I realize in my daze I left the keys in with the presents.

The auto-club service is very prompt, I barely have time to eat the taco with mango salsa that I ordered from the nearby taqueria chain/xanax alternative for the wait, but this delay causes me to miss my window of traffic freedom. Rush hour is coming in hot. As a recent transplant in LA, I am about to understand in this moment the reality of what is normally a 40 minute commute to my love’s home, is now easily quadrupled.

I cancel my meeting (actually they cancel it for me when they realize the time and distance and advise me that my eyes are bigger than my distance) and live-text apologies, a few updates, some incredulity and upbeat hope for our plans at stoplights to my heart-stopper. It’s no use. It appears I may have ruined Valentine’s Day. We both have work obligations so our time is reduced to an interaction long enough for him to issue a sweeping rejection of any of my gifts or attention. We agree to meet up after we finish our work.

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Overseas Lovers & Secondary Adolescence

by Alexandra Norrisin LOVE2 Comments on Overseas Lovers & Secondary Adolescence

Moving overseas has a tendency to feel like a second adolescence. You wipe the slate and have a chance to try on different versions of yourself. It can be quite daunting navigating what feels like being an adult teenager. It is a cycle of losing and finding yourself until you find the right fit. If you choose to return to your nest from battle, you may find you are comforted by familiarity and perspective. Then, should you decide to return to where you did all your growing and shifting, you get to double down on new perspectives.

Here is my story on my second adolescence and some of the relationships I experienced.

I had a thing for Bens* around the time I moved to Australia. My first Ben came to me when I found my first apartment in Melbourne. My friends brought him along I was a little tipsy and I liked the way his beard felt, so I invited him to stay and promptly passed out. He was a perfect gentleman. We dated for four months (a good beard can get you places, apparently). He took me out for food, we wore sweatpants a lot, smoked marijuana, he taught me to play some music and we jammed together and we watched the TV show Weeds and had pretty fantastic sex. I met his family for passover and they were fantastic. After a while some cracks started to show. One day I felt homesick and I cried. His overwhelming sympathy consisted of a trip to his local pub and an invitation to stay behind if I felt like it. Another day, I found out my cat had died on my way to a football game with him, and I cried. He repeated the drill by walking a full meter in front of me while I wept and then we went to the game.

At a certain point, I realized I had never really felt fully connected to Ben #1, but I felt comfortable in those sweatpants, and was ever so far from home. I needed it.

My second Ben came after I left to do some travelling and working around the country. I came back to Melbourne a little shell shocked from some deep spiritual digging. I ended up at a party, and was chatted up by one of the coolest-looking Bens I’ve ever met. He was laid back, wore a winter hat even though it was warm. He worked at a cool bar and liked the same cool music I was into. He also made me feel very cool. He sent me a text before the night was over and took me out for dinner later in the week. He saw a photo of me with my mother in my wallet and told me I looked hot as though I should know it, which was not a feeling I was accustomed to, but it was very nice. We made out and he was the best kisser I had ever met until that point. I felt high when he pressed his lips against mine. He swept me off my feet about as swiftly as he ditched me for being “too intense.” Fair enough (a phrase he would exhaust even in the short time we knew one another). Everything felt more intense so far from home. Adolescence has a tendency to be a bit intense and I was on my second round of it.

Young yoga couple meditating during amazing sunset on the ocean

It was at this point that I found a local hot yoga studio and discovered that they were offering a special discount for people insane enough to do it every day for a month, they even let me keep going for two months. I threw myself into hot breathing and stretching on the daily, and also discovered in Melbourne you can see a relationship counsellor on a weekly basis and payment is on a sliding scale. So if you were broke, like I had been, it was free. I recommend this for everyone who takes up a new life overseas. I started to feel functional as a human again and unpacked all of my baggage while not having to burden my friends with my anxious thought.

My counsellor reached out to me after I left Australia for home and told me she had moved on to another facility and told me that her own experiences mirrored some of my own. It was touching to learn that even the people meant to fix you can have their own version of the experiences that have felt so impactful.

A year outside of your comfort zone, meeting your own Bens and having some uncomfortable growing pains can provide cathartic benefits. Taking healthy risks affects our emotional intelligence in a way that is as unique and wonderful as it is terrifying. Go find your Bens and come back and tell me about it. I’ve moved on to other names but would love to hear about yours.

*Names have been changed.

Was it Sexual Healing?

by Alexandra Norrisin Mind, Sex

Closing in on my first year living overseas, I had taken the opportunity to check out the countryside as part of an exchange. The program allowed young internationals looking to extend our working holiday another year in Australia by doing farm work.

As you might imagine, while scenic and beautiful, it was not a juggernaut of cool fun and excitement. The farmers treated us mostly like trained animals they didn’t like much. To pass time, I began listening to a podcast on how to understand and let go of your ego and live in the present moment. Fully aware of the irony, I would use these talks to set my mind free of the boring and painful work strewn across the breathtaking landscape. In short, I wore thai fisherman’s pants, got into the best shape of my life, stunk of minty muscle cream and each day rinsed away the sweat, mud and degradation for six minutes (due to the water restrictions imposed by a drought) of heavenly shower time.

During a slow patch of work, I found a flyer in a shop near my hostel. It was advertising a weekend retreat with a name like TOGETHERNESS that claimed to celebrate the masculine and feminine in us all. It was three days of seminars, yoga and dancing around bonfires on a lake and it was right near where I was staying. Perfect.

At 23, I was promptly crowned “the youngest woman,” and was accordingly coaxed to dance around bonfire number one during the opening ceremony along with the youngest man, a 21 year old who was the son of the retreat’s creator, and whose hubris was through the roof.

While ordinarily I would have had my red flags firing on all cylinders, indicating that this was an express train to dreadlocked armpit hair and the Law of Attraction; I felt safe enough to roll with some gentle brainwashing. Perhaps what has gotten me into the most trouble in my life so far, has been encountering an absurd situation and leaning into it out of sheer bewilderment of it’s very existence, coupled with an adolescent sort of curiosity.

