When in doubt, just spray shit gold and other lessons I learned planning a wedding.

March 24, 2018 By Emma Gillies in Humour, Life, Toronto Tags: DIY, Humour, Life, Love, Relationships, Wedding, Wedding Planning, Writing Leave a comment

Guys, it happened. I.got.hitched…

… Not entirely by myself, Dan was there too but whatever, mere trivial details.

It’s been nearly a year since the partner and I decided to senselessly tie our lives together for all eternity, so that means we’ve had almost enough time to slowly collect the lost pieces of our souls and pay off those soaring Visa bills.

We’re also at least 80% recovered from that terrifying bout of wedding planning PTSD. I am happy to say that we can now look back on whole experience with warmth, a smile, and only the occasional shudder.

You learn a lot in the year leading up to your wedding – about yourself, your partner, your relationship, and just how long it takes until one of you completely and wholly implodes from the stress of it all.

So first things first: what did Dan and I learn about each other’s coping mechanisms?

We learned that Dan likes to internalize his stress, bury it deep in the far reserves of his psyche, plaster a smile on his face and act like everything is perfect, all the while suffering from bouts of dangerously high blood pressure.

I, on the other hand, I prefer to release stress slowly, over the course of many months in the form of passive aggressive comments and mature declarations like, “Why did you make me do this?!” and, “Fuck the fucking wedding industry and everyone associated with it.”

So now that I’ve made it clear how unqualified we are to offer advice, gather around and listen to all this advice!

Here’s a not-so brief compilation of the things we learned planning a wedding:

1. Smile and nod at everyone’s opinion and then completely ignore their advice and do whatever the hell you want to do.

I don’t know why a throwing a wedding is open-season for people to offer unsolicited advice on literally everything but OH IS IT EVER.

But guess what? None of those people are the two of you. If you’re signing up to get completely financially rinsed all in the name of one perfect day, then that day should reflect the two of you in exactly the way you want to be reflected. The day will not be made or broken by your entree choice or where you source your flowers.

Stand firm. Eat what you want to eat. Smell the goddamn flowers you want to smell.

Your grandmother had her time.

NO ONE WANTS POT ROAST ANYMORE NANNA.

2. No one cares about your décor but you.

Ok this may be a bit of an exaggeration. I have been to weddings where I’ve heard people critiquing the décor, but here’s a little secret: everyone really hates those people and how did they even get invited to your wedding in the first place?

I think if you surround yourself with good humans, they may remember that it looked “nice” or felt, “warm.”

BUT if anyone you know actually spends his or her time getting into the nitty gritty of your table arrangements or colour scheme, then those people are lame and shouldn’t get to go to fun parties.

I think what people remember most is the feeling in the room, and I guarantee that feeling is going to be a hell of a lot more positive if you didn’t just blow $5000 on candles.

Which leads me to my next 2 points:

3. If you think you’re above IKEA, you’re not. And closely related:

4. If you think you’re above Dollerama, you’re definitely not.

I made Dollerama, HomeSense, Michaels and IKEA my bitch on a regular basis leading up to the wedding.

If you took a gander at the absurd Visa statement I mentioned earlier it’s just those four stores, on repeat, for three months. I can’t imagine what our wedding tab would have looked like if I didn’t opt for the DIY ghetto-chic décor options. But again, no one cares if your candles are made by the wax of purebred bees, or if your linens are 7000 thread count.

And it begs repeating: those people who do care, really suck.

5. Things to cheap out on: midnight food. Things to not cheap out on: a photographer and a live band.

It’s very important to note for all future event expenses that drunk people will eat literally anything that’s put in front of them.

I’ve awoken the day after a night out to realize at 3am the night before I just poured Sriracha on plain rice crackers and went to town.

Cold corn straight from the can? Yep.

Makeshift nachos comprised of just goldfish crackers and melted cheese? Check.

So don’t spend your money on artisanal pizza or fancy midnight sliders, as I guarantee the same person dancing shirtless on the floor is not going to appreciate the tang of red pepper relish on their delightfully tiny burger.

HOWEVER, a solid live band or DJ is pivotal to success and good party vibes. Are people going to be soaking in sweat rocking out to Counting Crows or are they going to be sitting at the table rolling their eyes while that one Uncle dances the Macarena?

Is it actually fun to stay at the Y.M.C.A?

N.O.P.E.

Also, spend the extra dough on a good photographer/videographer. I’ve had friends spend so much time and energy and money planning their weddings only to be disappointed in their pictures.

That day is a goddamn whirlwind that has you spinning in circles, too over-stimulated to really absorb any one thing. I promise when you blackout for 7 hours and come to at 2am sitting on the floor of your hotel eating a bag of Doritos still in your wedding dress, (No? Just me?) you’re going to want to rest easy knowing someone properly recorded all your memories for you.

6. Make a budget. Then tear up that budget while cackling evilly like everyone else in the wedding industry who is just out to slowly and methodically castrate your bank account.

You know the rule for converting Celsius to Fahrenheit? No? Me either. But Google tells me you double the temperature then add 30.

…Yea, wedding budgets are a lot like that. It’s a daily punch in the vagina/nuts so just make sure to wrap your head around that before you dive in.

I don’t know if people in the wedding industry are assholes, geniuses, or some combination of both. All I know is at some point in the planning process you too will find yourself getting inexplicably attached to a certain type of stupidly adorable dessert or table runner, lose all sense of logic and pay triple what you should for it out of some completely misguided sense of “need.”

You think you won’t. You think you’re above it.

So did I.

But then I went and spent $120 on 24 of these because Pinterest told me I should:

No one is above it.

7. Outsource as much as you can.

I know this contradicts the part where I said the wedding industry is a sadistic motherfucker, but the only thing worse than getting help is taking it all on yourself.

Case in point: me.

I decided early on that to save money I would try to do as much as I possibly could on my own. This meant dealing with vendors and throwing linens on tables and yes, crouching on my balcony in 5-degree weather spraying everything I could find gold.

Beer bottles or vases? You tell me.

And I don’t know, maybe I saved some money, I couldn’t really tell you.

But I can tell you it made me a goddamn nightmare to be around.

Because if I’m being completely honest, taking the reigns had less to do with saving money and more to do with one of my more charming, delightful qualities: being a bit of a control freak who insists on doing everything herself, rejects all offers of help, and then complains she’s doing everything alone.

Remember that time someone shackled himself to me for the rest of his life?

What.a.sucker.

8. IF you relent and give the future husband a to-do list, include supporting photographs, a carefully laid out Google map, weblinks, a firm timeline and pre-programmed daily reminders.

Don’t get me wrong, I found myself one exceptionally good dude. It’s just that whereas my timeline is very much, “Now. Immediately. Today. This minute” his is much more, “As long as it’s done before we’re walking down the aisle, I have been tremendously successful.”

So perhaps I should have trusted that his to-do list would have gotten done without my near constant harassment and enraged/frustrated sighs…

…But we’ll never know.

Because I didn’t become a passive aggressive control freak over night, I’ve had years of practice perfecting it!

