The time has finally come! ‘Tis the week before Christmas and all through the house, laptops are closing, Prosecco is popping, and cheesy Christmas movies are being watched. Even though this blog is meant for tales of my personal relationships, today is destined for the meet cutes we know and love (kind of) on the big screen.

Have you ever been ghosted by a friend? I have. Multiple times. Some of my favourite meet cutes have been with my friends, but not all have lasted this far. It’s a tough thing to write about this phenomenon of friendship. It’s multi-faceted and deeply part of our lives. Yet, here I sit ready to disclose a meet cute turned unrequited. *big sigh* But I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t challenge myself to be vulnerable, so here we go…

I won’t sugarcoat this story. It’s heartbreaking. Even as I prepare to write it, I worry what they will think of me. It was many years of my life that I invested in this relationship, so it will take some time for me to not wonder what they think. I am a recovering people pleaser! I’m also learning to forgive—to not let them live rent-free in my head.

Someone told me once that assumptions steal choice. For so many years, I’ve made decisions based on what I thought people wanted me to do or what I thought was best for them. The key in that sentence is “thought,” the sister to “assumed.” I didn’t realize how much I was taking away someone’s choice by making decisions solely based on assumptions. I now know that this has hindered my dating life in many, many ways. We all make mistakes, especially in dating, and this meet cute story was my big mess. 

It’s meet cute season, or at least it is in my world as I learnt this saying from Arthur Abbott (aka. the beloved older gentleman in The Holiday). Many of my personal meet cutes, as you have come to learn, have not ended very well, so I thought it was about time for a cutesy narrative. One that warms your heart like any cheesy Hallmark film!

I took a break from my Wednesday blog posts last week. It might have been that I arrived home at 3am Wednesday morning from my trip to California and I hadn’t even started to put together a blog post or the newsletter that goes with it (cue promo… “sign up now”). I think it had more to do with my mind being full of thoughts and no clear path to take. But this week, I am choosing a path and it’s not about a specific dating story. Nope! This path feels more vulnerable. More exposing. Probably because it’s a story that is not about the past, but about the present me and where I am at.