The intense introspection of a few months of fieldwork combined with being in my early twenties left me feeling very open to the world. I wasn’t one hundred percent sure what was going on, but I felt utterly blissful the more I surrendered to the experience.

One of the workshops the retreat had offered was something called a “Cuddle Party.” Curious and encouraged by the glowing feedback of the woman next to me examining the daily schedule, I hiked up my fisherman’s pants and shuffled off my birkenstocks into the “puddle” made of pillows.

A burly and round man in his late 30s identifying himself as a “Sexual Healer” explained the exercise where we weren’t allowed to touch one another, unless there was an explicit “Yes.” Our directive was to talk to each other and ask permission to touch each other in various areas that might lead to cuddling, but we were told could not lead to anything sexual unless we wanted to “take it elsewhere”. If we felt like responding with even so much as a “maybe,” we were instructed to default to “No.”

Later that evening, the sexual healer approached me and we started talking. It’s a bit of a blur of patchouli and moonlight, but he proceeded to charm me into his tent like a snake in a basket, and I spent the remainder of the retreat enchanted under his spell. Rather than return to harsh life of cold bunk beds and mean farmers, I enveloped myself in the afterglow of the retreat and floated into the nearest city where most of my new friends, and the Aussie Marvin Gaye incarnate lived.

The first few days were spent in a whirlwind of new thoughts and ideas. He showed me videos about his therapy and how he helped women with chronic pain in their vulvas (known as Vulvodynia, or a depressed vagina, as a friend who had struggled with the affliction would describe it), shared books on open relationships and often casually remarked on how he’d like to one day have a harem.

I absorbed as much information as I could on how his practice helped women and couples. It seemed that I was meeting a lot of young ingenues and very friendly sex workers; a phrase, I was told, which extended from writing erotica for a living to working in a brothel or, providing what I learned was called “full release” massage in your high rise condo to exclusive clientele; and everything in between.

Some of the women who floated in and out of the home were sweet and open. I remember one of my new sex working friends inviting me to her home, showing me her “massage” space, eating a lot of prunes and ordering pizza. She got very sick (probably from the prunes, she ate about 50 of them), and I somehow awoke next to her with her freaking out over seeing my eyes without glasses. She wanted to go and get colonics together. Those plans somehow never materialized.

One of the other women, a young mother of two, stared daggers at me. I later pieced together that she was sort of the Matriarch and it seemed I had unwittingly moved in on her turf. I could never figure out what I had done to upset her, but she had a way of introducing me to the concept of passive aggression in a way I had never experienced.

Marvin (as I’ll refer to him for the remainder of this story) continued my education in his work by showing me a movie about a married couple whose relationship was marred by her inability to climax after experiencing a traumatic sexual event in her past. The sexual healer in the movie “treated” the wife by having sex with her and helping her find her orgasm. The healer saved their marriage and this was the apparent impetus for Marvin’s work. Though Marvin claimed to never have sexual intercourse with his clients, he would “massage” them and provide counsel. He also introduced me to a duo who deftly circumvented anti-prostitution laws in America by dividing the labour and having one woman massage the vulva (or, yoni, as Marvin insisted on referring to it) with instruments (rather than hands or body parts), and the other knelt by her head and talked her through the experience. It was fascinating and confusing. He introduced me to his library of books on open relationships and showed me his “Treatment” room, which was essentially a living/dining room with a massage table and throw pillows. Marvin felt strongly that this area and his bedroom remain separate and expressed that he strived to keep the two sides of his life from blending. He talked to me about the importance of clear communication in all relationships, especially open ones. He created a book comparing photos of yonis next to corresponding flowers. I cautiously ate it up with a spoon and waited for more.

Early on, Marvin tied me up with some very sexy satin ropes, and skilfully continued with his seduction. I sought to understand his work while enraptured with the idea of being a muse. After the first few days, however, I noticed we were spending a lot of time cuddling and walking around naked like we were in a nature documentary; but, strangely, having sex together ground to a startling halt without any real explanation. He would insist that he just wasn’t feeling very sexual. Not one to take a hint, I stuck around.

One evening, while Marvin was conducting a women’s talking circle that I did not qualify for, I had an accident. Not one to interrupt the sanctity of the circle, the loud “BOUUFFFF” sound of an exploding natural heating pad in his kitchen went ignored, until one of the women insisted he check on me. He promptly hid me in his room with an ice pack and returned to the circle.

On the advice of a nurse’s hotline, I took myself and my 56 new blisters to the ER. I made some new friends, cracked some jokes, and relaxed until the shock wore off. Eventually, once his talking circle was finished, Marvin came to collect me. Wrapped in bandages and high on morphine, I suggested we lighten the mood and go out for ice cream. Marvin quietly escorted me to a convenience store, where he waited as I picked up my own pint. Either I wasn’t very good at setting location notes and ambiance preferences for post-traumatic cheer-me-up dates, or it was starting to appear that my position on his pedestal was now really coming apart at the screws. It was not long (but not before falling asleep waiting on his front lawn, while he presumably hooked up with the Matriarch across town) before I packed up my fisherman’s pants and headed south.

My memory paints this story as one of an older man manipulating an impressionable (and possibly clueless) young woman during a vulnerable time in her life, then casting her aside. Someone so eager to help what seemed to be every other woman and encourage open communication and free sexuality, drew me in, adored me and then, when he wasn’t proselytising, swiftly ignored me. It felt like a classic bait and switch. The ole “C’mere, Go Aways” as my best friend used to call it. The more I reached out to understand everything and figure out what I was missing, the more deeply he would withdraw, and his attention and his affection would wane. It took more time than I’m proud of to figure out I had played my part and then hung around a little too long after the curtain call.

Today, I am in a healthy and calm long term relationship. I am kinder to myself, I have learned about this weird concept called “boundaries.” I threw away my fisherman’s pants. I got a tattoo on my arm to cover the physical scars and I saw a counsellor to try and run interference on the emotional ones. It took me years to wrap my head fully around my experience, my true errors in judgement, rather than perceived flaws in my character, as well as my actual flaws in character and how to deal with them. I’m no longer bitter, confused or resentful (most of the time), but I am weary of protecting my emotional soft spots, and immediately suspicious of older men offering cuddles and lectures on female empowerment.