I’m also not sure he’s come to terms with the fact that even if the end result is flawless, if he doesn’t do it precisely my way I consider it a swift and mighty failure, so that’s also fun.

BUT to be fair, Dan has a tendency to be incredibly self-congratulatory and sort saunter around without an ounce of humility when he does accomplish the one small task I’ve been stalking him to do for three weeks, so I like to think we’re equally infuriating.

That’s why we’re married guys! A crippling fear that no one else could stand us.

9. Once the day starts, try to just roll with the chaos.

It really is the most tired of clichés but the whole day does just fly by. So look up once and awhile, and try to accept this day for what it is: literally the last time you will ever be one-half of the centre of attention ever again.

After this it’s usually kids and frankly once that happens no one will notice or care if you’re in the room ever again.

Breathe. Get a respectable amount of drunk. And enjoy the damn spotlight.

I became an #Instawriter and everyone thought I was screwing with them

September 30, 2017 By Emma Gillies in Humour, Life, Poetry Tags: Friendship, Humour, Instagram, Life, Love, Poetry, Relationships Leave a comment

Guys it’s been ages! It’s been way too long since I posted up in Jimmy’s Coffee and wrote something long enough to warrant the title “blog post.” Which is of course a TRAVESTY for all my loyal follower… singular.

But what can I say, when your blog doesn’t have any obvious theme, or direction, or consistent subject matter outside of sporadic tales of some city chick’s life, it doesn’t pay you da cash money. And when it doesn’t pay you, it unfortunately takes a back seat to the things that do.

So blah blah *insert stream of excuses here* – I’ve been getting my Real Estate license, yadda yadda, planned a wedding and it took over my entire human existence – YAWN.

If it’s two things I know for certain in this life it’s that:

Everyone is busy and,
No one cares how busy you are.

But I, like everyone else, am a slave to the September guilt, which for some reason, feels more like a new year than the actual new year.

Blame it on the fall foliage or pumpkin spiced everything, but that bratty little bitch in the back of my head has decided to resurface in a BIG way, being all, “hmmm, what form of regret can I torture you with today?”

So chalk full of that late-2017 guilt, here I am, typing away.

That being said, I have been writing… on Instagram that is.

I started up a little side project there almost a year ago that couldn’t be more the antithesis of everything I write on this bad boy.

In fact, one of my best friends, upon reading it for the first time, had this eloquent feedback to bestow upon me:

“Wait… are you fucking with us?”

As if I had gone to the trouble of creating an entirely separate writing portal solely for the purpose of mocking the whole #Instapoet phenomenon…

… Which, quite frankly, is definitely something I would do (so in retrospect I suppose her reaction was warranted).

Except I didn’t do it to mock, or to ironic. First time for everything folks!

Said Instagram account is super emotional, and vaguely poetry-esq if I thought I knew how to write poetry. In truth, I have always assumed poetry is just regular writing but pressing the Enter Key way more, so there’s that.

You should definitely follow me there if you like quote-of-the-day websites, and kittens, and cuddling in soft blankets while reading quotes and petting kittens.

Here she is:

@vodkataughtme

Click above to enter the flip-side of my brain, where I think things like this:

And this…

Oh ya, and this doozy…

Seriously, I’m barely recognizable.

Told you, my brain is one scary little muthaf*^ker.

So why did I do it you ask? Is it because I had always has a deep-seated want to become a super famous Instagram influencer, get sponsored by Tim Horton’s and have my writing compiled into a trendy book to sell at Urban Outfitters for $30?

Ummm, HELLS YES, that is the millennial dream after all.

Nah, I mean this is the first time I’m even mentioning its existence to the general public, so clearly I’m not in it for the followers or the free face masks.

I did it because I knew I wasn’t writing enough, and short little snippets of half-assed thoughts are easier to put on paper than these long-winded beasts I call blog posts.

It’s a good brain exercise and also allows me the opportunity to dig down into some of the deeper wells of what makes me tick.

All kidding aside, the truth is this:

I’ve always suffered under the premise of being “one thing,” or of having only one dimension to my personality (see: last photo).

Everyone who knows me knows that I have a tendency to hide my feelings under layers and layers of sarcasm and sass.

But here’s a secret: I’m also highly emotional. Strip away that last coat of sarcasm and you’ll come face to face with a human puddle. The girl who most recently found herself loudly crying to a Levi’s commercial (*sob* “They really ARE for everyone – young old, gay or straight” *sob*)

I find a lot of things beautiful in this world, and I also find a lot of thing wholly heartbreaking. On any given day I am bombarded by images of tragedy and hurt and of wonder and appreciation.

The nice thing about not having any semblance of a “brand” is that no one is telling me I can’t write about all of it.

I am a realistic romantic. A control freak who loves a good free fall. A highly organized mess.

And as you can imagine, a god damn RIOT to live with. Dan loves playing a good round of, “Which of Emma’s personalities do I get to be married to today?”

Sometimes what I find interesting involves a woman with zero self-awareness walking down the street pushing her dog in a stroller, and sometimes it’s sitting in a living room having a conversation with my girlfriends and being awestruck by the fact that I get to call these strong, intensely loyal, ambitious women my people.

Sometimes I want to scream at the top of my lungs at the absurdity and violence and cruelty in the world, and sometimes I watch people being so selflessly kind to one another that I think if we all stopped senselessly hating each other so much we might actually have a solid shot at this humanity thing.

So I do the only thing that makes sense to me: I write it all down.

The magic and the mess.

The hilarious and the painful.

To sum it up, I’m going to stick with doing both.

This blog will stay what it is, i.e.:

Advice no one asked for from someone who has no right to give it.
An intimate look at the inner workings of a relationship/marriage that my husband never gave me permission to write and only ever succeeds in making him extremely uncomfortable.
My continued blissful ignorance at the two points above.

In turn, my Instagram account will stay what it is:

Basically the word equivalent of the weeping emoji face.

But, like, still follow me I guess? Because how else am I supposed to get that prime Urban Outfitters shelf space next to Unicorn floaties and pineapple EVERYTHING?

K thanks team.

The Couple’s Travelling Rules

January 11, 2017 By Emma Gillies in Humour Tags: Adventure, Belize, Humour, Love, Relationships, Romance, Travel, Writing Leave a comment

Once upon a time I wrote the Couple’s Cohabitation Rules. Because you know, at that point Dan and I had lived together for a whole year, making me the obvious choice as expert on cohabitation, and like, relationships in general.

Just kidding, we’re literally flying by the seat of our pants every.single.day.

But, with 2.5 years of condo living under us, I do feel like we’ve got the living together down. A lot of our success can to attributed not to our personalities or deep maturity and superior conflict resolution but instead to:

Being on completely opposite schedules so we only really “live” together three days a week and,
Having four of Dan’s best friends live within a two-block radius which makes our 800 sq. ft. condo seem like a normal sized human living arrangement, not one built for tiny Toronto hobbits who are comfortable with zero personal space.

Point is, we’ve worked it out. We know each other’s ticks and buttons and only exploit and poke at these once every 8 to 10 days.

But travelling together? That, my friends is a WHOLE other ballgame.

