NO CHRISTMAS MIRACLE
Liam and Joanna gave long-distance dating a shot, but it ended with a silent night,
Liam is a 37-year-old financial adviser who lives in the Annex. He says “I’m usually dressed pretty well: work requires that I wear suits, for the most part. Because of this, my weekend uniform tends to be ‘clothes you could paint in.’ ” Liam says “I can come off as arrogant and perfectionist, but I think I hold myself to the standard I expect from others. I’m a lot of fun, provided business has been taken care of.” Liam says “If I’m doing an after-work, it tends to be pubs with friends, but I’m up for anything on the weekend. I play hockey. I’m a homebody, and a lot of my dates are cooking at home. My dating life tends to be off or on. I’m a fairly intense person who takes an all-in approach to everything I do.”
Joanna worked in my industry, but in a very different capacity. We were introduced at an event by a colleague who then had to leave and we stayed out until all hours drinking wine and talking. She seemed comfortable with herself and like she was the kind of woman who could provide me with a challenge.
She lived out of town, so we struck up a fast thing over email. We spent a lot of time going back and forth and the connection grew from there. It was easy and familiar.
Her business brought her to Toronto often and we had a few meetups here, and I visited her as well. She was smart and nononsense but very kind and empathetic. I thought she was great, but living in two different cities was difficult.
It was Christmas party season and her company was having an event. She asked me to come, and I accepted.
Things weren’t super serious, but it felt natural enough for me to attend with her — I’m not afraid to make conversation with anyone and I knew some of her colleagues already.
The afternoon of the party, I left work early and caught a flight and then took a cab to the party, which was a few blocks away from her office. I got to the party right on time, and she wasn’t there yet. By the time it was clear that she was really late, I’d realized that I’d left work, gone through security, flown on an airplane and taken a cab to the party faster than she’d travelled the kilometre or so from her office. I was really aggravated.
I ran into someone I knew from the industry and we had a few glasses of wine. It was an open bar and I make friends easily, so by the time she got there — two hours late — I was half cut. When I wasn’t worrying about her, I was actually having a good time.
When Joanna finally arrived and sought me out, she told me she’d taken longer than she’d thought to finish some work and then was slow to get home, slow to get ready and slow to get to the party. She blamed traffic. She told me she’d missed my messages, but she wasn’t particularly apologetic even though she knew I’d been there for hours. Inexplicably, she was mad at me for telling a colleague of hers, who I also knew, that we were dating, which made no sense to me, since she had invited me as her date. I was annoyed: it was the end of the week, and I’d gone to some trouble to get to this party, and I wasn’t expecting to spend the night solo.
We ended up on the street having a frustrating but polite conversation about what had happened. I think we were both half-in and half-out of the rela- tionship anyway, since being together would mean one of us would have to make huge compromises. We agreed that we both needed some space.
The plan was for me to stay for the weekend, post-party, and hang out together before parting ways to spend the holidays with our families, but the mood had soured so quickly that a few minutes on my phone and a few hundred dollars in change fees later I was in a cab on the way to the airport. Two flights in a day and a breakup right before Christmas was not exactly what I’d had in mind.
Liam rates the date (out of 10): 5