And I will never listen to a Marvin Gaye album with a straight face again.

Great Sex with My Best Friend

by Alexandra Norrisin RELATIONSHIPS

I met Sean when I was running a small magazine I created when I was 15 and not interested in my high school’s curriculum. Sean was a kid with big curly hair and braces at one of the nearby booths selling merchandise. He gave me a t-shirt or something and I gave him one of mine and we became sort of carnie high school sweethearts. We made out in the bleachers and in between some tour busses but it never went past that. Of all the people I met both summers, he was the one who stuck as the years passed. I started visiting him in Los Angeles, where he lived, as a means of getting out of my hometown in Canada where I felt like I was in brain jail and he was always there. He was often several hours late. But he’d be there.

I felt safe with him, our courtship had faded as soon as the tour had ended and he felt like my most trusted friend away from home. I began to see him as a brother-figure. He was protective of me and I loved his family. My mom loved him. Over time, the thought of anything ever happening between us felt like a weird Brady Bunch move. Over a period of several years, we would fall in and out of touch as we went about our lives, but we always circled back to check in and the welcome was always warm.

One day when we were both going through a breakup and sought comfort in one another. My boyfriend had been really hard on me about money, work and my body. It suddenly dawned on me that Sean had always looked at me like the sun shone out of my butt. I kept Sean at an arm’s distance because it felt good to have a friend I trusted and felt close to without sexualizing it. In my sudden realization at how good Sean made me feel when I talked to him, I actually saw him as a fully grown up adult, attractive male, and not the goofy teenager with braces and fluffy hair that I remembered (to be fair, both of us matched that description exactly) Somehow organically, we started talking about getting together.

Sean was coming through town, still working for the festival where we had met. I grew nervous and wondered if it would feel like making out with my brother. We talked through those feelings and decided we would deal with whatever happened. We had known each other long enough to know we loved each other as friends first. So I felt safe pulling the plug if it felt icky.

I met him at the festival and chatted with his co-workers while he finished up. We were so happy to see one another and I didn’t even think about the sexy part of it. I was just happy to see my friend and it was his first time in my town, so excitement bulldozed through any underlying anxiety. Once we made it to the cab over to my new place, it became clear that this very much did NOT feel like making out with a brother.

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Top 5 Songs to Fall in Love To

by Alexandra Norrisin LOVE

Summer, the season that gets the lion’s share of credit for getting us all some of that sweet lovin’, is upon us!  What better time to reflect on the ongoing soundtrack of our journey through great loves.

Below are my personal favorites.

Such Great Heights – Postal Service

I fell in love with my first grown-up love to this song. I was tour managing for a band and he was in advertising school and an aspiring singer-songwriter. This was one of those songs where you feel like each line relates to you. I remember once being in the tech booth during a sound check on the road and it came on over the PA system and it instantly made my insides into a pile of warm jelly.

NightCall – Kavinsky

This may seem like an odd choice to fall in love. I have been on a few dates with different men where they played the movie “Drive” for me, more on that another time. There is no denying the sexy coolness of this soundtrack. While arguably creepy, my boyfriend at the time and I delighted in calling each other up after dusk and whisper singing the lines into each other’s answering machine. It made us laugh, it brought us closer, and inevitably my childhood crush on The Gos paid off for us all and this song became thematic in our love.

Time – Jungle

My current boyfriend has struggled to find the middle part on our musical venn diagram where we meet throughout our relationship. Spotify and Pandora are both exclusively instrumental movie soundscapes for him; while I mostly like songs with words. Jungle have created some of my favourite music videos and their music transcends generations. He will often put their station on Pandora and look at me as if to suggest I should be very impressed and wooed immediately by this gesture. Admittedly, after I’ve finished laughing at him, it works. Time is possibly the most effective at cracking the shackles around my heart.

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My Name is Alexandra, and I am Co-Dependent

by Alexandra Norrisin Wellness1 Comment on My Name is Alexandra, and I am Co-Dependent

I felt wrong. All. the. Time. I couldn’t figure out if I was being abused or if my lack of understanding of any boundaries were closing in on him and he was responding accordingly. Probably both. I underestimated the power of infatuation.

When Jonathan called, his voice was bright and excited. At this point, I hadn’t thought much of him other than that he dressed well in vintage and was a fun person to talk to. By the end of the night, after inadvertently getting caught up spending several hours talking, he was the first to acknowledge the spark, and asked if I wanted to kiss him. I blushed, sputtered out an excuse, and stared straight forward at my steering wheel. I felt something, but at this point it was premature; and my gut clenched up.

As the back and forth in planning our next meet-up transpired, it began to occur to me that I really did want to see him again.  Every moment we were together, I found myself swept away and I couldn’t (and had no desire to) shake the daze I found myself caught in.

Between my frequent flyer points and his impressive gifts of return flights surprise trips to Toronto, we somehow saw each other every couple of weeks for the rest of the year. I began making plans to shift my work over to LA as much as possible. We nearly missed every return flight as our feet dragged behind us to the airport to say goodbye, and saying hello never came soon enough.

Of course, the other shoe always loomed above our heads, ready to drop at any moment. I often found myself saying something that would set him into a tailspin, and I would scurry to pick up the pieces. I could never figure out what I was doing wrong, and he would withhold the answers judiciously, like they were part of a test I never read the textbook for.  He was very smart, experienced and appeared to have his life together. I was over a decade his junior;  though I knew I was smart and capable, I followed his lead like a lost puppy. I was his ball of wax to mold; except that beneath the wax were my previously existing flaws and human characteristics that were not at all complimentary to his. They were eager to poke through at any inconvenient moment.

As you might imagine, the cracks in our love turned to canyons, and I found myself in a deep hole. I had gone deeper into debt attempting to keep everything afloat in a foreign country, blinded by my ambitious romantic entanglement, without any real plan. I returned to my mother’s house in my hometown to start over from scratch in my late 20s along with my bruised tail between my legs.