And to be clear, I’m not talking about some all-inclusive resort vacation where a gentleman named José serves you your 7th mojito of the day while you lather on the SPF 80 and talk about how “dry” the heat is down south.

On these trips, you spend the bulk of your time discussing what a beautiful country Mexico is despite only seeing one stretch of private beach, and your only interaction with a local is knowing they make a really dope towel swan.

Get yourself a resort vacay, and the worst you’ll have to worry about is boredom, and what on earth you’re possibly going to have to talk about at your 3rd a la carte meal of the day.

If that’s your bag, all the power to you; I get the draw – it’s easy and you don’t have to plan/think about anything.

It’s just not my thing. Trips like that make me lazy, and prone to pick fights over stupid stuff that doesn’t matter, like where José is with my 8th goddamn mojito.

No, I’m talking travelling. The kind where you have to move from point-to-point, and therefore deal with planes and boats and delays and uncomfortable amounts of back sweat and an overall lack of Wi-Fi to distract you from each other.

Dan and I just got back from Belize, so again, that whole seven days of traipsing about together makes me the obvious choice as expert on couple’s travelling.

Man you guys are SO lucky I’m here.

So here I present to you, my guide:

THE COUPLE’S TRAVELLING RULES

AKA a step-by-step guide to avoid committing spousal murder in a foreign country

1. Force your significant other do things they hate so when you get in a fight at least you have an excuse.

Listen, Dan is very laid back, and there’s not much he doesn’t like. But HIGH on the short list of things that give him the heebie-jeebies are:

Planes
Sharks

So obviously on our trip to Belize I made sure we flew in a tiny 10-person plane and went snorkeling with sharks.

It’s very rare I get to see Dan freak out, and I find it extremely comedic when he does.

So for the 30-minutes we spent riding a baby plane over open water while he stared directly into the aisle and I soothed him with such calming, reassuring words as, “Dan, look out the window, look how high we are, look at how deep the water is, isn’t this plane SO SMALL?” I was extremely happy and amused.

Similarly, listening to your 6’4” significant other scream bloody murder into their snorkeling tube when their foot accidentally touches a stingray makes for some serious entertainment value.

Try it sometime, comedic gold I promise.

In turn, Dan made me… do absolutely nothing I hate. Because what is he INSANE?

Plus I don’t have any obvious fears other than organized sports so as long as he didn’t try to get me to join a Belizean softball team we probably would have been ok.

2. Don’t compare your current trip to places you’ve been without the other person as this makes you an obnoxious show-off.

Ya, about two days in I started to say “Oh man this road really reminds me of…” and Dan exasperatingly cut me off to exclaim, “Let me guess, Cayman?!” and I realized I was being THAT person.

So referring to the above point 1, I of course just kept doing it until he lost his mind.

No I didn’t!…

… But I thought about doing it, because if it’s one thing I think we can all agree on, it’s that sometimes I am an intentional asshole.

3. Get those #whitepeopleproblems out of the way REAL quick.

The beginning of our trip got off to a, “rough start.” And by this I mean,

We didn’t get to the airport early enough to get coffee, and
For approximately 13 seconds I thought WestJet was out of cheese trays.

As easy-going a unit as I like to think Dan and I are, if you wake us (me) up at 5am and deny us (me) of our (my) coffee and snacks and you would have thought our worlds (my world) was ending.

By the time you actually get to another country and have successfully changed into a bathing suit and flip-flops all those little things seem so silly and ridiculously dramatic.

… mostly because, as it turns out, the plane had both cheese AND coffee. Phew.

4. Invest in Air Conditioning.

There was a time in my life where I thought roughing it was fun, and that I could get by with just a mattress on a floor and a fan.

And I did! …Get by that is. Somehow all without contracting a flesh eating disease or bed bugs. I mean, when travelling abroad, I lived in some hovel-like conditions.

Very crack-den chic.

Turns out that’s all I need when travelling alone and only having my only personality to deal with in the morning. I mean, back then, who cared if I woke up haggard and hating everything? I could take as much time as I wanted to face the general population.

This is NOT what you want to do when you have to sleep next to another human.

Especially when said human is a giant, sweaty man-furnace who actually wants to interact with you within three hours of waking up.

We learned that lesson circa 2014 in Costa Rica when I made Dan stay in a very sketchy hostel that lacked many basic human amenities, like water pressure, linens, or any type of airflow.

Sleeping with a mattress spring jabbing him in the back the entire night was not the key to a successful romantic vacation.

Although again, did provide me with some serious amusement. It wasn’t my back after all.

5. Talk to other people.

Like, a lot. You’re on a trip together for sure, but I wouldn’t suggest going about it in a #nonewfriends kind of way.

I don’t care how in love with someone you are; 24-hours a day for seven days in a row with one other person is a lot. You need some human buffers. Mix it up, mingle, and take a two-hour break to lie alone in a dark, quiet hotel room so you don’t daydream about “accidentally” drowning each other on that sunset cruise you thought was a great idea when you booked it five weeks ago.

You know, the usual, healthy relationship kind of stuff.

6. Try not to feel that bizarre vacation relationship pressure to be completely different people.

It’s this weird idea we all have that trips are supposed to bring out the perfect versions of us. This relationship ideal that as soon as we cross international waters we immediately revert back to first date status – just a couple of horny teenagers experiencing moment after moment of unfiltered romantic bliss.

Like when we get home and people ask what we did on our trip we’re all supposed to sigh, smile and say, “Oh us, I can’t even remember the activities, we were just busy loving each other.”

Screwwwwwww that.

Yes, I absolutely agree that it’s easy to be happy and easygoing when you remove all of life’s everyday schedules and complications. But it’s not as though you get to another country, look around and think, “Ok…palm trees, check. Sun, check. Let’s just throw on some R-Kelly and slow dance for a week.”

Or I don’t know, maybe some people are exactly like that; I’m just not one of them.

I instead, really love to completely self-destruct under moments that feel like they “should be” romantic.

The night of New Years Eve in Belize, we were standing on the beach as fireworks went off. Dan put his arm around me for what must have amounted to a tenth of a second, and the whole thing just felt so overwhelmingly cheesy I immediately went into Robot-mode and had to disengage.

I always have these out-of-body experiences in those moments where I end up way too aware of just how much we must resemble a 1990’s Made-for-TV movie.

And why do I care you ask?

To that I say, I have absolutely no idea, but I’m sure my future therapist will have a TIME digging into that mess.

Throw me into a spontaneous situation where I say, watch my boyfriend attempt to hoist his large body onto a very small inner tube unsuccessfully for a 3-minutes, leaving me in a puddle of my own hysterics and BOOM! Instant romantic moment I will forever remember.

I love him so much in those moments it’s silly.

But should he try to lie beside me and stare at the stars while I don’t know, the ocean makes bloody ocean sounds around us, and I will go so inside my own head about how ridiculously, “A Walk to Remember” we look and definitely find a way to ruin that moment.

… In a mature, adult fashion of course – i.e., by loudly proclaiming “EWW!” and then barrel rolling away from him.

Really nice stuff here; Good luck to you, future doctor of my brain.