Each morning, I would attempt to go for a swim in a nearby pool. My body felt so heavy and tired, like I was carrying around a deadweight with my head attached to it. Swimming made me feel temporarily lighter and relieved and I could quiet my mind for a few minutes. It was the only thing I could convince my body to do aside from gluing myself to my computer. What I was going through felt like an emotional rock bottom. I had put every last egg in one basket with reckless abandon. This has been something that has served me with unbelievably unique and remarkable experiences and opportunities. But those experiences sometimes went the other way and led to disaster. In this case, it shattered me. I was devastated to a point that it had occurred to me that my breakups felt like a death. An extreme feeling that it occurred to me might not be normal.

My addiction, as it turned out, was people. More specifically, I used relationships to help me feel whole. The amount someone cared for me seemed tantamount to the number of gestures they would produce that showed me this; washing my car or building me something or even just letting me be the little spoon when cuddling, made me feel loved and therefore special and gave me value.  Which stands to reason that when that person decides not to “do” these things, I feel slighted, hurt and empty. My whirlwind romance had become a drug for which I was compromising every aspect of my life; my finances, my stability and any semblance of a healthy interaction with anyone around me.

I had remembered a friend mentioning an organization which was called Co-Dependents Anonymous, modelled after the 12 step programs for recovery from drug and alcohol addiction. As fate would have it, there was a group within walking distance of my mother’s house in the middle of a suburban wasteland. I added this to my short list of things to get out of bed for, and started attending regularly.

For the first month, I had been a shadow of former extraverted self and quietly listened, shell-shocked, to the familiar stories of those around me. I was not alone, and as unique as I would love to believe myself to be, every story I heard felt like a chapter from own experience. These people were me. For the first month, I quietly wept at every single meeting, but would almost always compose myself enough to collect some thoughts to share and kept moving forward. It helped to hear from other people who were at various stages of pulling their shit together and learning what healthy boundaries felt like.

While I began to piece my life back together, I took a couple of interim jobs in depressing call centers lined with mini-cubicles, headsets and the color grey. I filled the time between calls working on the program’s steps and finding balance. I talked objectively to more people one on one than perhaps I ever had in life, alternately asking people survey questions or helping file insurance claims. As removed from my career path as it all was, I was good at it; I felt like I was contributing something constructive to the universe. This helped me feel human and that I had worth. I began to feel lighter and more awake as I readied myself to jump back into the life I had left hanging.

It is at three months when you are considered a recurring member of a 12 Step Group, and can be relied upon to participate in such things as chairing meetings and handing out commemorative chips. I mentioned to some of the members in charge of organizing the meeting for that week that I would be picking up my three month chip that night. The woman on the schedule to chair that evening, graciously offered me the opportunity to lead the meeting for the night. It remains one of my most fulfilling moments, being able to stand confidently in a leadership role in front of the group who had seen me in my most fragile, broken state, as a person who could smile with a genuine warmth from inside. The icing on the cake was having the opportunity to help a newcomer at her first meeting. I picked up my chip, held some hands, submitted my requisition with the universe for serenity and headed back to LA.

For more information, visit www.coda.org and feel free to reach out to me if you are struggling with your own codependence.

 

 

 

Breaking My Heart Open Through Heartbreak

by Alexandra Norrisin DATING ADVICE, LOVE

Heartbreak is the biggest cliche conceivable, but somehow always feels uniquely painful through the scope of our own experience. Contrary to the belief that heartache gets easier as we shed our awkward teen cocoons, the pain felt familiarly sharp with each of my “Big Three.” As I embark upon what I like to call the “Age of the Great Drought of Fucks to Give, While Simultaneously Getting One’s Business Together;” otherwise known as turning 30, I present the Saga of Three Heartbreaks.

Heartbreak #1 Gillam. My Puppy Love. Age 14.

I saw him in my step-sister’s school play and my adolescent loins that burned for Ryan Gosling twinged for him. I called him in advance of our first date from a payphone when I discovered I had won tickets to go see a very cool-by-teenage-standards rock band. Putting the cart squarely before the horse, on our first date, we sat on the edge of a slab of wood resembling a dock with no water, and he wrote me a note explaining to me that he “fell for [me] like a blind roofer” and if I ever doubted his feelings I should read the phrase “Isle of View” aloud. Pretty smooth for a gangly 16 year old. Gillam lived a half hour drive away in an entirely different province (that’s Canadian for “state”). This was my first taste of long distance romance, but certainly not my last. I visited his family and bonded with his younger sister. It was she who had to eventually break it off with me over the phone; when out of nowhere he changed his mind about the whole thing. Everything is so intense at that age, that the serotonin from a rock concert or new love was like a hit of MDMA and sent me into heavy withdrawal for a day or two afterward. When we broke up, I had lost the will to go on, like a real damsel in old days. I went catatonic and watched the portable phone spin on the floor for what felt like an eternity.

Heartbreak #2 Sam. My Delayed High School Sweetheart. Age 20.

Sam was from the same suburb as mine, but we met at a bar in the city, while he was hosting an open mic night, and I had taken a job putting up posters promoting their events. When he confided in me that his parents were going through a divorce (something that I was an old pro at dealing with by now), I felt compelled to offer support even though we barely knew one another. We met at the library in between our houses and talked until the sun came up. We eventually had to be rescued by his father when his parents’ car battery died after we had jointly decided it was a great idea to climb into the trunk and get our awkward flirt on.

As we continued to see one another, it began to feel as though were in a boat, just the two of us. Whenever we saw one another, the rest of the world would disappear, and we were alone on the water together. After several months, Sam went away for a school trip. He had been nervous about a presentation and didn’t have an outfit he felt confident enough to present in, so before dawn on the day he left, I slid my way across frozen tundra that lined the path to his house that winter, and presented a care package that I had meticulously put together of his favorite colors and prints in an outfit for his presentation. His father drove us to his pickup point where we shared a sweet goodbye and then, rather than introduce me to his group of classmates, Sam awkwardly pointed me toward the bus stop (inconveniently, 2 minutes after his father had left for our neighborhood) and then scurried over to join them.

I would later learn he was leaving me for one of the classmates he had avoided introducing me to. I was okay, I had convinced myself; until I curled up in my mother’s lap like an infant, and wept a heavy sob that squeezed every drop of moisture out of my body.

He moved across the country with his new girlfriend from school, and then eventually came back home after she cheated on him. We both happened to be back in our hometown, and ran into one another at the bar where we had both met. As we embraced for the first time in years, I felt the familiar comfort of our boat. This time, however, it was as if he had a dark cloud looming above him. He had become embittered, and I felt compelled to stay as far away as possible. Our mutual friend relayed snidely to me that Sam thought I wanted to marry him and was afraid of seeing him, lest I lose all composure. I responded matter-of-factly that I didn’t mind if I never saw him again. This felt like I was saying it as much to him as I was to myself. Somehow, the universe caught the message and seven years later, we haven’t seen each other in person since.

Heartbreak #3 Jonathan. My Rock Bottom. Age 27.

Truthfully, it was by now that I thought I had aged out of feeling this devastated. Jonathan knocked the wind right out of me. I was empowered and in my element while pursuing a life I loved and taking everything by storm; so when I met Jonathan and discovered our shared feelings, I took the bull by the horns, throwing both caution and boundaries to the wind. As I seized what felt like destiny, it occurred to me how fully engaged and attracted to him I was physically, emotionally and intellectually in an as yet undiscovered way that formed a perfect storm of vulnerability. At first, I felt charming, understood and cherished as we celebrated the prize we had both won in finding each other. A small voice inside me knew it was trouble, but I was a warrior and this felt powerful. I could handle it if things went sour, I convinced myself. This wasn’t my first rodeo and love is worth risks, I bargained. I walked a razor’s edge with Jonathan; he was every bit what you would consider to be the human equivalent of the purest, most deadly addictive drug. Even as I type this, I feel like crumbs of scar tissue are still working their way through my emotional lymphatic system.

Recovery and the Slow Burn.

After a great deal of personal reflection and time alone, I started slowly seeing a stoic man who possesses a quiet calm. He is a sleeping angel in the bed we share as I type this on our nearby couch. I never really felt any fireworks, I didn’t feel like I was in a boat. He didn’t create riddles to explain how he felt (Except for this week, when he compared the evolution of his feelings to a speedometer). When we met, I was still pulling shards out of my fragile psyche. I was not ready for anything serious, I thought. It wasn’t until several months into our relationship that it occurred to me that he was someone I had grown to cherish. I would pick fights and shut down emotionally and start exhibiting all of the traits that had hurt me and had nothing to do with him. He remained sweetly quiet, stoic and unaffected. He just wanted to get us dinner, watch movies and hang out together. He occasionally voiced some concern, but did not think much of my emotionally stunted behavior. I thought he must not really care, so I acted out— until I learned not to. Mostly. As time passed, my fuse grew longer and my sanity began to restore itself. As my head poked out of the sand, there he was, watching movies and hanging out. Without much fanfare, I grew to find myself loving, and eventually (this is an important distinction) in love with him. Little things, mostly silly mannerisms, how he laughs in his sleep, or personal reflections on life that should be a book which straddles self help and unintentional satire. What we share has developed into a cherished depth of connection I haven’t felt with anyone else before. I call it the slow burn.

I probably would not have ever seen Walker (the name I imagine he’d like me to use for him) as a potential partner even a couple of years ago, because I craved the drama, the high stakes, the boat. I needed the excitement. Relationships had to make me high otherwise they didn’t feel real. I wanted to feel the impact, even if it hurt. I couldn’t manage anything between euphoria and total collapse. As I depart the emotional roller coaster of my 20s, I’ve learned to enjoy the nuances in between.

Recipes for Making Up, Shacking Up and Getting It On

by Alexandra Norrisin DATING ADVICE, LOVE

It is a cliche for a reason, the idea that the way to our hearts is through our stomachs. When someone cooks for you, it is a sign of nurturing that indicates we care.

The first boyfriend I ever lived with had a fridge was stocked with a stale half eaten box of pastries, and half a bottle of old wine when we met. As it turned out, his parents had fixated so much on directing his focus to his studies, that he never learned to care for himself at all. No laundry, no meals. At 28, he had a pile of laundry the size of king kong and ordered from restaurants for literally every meal that wasn’t prepared by his mother.

When I accidentally burned his eggs doused in maple syrup, he raved with incredulity that you “couldn’t get this in any restaurant,” scarfing it down in seconds. His favorite meal happened to be the first I ever learned to cook that my parents fell in love over and had dueling recipes for; spaghetti bolognese. He delighted in learning each step and insisted on preparing all the ingredients as he watched them all come together in the pot. He covered all of the chopping, dicing, ralphing from eating raw onion skin… the works. In gratitude, he would even graciously insist on doing the dishes; resulting in a lovingly chipped collection of dishware that we shared together. It was one of my favorite parts of our entire relationship.

happy couple have a romantic date in a fine dining restaurant th

Years later, I found myself travelling across the continent in a heroic attempt to save a relationship. When I arrived, I presented my White Bean Dream, a recipe I had been given from a food blogger when I had been tasked with writing about food for a lifestyle website. It included hand pressed white bean patties with diced jalapeno pepper and home-made pico de gallo; it had been his favorite meal that I once nearly lost a finger preparing. He thought the gesture of kicking him out of his kitchen and bleeding on his chopping blocks to be endearing. So naturally it was my go-to joint for a love-saving mission. I followed it with his favorite chocolate pretzels and sliced fruit in Greek yogurt in mugs covered in whipped cream.

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I Didn’t Die: How Love Might Finally Find You

by Alexandra Norrisin LOVE

For once, I had been completely honest on a date, put myself out there and hold on for this revelation: I DIDN’T DIE!

Fear is an interesting instinct. The best description I have heard has compared fear to an alarm clock. When it goes off, we have the choice to wake up and deal with what’s next, or to hit the snooze button and ignore it, especially when it comes to fear felt on a date. Let’s talk about it.