6. Drink Drink Drink Drink Drink Drink (set to Rihanna’s Work)

The only thing that ensures you’ll black out and fall asleep before you go and ruin romantic moments?

Cheap tequila.

After all, what’s more romantic than a slurring corpse?

On that pleasant note, happy romance and future travels together kids!

A Wedding-Phobic’s Guide to Weddings

September 27, 2016 By Emma Gillies in Humour Tags: Engagement, Humor, Humour, Random Thoughts, Relationships, Wedding, Wedding Planning Leave a comment

So in case you haven’t heard (which would be tough, because we’ve been all up in your social media faces about it) at the end of May the boyfriend and I got engaged. Which, thanks to the kindness of our friends, made for a bunch of congratulatory texts, calls and emails, making us feel incredibly lucky as well as very smug and accomplished for no reason.

Yet, all this love and support heading my way came with very specific undertones of “Wait WHATTTTTT?!” and, “Whoa…I can’t believe you said yes.”

And this is not because I don’t entirely dig my boyfriend. I’ve been calling my life partner since that first time he oh-so gently and romantically prevented me from diving into a dark lake while high on mushrooms.

He is the best of dudes and patiently accepts me in all of my crazy, and I in turn accept him in all of the conversations about how annoying his hair is today.

But marriage? Nah, it was never really for me.

Call it an extension of my overall paralyzing fear of routine, being the center of attention AND titles, but I had always just envisioned a very casual spending of life together. In my version of our future, we’d just wake up one day, roll over, be like, “Ok so we’re in this for good?” Seal in with a high-five and go back to sleep.

But then I went and fell in love with Daniel friggin’ Lynch.

Dan is the only guy you will ever meet who when told, “Actually, you know what, I don’t particularly need a $10,000 ring or $70,000 wedding” didn’t immediately stand up and start spinning about in a slow motion twirl to the song What a Wonderful World.

Nope. Instead he said, “Aww really, but why not?”

But hey, I’ll give it to him: – for a chick who prides herself of being pretty self-aware, I don’t actually know myself THAT well.

Fact is, when it comes down to it, this whole engagement thing hasn’t sucked.

Everything I thought would be the worst, most self-induced torturous experiences in this whole wedding planning thing have been some of the most fun.

And because it’s been a whopping 4 months and I’m basically a wedding expert now (kidding, I’m always about 30 seconds away from passing out from the pressure of it all), here I present you with Emma Gillies’ Wedding Planning Pros and Cons.

PRO: You get to do whatever you want.

CON: People don’t like that.

Here’s what I learned REAL quick. If you step even a little outside the carefully mapped-out, “Everyone’s Guide to Weddings” people assume you’re going to have a gothic themed day, sacrifice baby lambs as an appetizer, then rock out some vows and seal your marriage with the tears of orphaned children.

When all this engagement stuff went down and we decided to actually do this, my one stipulation was that we did it our way **AKA my way** AKA an informally structured night heavy on the booze and light on all the other mumbo-jumbo.

When people heard that however, suddenly I started getting questions like, “Are you wearing a dress?” and, “What colour will you be wearing” and,“Will there be keg stands and red solo cups?” and, “Is the venue someone’s garage?”

As if just by the very nature of trying to go a little off-script we were essentially lighting the entire wedding industry on fire and cackling evilly as it burned at our non-conformist feet.

We might as well have been planning to make our wedding a giant middle finger to all the other weddings that came before. I would wear a black pantsuit; we would release doves and then tenderly shoot them and their accompanying symbolism from the air with BB guns. Stare at the aghast, horrified faces of our friends and family and scream “Welcome to our celebration of love bitches!!”

Just a little FYI: no animals will be harmed in the making of our wedding, I’ll probably wear white, it will be in dress form, keg stands are a no but I assume at some point there will be a pink flamingo beer-funnel, and the only thing we plan on sacrificing is a tiny bit of everyone’s soul and pride via an 8-hour open bar.

PRO: You get to have a vision.

CON: You have to have a vision.

Related to the point above, a ton of wedding decision making depends on people have some predetermined “vision” of their perfect day that they would like to see come to fruition.

I had no such vision, and Dan even less so. The first time someone asked us (our photographer) I froze and panicked knowing she wanted to hear something like “city rustic” or “hipster glam” and all I could come up with is, “Uhhh… a party for our friends that we happen to get married at?”

This will of course be little help to me when it comes to trying to figure out what shade of peony looks best against a brick background. Regardless, it stuck. Now we go forth making all decisions based on a carefully balanced scale of “Will this increase or decrease the amount of fun had?”

PRO: You get to try on fancy dresses.

CON: None; go do this now.

I had assumed wedding dress shopping would leave me lying in the fetal position delicately clutching a pile and lace and tulle, regretting every carb ever consumed and swearing off the colour white for the rest of time.

However, what I failed to comprehend is that weddings- and especially women’s dresses- are a carefully contrived, booming fucking mega-industry and that all these dresses are manufactured specifically to make women feel like goddamn beautiful angels.

I might as well have been dressed by singing Disney forest animals who draped me in combinations of white lace and silk blessed by Tibetan monks for now nice everything looked. We’re talking about ALL the things being nipped and tucked into the right places.

It’s bonkers, and a ton of fun.

I highly recommend it to anyone, regardless of current relationship status. Having a bad Tuesday? Try on a wedding dress. Getting over a head cold? Pretty dresses are the cure. Didn’t like your latte this morning? Satin and Chiffon will help.

PRO: Pinterest is basically the answer to everything.

CON: I actually just typed the above sentence.

I don’t actually know how the world operated before Google. And I definitely don’t know how people planned parties before other way more talented people planned parties and posted pictures of them for you to completely rip-off.

Here are types of things I’ve Googled since May.

How do you make a mason jar look rustic?
How do you make a tablecloth look rustic?
How do you make a future husband look rustic?
How do you host a barn wedding but like, in downtown Toronto?
Are sumo wrestler suits an appropriate wedding activity?
What wedding dress styles make your arms look skinny?
What engagement photo poses make your arms look skinny?
Should I just workout my arms once and awhile?
Is it possible to have a bridal shower that doesn’t make people want to die a slow death?
Are there wedding DJ’s that aren’t overall terrible human beings?
Quotes about love and Whiskey
What are the best kind of whiskey shots?
What do you do if your boyfriend loves whiskey more than he loves you?

PRO: People expect you to use the word fiancée.

CON: This is an awful word that makes even the best of people sound like idiots. Let’s eradicate it from the human language.

I feel like this word was designed simply to set people in relationships apart from other people in relationships. What a strange, nonsensical divide.

There is no way of pronouncing this word that doesn’t make you sound like an asshole.

Please stop it now.

PRO: People will suddenly become very interested in that one part of your life and ask you a ton of questions about it.

CON: If you’re anything like me, you won’t have an answer to a single one of them.

Life is so weird man. Sometimes I think that if I laid all my pivotal life decision down like a series of dots every single one has been immediately followed by people asking, “Ok but what’s next?”

There’s no stopping it.

When you’re single everyone asks when you’re going to settle down. Find a partner and it’s when’s the engagement? The wedding? The babies?

Figure out one thing, what’s the next thing? You’re ok now, but you could be better and further along and more more MORE!.

When we got engaged I naively thought, “Boo yah! No one saw this coming, this will quiet down the masses for a second.” But then immediately it was “Have you booked a venue? When are you trying on dresses? WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DON’T WANT AN ENGAGEMENT RING?”

Instead of taking a breath and just asking each other how life is right at this very moment, we’re all stuck chasing a future that for no reason is always deemed brighter and shinier and better than the present.

Everyone thinks I’m wholly naïve to think that I can bang out 90% of this wedding in the three months immediately preceding it, but here’s my rationale:

The hard part is over.

I found him.

We don’t all fight and cry our way through the relationships in our 20s in the pursuit of one day, or one party.

We do it so we can grow into someone worth spending life with. And then we go out and try to find someone worth spending life with.

It’s all so that one day someone will look at us and be like, “Hey, I like hanging out with you, would you like to hang out forever?”

The flowers and the dress and all those thousands of other small decisions will come. But I don’t want to spend so much time making those decisions that I miss the next year buried in piles of font and twine choices.

I’ll probably have a month’s worth of sleepless nights over appropriate tablecloth shades and string light bulb wattage. But 30 days is better than 365.

So maybe I’m inexperienced, and yes, maybe a little out of my league with all this planning but I do know this: When it’s all over, all I’ll remember is the people in the room and the person standing beside me.

Which brings me to the ultimate PRO: It’s your one excuse to get all the people you adore most in one space for one giant, ridiculous, intoxicated night of fun and horrendous dance moves. That’s what sold me on this whole wedding thing.

Plus, it’s life after the party that I’m pretty pumped for.

Homo6ixuality: Toronto Pride

July 4, 2016 By Emma Gillies in Toronto Tags: Gay Pride, LGBTQ, Love, Relationships, T.O., The 6ix, Toronto, Toronto Pride 1 Comment

Toronto, this weekend you proved why I speak so highly of you. I’ve been burnt out on you this summer, spending my weeks trying to find ways to spend my weekends away from you – at lakefront cottages, at homes close to cottages close to some body of water (at times I would have settled for a kiddie pool and a sippy cup full of alcohol if someone offered).

Anything to step momentarily outside the chaos and High Rises, the metal and ritualistic burning of money that accompanies summers here.

But then you go and have weekends like this one, so full of love and beauty and progress and pride that I wonder why I ever wanted to leave you.

Here’s the thing I’ve always known about you Toronto: you are not a city that is content on riding on the coattails of progress.

You define progress. You set precedent.

Toronto, you are only the multi-racial, multi-sexual city you are because you have not just accepted or accommodated differences, but have encouraged them. You have enveloped these people in all of their diversity warmly into your arms and whispered, “Welcome, you’re safe here. This is where you belong.”

And Toronto, you have PRIDE.

Yesterday you were beautiful. You were a city at its best, most enlightened self.

You were on fire.

Because Toronto, if it’s one thing I’ve always respected the fuck out of you for it’s this: you know love is hard enough to find and maintain without having to fight for the right to feel it.

You know that life can be cold and love is rare and when two people find it that should be celebrated for its rarity, not ridiculed for its existence.

You have understood, long before other cities, that the support of friends and family is important but so is the support of the larger community. That truly powerful cities, the ones with heart, will protect love in all its forms and allow it the possibility of thriving, rather than extinguishing it with declarations of, “That’s not the right kind of love.”

You are the city where my mother felt comfortable taking me to pride parades as a toddler. Where yes, I definitely have clear memories of naked old men marching and being beelined in the head with condoms being thrown from floats.

But I also have memories of beautiful women holding hands, and men of all shapes and sizes kissing each other tenderly, and hoards of people laughing and dancing and strutting in celebration.

And because of that, because you are a city that holds one of the Top 5 Pride Celebration attendance records IN THE WORLD, and because I was raised in the thick of it, I got to grow up thinking what everyone now seems to be realizing:

That love is love is love is love.

You are a city that is part of a larger country that finally elected a Prime Minister worthy of the respect of the gay community; a man who looks at the residents of his country in all their diversity and represents their rights. A man who marched in the parade yesterday so unabashedly giddy that people screamed triumphantly and wept uncontrollably (or was that just me?)

Toronto, yesterday you were host to a pivotal moment in Canadian history – The 1st Canadian PM to march in a Pride Parade – how fucking cool is that?!

And sure, you’ve set aside a section of your city to celebrating the rights of LGBTQ citizens, but expression of this sexuality is no longer confined to that space. More and more people are feeling free to express love and affection across your neighbourhoods.

It is not a city block that plays safe haven to this community; it is the city as a whole.

Toronto, after the shootings in Orlando you saw such a swift outcry from your residents, and the city ran deep with raw, visceral emotion. Empathy wasn’t a rare commodity and anger and sympathy ran across communities. We were not segmented that day but instead stood together in support.

And in an action meant to strike fear, we stood fearless. The overwhelming sentiment wasn’t panic that this could happen here but a firm belief that we would NEVER let it happen here.

We operated with the knowledge that Orlando may have been the actions of one man, but that one man was raised in a society that gave this ideologies legitimacy; that somewhere along the line he found support for this hate.

And Toronto, we knew you had to be better than that. You ARE better than that. You know that these beliefs cannot be fostered but must be squashed- by love, by proper education and by teaching support over anger at every turn.

And hopefully, Toronto, we will never have to deal with the emotional ramifications of a mass shooting because we will have built a city that declares that behaviour so intolerable, so outside the realm of possibility that no one would dare mess with the 6ix.

You are a city that knows one day these won’t even be conversations, or debates or arguments or fights. You know that if we continue on this path, by the time our kids are our age they too will feel proud to have been raised in a city that is trying to get the world to see sexuality for what it is: endlessly fluid; as a glorious spectrum rather than two opposing poles.

A city that knows one day “gay” or “lesbian” or “transgender” will simply be a characteristic, not define someone’s character; a city where if we raise our kids properly, we will welcome into the fold more tolerant group of individuals capable of choosing kindness over prejudice.

We will be a city that helps mould a country. We will mould it until we won’t require a rainbow flag anymore because a pride flag and Canadian flag will be synonymous.

Gay pride is Canadian pride.

And Toronto, yesterday you showed me your Pride and for that I am so endlessly proud.

Thank you.

My friend is raising twins and I can’t even find the remote control

April 2, 2016 By Emma Gillies in Life Tags: Humour, Knocked Up, Life, Pregnancy, Relationships, Toronto, Writing 2 Comments

I spent this past Easter Monday staring at the one-week-old faces of identical twin boys, incubated and birthed by one of my best friends Melanie.

That’s right. To all you young people out there currently considering having kids, let’s take a minute to really absorb that…

…You can have TWO of them. AT THE SAME TIME.

So I’m sitting there, watching these two tiny humans form neural connections and learn and develop before my very eyes and all I could think was:

All newborns really look like shrunken old men, and
Oh man, this is SUCH real life.

If you’ve read anything I’ve written in the past, you know I’ve spent a huge bulk of the last two years attending bridal showers, bachelorette parties and weddings.