It is 2012. I am moving and shaking and feeling life, like really feelin’ it. I had good friends I would visit in Montreal every other weekend, I was living in my favorite neighborhood in Toronto I had grown up wishing to one day live in, and I was finally in what felt like the right lane with my ambitions. I think the key factor to make note of is that I was present. I woke up and felt life and interacted with it.

I had recently got up the gumption to confront a peer that I’d had a crush on. We had a fleeting connection that I had become consumed by. At a work conference, we formed a unit of colleagues that would hold court while others came and went about their days and stopped in to say hello. While waiting on the friend who I’d been staying with, I was caught off guard with an offer to stay with the object of my “Are-you-kidding-me? Never-going-to-happen-in-your-teenage-loins’-dreams” affection in his hotel room above the bar we’d been ruling.

The phrase “C’mon, you wanna get out of here?” was uttered. I stammered out something about how the hotel has trundle bed style cots you can have delivered to the room.

“It’s ok, I have a really big bed, you can just stay with me” he responded, kindly, without assumption. I must have been having an out of body experience. You must understand, this is the equivalent to a Backstreet Boy, the middle Hanson brother and/or Steven Tyler of Aerosmith asking me to the prom. Why yes, I did grow up in the 90s with some questionable musical influences. How could you tell?

Back at the conference; I bargain that we should check at the front desk for the trundle bed option. He complies in a most gentlemanly fashion, and meanders around the elevators while I inquire. After a brief interaction with the receptionist, I pivot around to see him, rather nonchalantly, asking for the outcome.

“They say they’re out of cots” I report, trying to mask the re-awakening of my adolescence. He nods and turns for the elevators. I almost blacked out on the way to his room. Then with trepidation crawled onto the very edge of the bed, fully clothed, with the TV on; and fell asleep as frigid as a flagpole in January. I wanted something more than whatever a confusing end of night rendezvous could provide. The next morning, he graciously offered to have me stay with him any other night. I returned two nights later, but it was even less eventful, if even a bit awkward. I felt myself losing my window.

Following this encounter, I would be out of town for several weeks. I would try to create work opportunities to keep in touch while I was away. My crush only grew stronger as the time away pressed on. When I returned, we made plans that later evolved into a party and it was increasingly apparent that the window of opportunity I had mentioned, was now in another building altogether by now. Still, that fear-based alarm clock was now on it’s fifth cycle and I couldn’t keep hitting snooze.

Finally, we shared a cab ride home. In a way, what I was working up to, was making up for every crush I’d stowed away for the last 20 years. Throw in as far back as my summer camp counselor crush, Neal; who liked Vanilla Ice. When of course I learned every word to ‘Ice, Ice, Baby’ (still permanently imprinted on my memory); and negged him (is this mooned or danced naked??) from a swimming pool. From Neal until now, there was a boatload of suppressed hormones to contend with so this became my moment to unburden myself.

“I have to confess something to you.” I blurted out.

I steeled myself and poured my heart out with my confession of the crush I’d been holding onto since he had me, before we had met, to be perfectly truthful. I could feel him bracing himself, which was obviously not a great sign. I poured my heart out. My crush very politely collected my heart in an imaginary glass bowl and handed it back to me. I had clearly colored the back the cab in a particular shade of awkward. He acknowledged that there was perhaps a moment between us, but for all I know, he was just being kind. He insisted on paying for the whole cab fare and dropped me off on the way to his apartment.

As I stepped out of the cab and walked up to my place, I had a slight sense of being embarrassed and crestfallen; however that was quickly overshadowed by a feeling of being ALIVE. I could feel myself vibrating with the electricity. For once, I had been completely honest, put myself out there and hold on for this revelation: I DIDN’T DIE!

Soon thereafter, one of the cool people who passed by us as we were holding court back at that first conference ended up being one of the people on my list of exciting new friends to visit on my next trip out of town. With this electric sense of self-confidence, I thought nothing of it when we made plans to meet up, other than sheer excitement to see a newly familiar and warm face. As the clock ticked away into well-past turning-into-a-pumpkin o’clock it began to occur to me that this was someone I had chemistry with. The window opened.

“Would you like me to kiss you?” He asked. I shut the window immediately with a fumble, clumsy yes-but-no. I managed to keep it open a crack, setting up plans together to meet again soon. By the next time I saw him, I wedged the window up and leaned out. I stuck my head out and opened my eyes wide and he stared right back. “Hi!” We both clicked.

I am confident I never would have fully made that connection and been open for it in such a complete way had I not woken myself up in the back of that cab.  It lifted a cloak of bleak, grey fear that held me down from making any real choices in my relationships. Until then, I just went with the flow of what made me feel least rejected and safest. It was terrifying, and invigorating. It was perhaps the first time I felt the raw truth with someone. I stopped hitting snooze.

Breaking Up – Listen to Your Hurt

by Alexandra Norrisin DATING ADVICE, RELATIONSHIPS

Do you need to hear this right now?

Breakups are the time when song lyrics often hold the most weight. It’s when we are shattered open, but also melodramatic enough that a song can “get” just what we are feeling, whether or not the intended meaning matches with our experience at all. Sometimes a song’s original meaning is much deeper than having our hearts ripped out, and other times, it’s just a bit of fluff, but one that we cling to as it shepherds us into to moving on. Below are some of the best break up songs.

Artist: Miike Snow
Song: Animal

There was a time when my world
Was filled with darkness , darkness , darkness
Then I stopped dreaming now
I’m supposed to fill it up with something , something , something

The opening hook brightly bursts in and deftly illustrates the mantra for the early stages of a breakup, when you feel most broken and empty, and have to remind yourself there is life outside of this relationship and figure out the parts worth holding onto. I repeated this to myself during the “housekeeping” phase of my last major breakup. That’s the part when you need to remain calm and tie up the loose ends like adults, restraining your bubbling rage which masks your hurt, which hides away your desire to be close to them, further clouding the dysfunction which is the painful root leading you to this song.