So you’d think I would have already comprehended that this “real life” started long ago and that I’m sitting smack dab in the middle of it.

But although I love a good wedding (friends celebrating friend’s love and whatnot), unless all my friends find themselves immune to those, “Global Statistics” the unfortunate truth is, some of those relationships will last and some won’t.

And before you say anything, get off my back; I’m not being a pessimistic downer. Because for the MOST part (aside from a little emotional turmoil and the mass drinking of one’s problems away) people are capable of picking themselves up and moving on.

Marriages and the relationships that comprise them are as permanent as you actively choose and fight for them to be.

But now, the babies have started; those living, breathing, miniature mirrors into your own human abilities and inadequacies.

And babies are FOREVER.

The time has come for getting knocked up. When people get to sit back in their new-parent smugness only mildly haunted by that tiny voice in the back of their minds that they can REALLY screw these little people up.

Now don’t be fooled by my rejection of certain traditional life events – I want myself some babies.

I want them in that weird biological-clock-ticking-feel-it-in-my-gut-constantly-trying-to-hold-strangers-babies-on-the-street kind-of way I thought was completely made up by men and projected on women as a way to keep them from becoming CEOs and taking over the world.

However, the idea of someone’s entire emotional and physical existence being reliant on me? Me – the person who crumbles under the pressure of deciding between crunchy and smooth peanut butter?

That’s some scaryyyyyyy stuff.

Aside from paralyzing fear, here are some of my thoughts on having kids:

Pregnancy is SO WEIRD.

When I say this verbatim to friends, most of them laugh awkwardly and change the subject. Because you know, as mammals the process of being pregnant and giving birth has been firming ingrained in us as natural since the moment we stopped believing those stork stories.

So the fact that as a fairly educated woman who is not 5-years-old, I still can’t wrap my mind around the whole baby-making process is considered a little off-putting to some. BUT COME ON – we take 3/4’s of a year to grow another human in a giant sack full of fluid, letting it feed off our innards and then spend 20+ hours of excruciating pain excavating that now-grown bundle of cells from our bodies and BAM! – Instant life commitment.

That’s.friggin.weird.

2. Not all babies are created equally cute, but it’s amazing how if they are even vaguely related to you you’ll be signing up for baby model agencies before they’ve learned to control their neck.

My nieces are goddamn adorable, but both have gone through a definite “Rob Ford” phase (all chins and lesbian-chic blonde hair sticking in every direction), all of which we can look back and laugh at now, but one that not a single family member seemed to notice at the time.

Similarly, when I joke around about my extended awkward phase that lasted 11+ years my father STILL actively refuses to admit that this was a thing and continues to say I was always beautiful.

… I assure you when I was rocking inch-thick glasses and trimming my own bangs into sporadic projectiles from my head I definitely wasn’t landing any beauty pageants.

So what I’m saying is, if I have a weird looking kid, keep that shit to yourself. Hormones are going to trick me into thinking they’re cute as fuck and every kid deserves to have their parents look at them through rose-colored glasses.

My parent’s unrelenting belief in my beauty meant when I was called a four-eyed midget for two torturous years in junior high I was able to let it role off me rather than have it absorbed into my fragile pre-teen psyche. Kids need to grow up strong, and this strength comes first from their parent’s blind support and encouragement.

I plan on taking full advantage of the nine months I’m pregnant to be a full damn nightmare.

I spend most of my life trying to maintain a personality one can describe as “laid-back” or even “aloof.” But I still don’t understand why pregnant women don’t spend more time having full-fledged tantrums in the aisles of Loblaws if they don’t carry the exact right brand and flavor of ice cream.

For nine full months women have the ultimate excuse to shift between Zen and crazy-bitch and only have to utter a simple, “It’s for the baby”

Who needs to be passive-aggressive when you can just be aggressive?

No one wants to let you have a seat on the bus? Dump hot coffee on them. Restaurant accidentally puts bean sprouts in your Pad Thai? Launch a formal class action lawsuit. Your baby daddy doesn’t anticipate every want and desire at least 12 hours in advance? Have a suitcase constantly packed and ready by the door with threats of, “Never seeing his child again.”

SO MUCH FUN. Screw trying to be casual and low-maintenance in some attempt to not succumb to the crazy girl stereotype.

After all, it’s for the baby.

4. How do people plan for kids?

I’m a planner. Sure life demands a certain amount of spontaneity and if anyone wants to invite me on a private jet anywhere in the next 20 minutes SIGN ME UP.

But kids demand a certain amount of pre-thought. I need to understand what I’m getting myself into. The whole, “As human beings we are evolutionarily programmed to know how to raise a child” is a GIANT amount of horseshit.

Our ancestors never had to plan for death-by-peanut allergy or trying to save for college tuition in a city where affording a 12-pack of Timbits feels like a luxury.

I don’t think my human heritage means I’m innately prepared to know how to raise a kid in a high-rise condo. When our ancestors had to send their kids out to learn how to forage for food did they have to teach them how to take an elevator to the park?

No, they just had to worry about little things like dysentery, starvation and animal attacks. You know…the easy stuff.

At least the forest has great square footage.

5. Kids make everything immediately scary because you don’t want to be the first one to break your child.

Kids are going to fall down, and hit their heads, and end up with black eyes and bruises and lumps. I had a permanent soft spot on my forehead as a kid I ran into so many things (probably a clue I needed those inch-thick glasses early on).

But you always hope someone else is the first one to let your kid fall down, or drop him or her. You know, so you can sigh and act very superior and forgiving, all the while wholly relieved someone else got it out of the way first.

At my friend’s house Monday I was holding one of her sons and she went to walk down a set of stairs and I was like, “Nope, I’ll be staying put up here.” If she hadn’t been there to assist me I probably would have:

Remained on the second floor and lived off food scraps until someone more qualified to jointly manage breakable babies and stairs came along, or

Wrapped said baby in some impenetrable cocoon of pillows and blankets to ensure that should I slip and fall, he would be so fully encased in feathers he would bounce ever-so-gently to the first floor.

Similarly, my boyfriend recently caused a line at Starbucks to form behind him as he diligently examined the physics of pushing his niece in a stroller down ONE STAIR, assuming doing so would cause her to launch headfirst out of the stroller like a little human rocket (despite her being securely clipped and harnessed into said stroller).

When you have kids every crack in the sidewalk is a possible broken leg, every pebble means choking and every fruit fly and mosquito a transporter of death and disease.

On that pleasant note, if anyone wants to volunteer to babysit my future child really early on and scuff ‘em up a little so I can maintain that classic motherly moral superiority that would be fantastic.

Come on guys, it’s for the baby.

The Couple’s Cohabitation Rules

February 13, 2016 By Emma Gillies in Humour Tags: Cohabitation, Humour, Love, Moving in Together, Relationships, Toronto, Valentine's Day 3 Comments

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, I was looking through some old emails the other day and stumbled across a list I had complied for my boyfriend when he and I decided to move in together in July of 2014.

At the time, I considered myself a relatively lone-wolf kind of character, and I was terrified to the point of being non-functioning at the premise of living alongside another human that wasn’t my badass female roommate. So, I set about making a list of rules that I thought would be the keys to a successful shared-condo relationship.

For the most part, looking back on it, I think it’s clear that:

I’m oddly self-aware of my own insanity,
We’ve followed most of these, and goddammit, it’s worked!
This is my idea of Valentine’s Day-inspired romance.

So I present to you, my guide for successful cohabitation with a significant other, as written to my boyfriend Dan a year-and-a-half ago.

THE COUPLE’S COHABITATION RULES

AKA Dan and Emma’s step-by-step guide to not becoming a boring, emotionally-dependent couple with no lives

All the below will relate back to the main purpose of this list: as a young, relatively good-looking couple who have yet to sag and wrinkle in all the wrong places, we want to continue to want to see each other naked.

Here is how I see us avoiding being that couple whose only idea of date night involves an Italian shower, sweatpants and Netflix (please note use of the word “only” as sometimes HBO and a robe is what dreams are made of).

1.We will continue to have our own lives. Neither party ever has to feel obligated to invite the other out on his or her plans. Life will not end if I don’t experience a 4am hockey boy’s night where you drink out of lawn décor. Similarly, you don’t need to know the sordid details of my latest engaged friend’s wedding venue…and wedding song…and wedding dress.

2. Two words: Date night – Once a week. No excuses. New restaurants, bars and events are what runs this city and what fuels both of us. The moment we stop going out is the moment we stop being ourselves.

3. Don’t touch my laundry, as I’m never going to do yours. Towels and sheets are communal and will most often be done by you as you’re going to be astounded by the time I can survive between laundry sessions (a backpacker, hostel-dwelling attribute I haven’t yet shaken).

4. …I will try to do laundry more often.

5. We will never go to bed angry.

6. I will probably wake up angry a lot, and drop things, and spill things, and take 25 minutes to leave our place and still be pissed off because I’ll feel like you rushed me. But you knew all of this when you signed up…sucker.

7. Sex solves most arguments. Remind me of this when I’m being a cranky bitch.

8. Friends from out of town are always welcome to couch crash; I will even make them coffee in the morning and pretend their not interrupting my very delicate daily routine when I’m at my most emotionally vulnerable.

However, friends who live 5-minutes down the street but are just so liquored up that they think our place is a warm, inviting alternative at 4am? That’s only going to end with me making my morning shake in a blender about 6 inches from their face.

9. Give each other space. So, so, SO much space.

10. That being said, let’s try to find some activities to do together.

You’re probably never going to leap at the chance to hit up a Pilates class with me and I’m never going to want to join you and three of your guy friends while you spend a gym session complimenting each other on your bods instead of actually lifting weights.

But relationships are all about finding some common ground and shared interests. Like…I don’t know…ice cream, or seeing who can sit motionless in one place the longest.

11. Pre-drinks? Yes. After parties? Depends how much we value our furniture (aka, not a chance and I’ll kill you slowly).

12. Speaking of furniture, continue to pretend you give a shit about furniture. This décor-obsessed attitude is unlikely to subside for a solid 6 months (cue disgruntled sigh).

13. We will not, “let ourselves go.” It’s an attribute of those who take their significant others for granted and who are lazy depressed fucks. Are we lazy depressed fucks who take each other for granted? NOPE, DIDN’T THINK SO (roar).

14. Keep a little mystery – the naked human body is a magical, wonderful thing…that is not meant to be seen in harsh direct lighting, or bending over to pick up laundry, or slowly sauntering around at 2pm on a hungover Sunday afternoon in an attempt to be enticing.

15. If you stop manscaping I’m going to stop waxing. We’ll see who wins that battle.

16. We’re not using seeing each other every day as an excuse not to take trips. My travel itch will never fully subside and you have a lot of the world to see. Let’s make sure we save some time (and money) aside so we never stop exploring.

Pretty much I see it like this: we’re two fairly emotionally mature, funny muthafucka’s who it seems like most people enjoy being around. It’s a natural consequence that we like being around each other. It’s all about the energy you give out in the world so let’s make sure the energy we impart on one another is as positive as possible.

As I keep saying to those who ask, you’re an easy person to be around so if I can’t live with you I’m probably just fucked….

On that note, can’t wait to start this little social-experiment with you handsome. Aren’t you lucky!

_______________________________________________

Happy Valentine’s Day Everyone! May you all one day love someone enough to compile a completely obsessive compulsive list of do’s and don’t’s for your relationship.

Love lessons you won’t find on an Inspirational Quote of the Day website

July 2, 2015 By Emma Gillies in Life Tags: Breakups, Humor, Life, Quote of the Day, Random Thoughts, Relationships, Writing Leave a comment

I spent a couple of Sunday’s ago at one of my high school girlfriend’s wedding showers. And although wedding showers usually make me want to get day drunk and give an offiside speech to all the grandmothers about how the bride lost her virginity just to liven things up, the time other women spent making miniature wedding cakes out of Playdough did allow me to reflect on this period of our lives.

Three of my good friends are getting married this year, but they’re all these bizarre species of female who have been in relationship with their fiancés for 7+ years. I treat them like strange little aliens they are.

For the rest of us who find ourselves in stable relationships however, it comes from years of navigating the highs and lows of love, joy, chaos, destruction and heartbreak. For those of us who didn’t find our life partner at 15, we have spent the bulk of the last decade dating, falling in love, falling out of love and watching our partners fall in and out of love with us.

So I sat there, looking at these girls I’ve known for 17 years, reflecting on what it is about us now. What it is about these guys, this moment, and this time that has us all functioning in relationships where others have failed.

It would be too simplistic to reduce it to just the two people in the relationship. We are a product of so much more than just a He + She equation.

It’s more like: He + She + Environment + Age + Timing + Friends + Current Ed Sheeran song playing.

I may not be some 80-year-old woman full of sage wisdom with an entire lifetime of experience under my belt. But in my handful of experience, here is what I have learned about love:

Love is NOT all you need

We get it Lennon, you were a damn talented man, but you were also so wholly full of shit. I’m sure when hopped up on acid and hallucinating cartoon submarines all of the world’s negativity really did melt away from you. I’m sure in those moments it did seem like life is easy and humans are intrinsically good and as long as you love one another everything is going to be OK.

But I’ve been in love with people, and been lucky enough that most of those people have loved me back. I’ve watched my friends be in love and watched other people love them.

And I’ve watched it all fall apart.

And yes, sometimes life does operate in black and white and you get to reduce this falling apart to one person just really fucking up. But most of the time relationships function in the many shades of grey; we don’t live in an easily polarized world of Hero vs. Villain, Prince vs. Witch, Princess vs. Jackass.

Because most of the time you love the hell out of one another and still have it not work out. Life would be a lot easier if we could just draw out a map or list of where it all went wrong. But perhaps one of the most poignant and adult conclusions you sometimes have to come to is, Just because nothing is wrong, doesn’t make it right.

At the end of the day, the Beatles can say what they want but it’s not all about love. You have to be able to communicate; you have to like each others families. You have to coexist in each others worlds and friendships. You have to be able to battle and scream and fight and then move on without building resentments or holding onto old grudges.