Artist: Drake
Song: Hold On, We’re Going Home

I got my eyes on you
You’re everything that I see
I want your high love and emotion endlessly
I can’t get over you
You left your mark on me
I want your high love and emotion endlessly

This song is for wandering around aimlessly at night while weeping to yourself. I preferred it as my drive-home music for whatever social event I could not fully engage with but tried to use as a distraction and be human. Powerful stuff, Mr Graham.

 

Artist: For the Mathematics
Song: A Versus

Ahh, this one is a deep cut. It takes me way back. Full disclosure, this was the band I toured with as their road manager around the same time I had my first “adult” relationship. I remember being picked up by the band in their converted airport shuttle retro-fitted into a mini-tour bus. It was the first moment of confusion in the early stages of our courtship. I hadn’t eaten all day, and after arriving home from day-job work, had started drinking a Smirnoff Ice like the cultured 20 year old I was, while waiting to be picked up for our next mini-tour date. That’s all it took. When they arrived to collect me, I recall a dramatic overture, questioning the very confused and exclusively male team as to why men are so hard to understand; before promptly dropping myself on the floor of the bus, leaned against one of their protruding knees, and immediately being reminded how fun it was being with my best friends, joking around on our way to a show. I was, more importantly, reminded how fulfilling it was contributing to their development as a group. It was the most supported I had ever felt and we often described it as a 6-way platonic marriage. When the relationship did finally run it’s course, my generous mother asked if I could turn this song down a bit. When I quietly protested, she turned it full volume, and allowed me absorb the song’s healing power while I wept cathartically in the passenger seat of her car, and was reminded by this song of how I still had value. I belonged to something beautiful. I never quite understood the lyrics to any of their music, but the wall of intricate and powerful sound hit me right where I needed it.

Artist:Parlovr
Song(s): Three Songs in A Tunnel

This video helped me through the first break-up in which I had lived with somebody. In the wake of the devastation, my brother had driven up to collect me from my hometown and delivered me to my family for recovery. I cocooned inside their guest room and binge watched episodes of the UK series The Green Wing; until my high school best friend collected me and we went to see Parlovr play a live show. The drummer had been a friend of mine back when I was running a small magazine and I had a tiny secret crush on one of the other members for years. At this show, I came out of my cocoon as the friend and I engaged in a thrilling discussion of everything and nothing and my friend turned to me discreetly and said “I don’t know what the situation here is, but he is INTO you” whatever it was, I felt lit up and had a joy come out from inside for the first time in many moons. To be flirted with by someone so charismatic, clever and charming, whom I had secretly carried a torch for, was the best medicine. I watched this video of the band performing in their beautiful city of Montreal for a pick-me-up whenever my emotions threaten to delve back into a case of the “why-me”s.

 

Artist: Madonna
Song: Hung Up

Time goes by so slowly for those who wait
No time to hesitate
Those who run seem to have all the fun
I’m caught up
I don’t know what to do.

Oh this; this old classic is the triumphant rejection of holding on. The antithesis of Drake’s crooning. You are fed up, you’re ready to move on and walk away. You are not staring at your phone, you are Getting. Your. Life! Listen on repeat when you are fed up and ready for pure freedom to bubble through you.

Artist: Santigold
Song: Disparate Youth

Don’t look ahead, there’s stormy weather
Another roadblock in our way
But if we go, we go together
Our hands are tied here if we stay

This can apply to a new love, but I prefer to direct it inward, to myself. After years of loving this, I just properly read the lyrics and I could write them all out for you because they are quite profound and applicable to this entire experience, but this intro is enough to get you started. Now you are free, this is you get up and go. I used this video, quite literally, to get myself out of bed while on a particularly arduous month long festival in the UK. I loved the work, but it was a mental challenge that required a shot of adrenaline to get moving. If there was ever anything I could recommend to set yourself flying out into the night, it is this.

Can you relate to the songs above?

Modern Marriage Part 1: Why I Eloped

by Alexandra Norrisin LOVE

Don’t freak out or anything. But I have some news. I got married. And to tell you the truth, not much has changed.

We are all living in a new world now. Priorities are shifting. Spending $30k to feel like a rich princess for a day in what is effectively a quinceanera for grownups, may not be your bag, and it wasn’t ours either.

Most of our close friends are spread across various cities, states and other countries; and the idea of something very private between us made public, rendered by my boyfriend extremely uncomfortable. While I am a little more comfortable with receiving attention, I would rather spend that time and money going out to visit them; or hosting them when it’s convenient for them and we can spend time together individually.

Here’s the other thing; eloping is fun. It is easy. And most importantly, it is about the two people getting married. There is no other time in a relationship when other people are invited in; no funeral for the end of one, no party for electing to stay single. No one cares about your anniversaries. When you elope, you get to do things the way you want to, on your own terms, without having to worry about keeping other people happy.

For us, as an international couple in our early 30s; in a relationship for nearly two years, and living together for half of that time, being married allows us to start making long term plans. I can actually start seeing myself staying with him long term and developing our lives together in one place like real grown ups.

A wedding wasn’t our focus, it was simply solidifying our existence as a team. I like to compare it to signing the mortgage on our love. The event itself was an afterthought; a whim, really. Something we discussed in pragmatic terms for some time and when the stars aligned, we went for it. We were never officially engaged, and ‘fiance’ was a term I never coveted nor used. In the weeks leading up to our shotgun love mortgage, I contacted close friends and family to invite them down, but when I saw my husband-to-be’s visible discomfort with any form of attention, I reeled it back in.

Once we get settled, we do plan on having a party with close friends and some family, maybe even several of them, in different places, as a kind of honeymoon/reception double feature. With a healthy distance between being married this sounds like our kind of adventure. One where any feelings of pressure surrounding being put on display, or entertaining others with our private feelings and plans together, grow rapidly smaller in our rear-view.

On our wedding day, my boyfriend brought his father who was visiting from out of town. I brought my friend to officiate and double as my emotional touchstone. We spoke to our other close ones on the phone.

My mother was ready to hop on a plane, but wouldn’t make it in time. I really wanted her to be there, but she has always been one to offer immediate and unflinching support, without holding on too tightly. I’ve always been a wanderlust out on some other part of the world as soon as I could get my hands on it, and she knew this was on the horizon for us, so this was no surprise and we were okay.  My recently estranged brother was crestfallen not to be there, but took the opportunity to break his silence with some very kind things that opened up our relationship in a lovely way.

My mother-in-law to be, however, made her objections known over the phone. I can imagine this sort of thing is hard for a lot of family members, and especially a mother, protective of her son.  She and I have very different ideas about marriage, which I completely understood. She kindly, firmly and respectfully filibustered our plan over the phone. As soon as he caught wind of this, my future father in law swiftly instructed his son to get me off the phone and be there for me while he started the car.

The sincere care I heard for both of us (though, obviously mostly for him) came through amidst her reservations, and the warmth and eager support I received immediately from his father solidified a profound love and appreciation for a family I barely knew. I saw a lot of my husband in him. As I sat in the back seat of the car heading to the chapel,  I watched them both for a moment and took in how fortunate I was to be in their company.

We arrived at the very friendly little chapel, expecting to sign the papers and be on our way, when they happened to have a room open up at the end of the day. I think it might have helped that they liked us, as they let us go inside and make up our own ceremony. It was silly and fun and just for us.

In the aftermath, despite being alternately nervous about taking the leap, and dismissive of the whole idea of traditional marriage, I have been pleasantly surprised with how relaxed things have felt since we pulled the trigger. It feels like a weight’s been lifted and married life is actually a lot fun so far. That honeymoon period is real, y’all.

One thing that I’ve found interesting, has been how much everyone else freaks out about it all; both eloping and our marriage in general. It’s like there is something in us that needs to explode a little bit  and let that Bridget Jones out of her diary for a second, and I sympathize. I get excited for my friends when they are excited about their love.  We have all been encouraged to get excited about the pomp and circumstance of it all, practically since birth.

I love sentiment and I do like jewelry; but tradition isn’t the right fit for us. I don’t like the idea of having a dress I will never wear again collecting space in my closet. The idea of an overpriced rock on my hand to mark someone’s claim on me isn’t appealing either.

With that said, I will most definitely accept a ring, or a necklace, or earrings (wait no, I’ll probably lose those, maybe a bracelet) just for the hell of it. My grandmother instilled this in me with her very glamourous collection of baubles. As wonderful and beautiful as those things are, however, we don’t have that kind of money right now. The way he routinely plugs my phone in for me when I forget, or how he kisses my head before he leaves for work early in the morning while I sleep, are the kinds of things that squeeze my heart more than trying to get him to fit into a box of things he is prescribed to do.

Here is our To Do list, while we chip away at our hefty collection of debt and pull ourselves into an improved financial situation:

  • Adopt a dog and a cat to grow up together (his idea, I’m fine with it)
  • Sell our cars and get one slightly shinier one to share (my idea, he is fine with it)
  • Find an affordable apartment of our own, with enough space for our friends or parents to visit (an idea we share equally); ideally with a room that can also double as our solitude from each other’s farts– or an office…

Even if we wanted it, traditional stuff doesn’t have much room to fit on that list.

In another relationship, at another time in my life, with a different person, perhaps all of this would be different. Perhaps an extravagant affair or someone I call “fiance” for a year would make sense. As we have grown together, I have learned that anniversaries, birthdays and other forced gift-events are not going to work for us. But, every month he dutifully budgets taking me out to whatever new restaurant he’s discovered which has at least four stars and 200 yelp reviews, and to every single movie theatre in a 15 mile radius, as long as we can get there before the trailers start. That is what works for us, and I am kind of proud of that.

What is your idea of a modern wedding?

Modern Marriage Part 2: Would You Take Your Significant Other’s Name?

by Alexandra Norrisin LOVE

As I sat in the Chapel, filling out our paperwork, I quickly dismissed the idea of changing my last name. My mother didn’t change hers, her mother kept her name as well.The idea hadn’t even occurred to me, to be honest, until I was asked if I wanted to. It seemed against my character to take the name of a man, rather than maintain my own identity. To my surprise (more than anyone), after the idea bounced around in my head for a few days, I found myself calling the Chapel back to see if it would be possible to change my mind.

Let me give you some background on the side of my family that comes from the name I was given. I am going to ask you to bear with me in case this comes off as bitter. SPOILER ALERT: my father’s side of the family has a fractious history.

I grew up idolizing my half-sister on my father’s side. For her tenth birthday, my parents had apparently asked her what she would like, and she responded with “a baby sister.” My parents got to work and shortly after her 11th birthday, there I was. She (and to a lesser extent, our older brother) was my hero growing up. Whatever her age was at the time, would become my favourite number. We shared a bedroom whenever she stayed at our dad’s place, and I loved her with the full amount a child’s heart could bear.

After I turned 13, the sheen of a baby sister had long worn off. Big sister had drawn a line in the sand between half and full blood siblings by explaining to me that we were “only” related through our Dad.  I probably don’t need to mention that the dismissal shattered me, but let’s take any doubts off the table. As the years passed, we made peace, but remained distant. In response to the news of my marriage, she called it a “great way to celebrate turning 35” (I am 30).

I last saw my half-brother, the guy who introduced me to Cool Ranch Doritos and my favorite New Kids on the Block doll, at age 22. My younger (full blood) brother had beautifully organized a special going-away dinner before I moved overseas. Half blood big bro inexplicably hasn’t spoken to our side of the family since. An old boyfriend of mine ended up working on a project with him in our hometown, and when he made the connection, he reportedly raced the news over to my half brother that he had dated his sister; which is precisely the moment when I learned that Big Bro doesn’t consider our shared last name and father to be a “real” thing.

So who is this patriarch of broken sibling relationships? In short, my father was adopted, has no siblings and with tight lips holds any history of our family under lock and key. We have pieced together stories from what our mother has told us and the most we can get has typically been confirmations or denials of facts shrouded in double speak. My mysterious father’s only wish is for me, after playing fast and loose with the role of “Dad” for a solid 15 years, is to give up my career and move back home and be happy. There remain many stones that may never be unturned; including my two eldest brothers whom I still have never met or spoken to, and I have no relationship with anyone else on his side.

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