You have to like the way someone chews their food, the way they act when their drunk, the way they travel and they way they behave when nothing is going their way. You have to learn to like each other even when you hate each other.

It may not make for the same catchy love song lyrics, but in this many shades of grey world we live in, love is but one essential factor in a successful relationship.

You have no idea how you fall in love I assure you, so don’t limit yourself

Very early on in my life I had this idea of how I fell in love. I mean, I only had a few instances on which to build my opinion but it had always happened in this real storybook ideal way:

Girl meets boy; girl is instantly attracted; girl pines; boy shows interest; girl pretends she never actually liked him in the first place; boy says screw it and starts to pull away; girl panics and draws that poor sap in at the last second.

…You know, a real goddamn Cinderella story.

But it turns out; I didn’t really know myself that well at all.

We spend so long and expend so much effort in trying to know ourselves. We start to see patterns in our own behavior and create lists of what we like and don’t like, characteristics in others we value versus those we could do without.

And then we start judging compatibility based on the presence or absence of these traits.

The problem is, when we do this it becomes very easy to reject or dismiss people because we can’t fit them into our preconceived patterns. We develop rules and limitations for ourselves – we will never date someone younger, someone shorter, or someone who works in finance; we will never meet someone in a bar. We will never date one of our friends, or even a friend of a friend. We hold onto the notion that attraction can’t be built, it’s either there or its not.

The most illogical part of all of this is of course that we reject people because they don’t fit the mold, failing to realize that the mold is what hasn’t been working in the first place.

Sometimes life and love is most beautiful in the unexpected. That feeling of being absolutely sideswiped by someone we never gave any consideration to in the first place. Sometimes chemistry isn’t being struck by lightning but is instead akin to a slow storm brewing.

Sometimes that person in the background you swore you’d never date becomes the only person you ever want to.

Rules are for sports and prison. When it comes to relationships, be a bit of a rebel.

Regardless of the nature of a breakup, watching someone move on is a terrible fucking experience.

There’s this widely drawn conclusion that in the war of Dumpee vs. Dumper, there exists this huge power imbalance, and the person doing the dumping naturally gets the better end of the deal and moves on faster.

But here’s the thing about humans. We may have opposable thumbs and consider ourselves the mightiest of all the species, but we are also so full of massive contradictions, flaws and paradoxes. No where is this more obvious than in the sentence popularized by pre-teens and adults alike:

“Just because I don’t want him/here anymore, doesn’t mean I want anyone else to have him/her.”

We are all such horribly prideful people. Sure we enjoy loving someone, but we also get off on someone else loving us.

So the hardest conclusion to come to is that we are completely and totally replaceable. That, as much as we’d like to believe it, our significant others sun does not rise and fall based on our existence.

Human beings are made to withstand loss and heartache. It doesn’t matter how much we cared about someone or how much they cared about us – They will move on, they will forget, and they will replace old memories with new ones.

They will have new favorite songs that make them think of new people, they will change and grow and breathe and laugh and they will do all of these things without you.

And you know what makes it worse: SOCIAL MEDIA! The first time I broke up with a boy I found out he was dating someone else weeks after the relationship started, over a phone call with one of my friends. And that was it. It hurt knowing he had found someone else, but the news was confined to one conversation – one large but quick ripping off of the breakup Band-Aid.

Now you get to find out someone has moved on in small increments, all playing out its course in public forums. You get to see photos and posts and tweets. There is no quick ripping off of the Band-Aid. Instead it’s like a slow death by heart shaped, kissy-faced emoticons aimed at new people.

We bear witness to our own replacement, and to put things simply, it really bloody sucks.

Loving someone doesn’t just happen, it’s a choice you make every.damn.day.

Ok so maybe I actually did take this one from a Quote of the Day website.

Most of those websites make me want to vomit butterflies (unless of course I’m going through a breakup, in which case, like everyone else, I throw on a 2001 Dashboard Confessional album and ugly cry to, “Love like you’ve never been hurt before”).

But once and awhile one of those bad boys really resonates with me. In this case, a little gem by Sherman Alexie that goes:

“He loved her, of course, but better than that he chose her, day after day. Choice, that was the thing.”

All of my relationships have ended because I wasn’t prepared to fight for anything. I was too young and too egotistical to think I couldn’t find something or someone else. I was a wandering soul and I wanted to soak up as many experiences and human connections as I could. I didn’t want to fight. I wanted to run.

I am not a firm believer in this whole marriage thing people keep pitching me on, but that has nothing to do with the example that has been set for me by my parents.

I have zero comprehension of what it must take to make a 37-year marriage last, but I do think it must mean that when you stand up on that alter and say, “I Do” you’d better not just be concentrating on the, “For better” part.

Let’s be honest, for most of us in our twenties and early 30s, we have yet to really have to fight for anything. Sure some of us have worked our asses off in school and continue to do so in our careers, but the real fights haven’t started yet.

Life is hard and relationships don’t always make it easier. Think of how much you’ve changed in the last decade. Now think of how much you’ll probably change in the next decade, and the decade after that.

You’re going to change dramatically and so is that other person and there are no guarantees you’re going to change in the same ways or in the same time scale. You’re going to grow at different rates and sometimes you’re going to grow apart. You’re going to be busier than you ever thought you could be and more tired than you even thought possible. You’re going to have all the romance and desire stripped away from your relationship at times, and you’ll have to wade through the muck to get back to it.

The beautiful end game is that if you last, if you choose each other over and over again, if you don’t get lost in the muck, then what you’re left with is an actual partner; a human extension of yourself. This other person who sees you for all your flaws and idiosyncrasies and late-night eating habits and still chooses you over all the other humans.

But if you’re not prepared for the worst- if you just love and don’t choose- life’s going to seem a whole lots longer and a whole lot harder than you’re probably prepared for.

If you set someone free, they’re probably not going to come back to you, but that’s no excuse not to do it.

It is one of life’s greatest truisms that we are at times ruled by fear. In relationships this presents itself as an all-consuming idea that if we walk away from someone, they will move on, fall out of love and find someone else.

We let this rule us to the point that we keep strings attached, text when we shouldn’t text, late night booty call when we definitely shouldn’t late night booty call, post quotes and update our Facebook statuses in ways that are clearly aimed at that person.

We drop crumbs like Hansel and send out these small, almost invisible fishing lures trying to keep that person close enough that they find it impossible to move on.

It is cruel for both parties, and love at its most selfish and immature. It extends breakups and builds resentments. In the process you probably drag other well-meaning people into your bullshit. You break and squash and burn each other until there is nothing left to go back to – just an overall numbness where tenderness used to be.

Growing up comes with recognition that there are different kinds of love. The selfish kind of love is when you decide you only love someone when they are yours, when they “belong” to you. This is the kind of love that needs lures and breadcrumbs, because you feel like that love doesn’t exist unless they are near you.

If you can get past this point, you can let yourself delve into the real kind of love. Love at its most kind and selfless is the idea that you love this human regardless of time, of where they are and who they are with. An idea that you love them for everything they brought to your life and everything they are leaving you with. The idea that you may never see or know that person again, but a part of you will always love them just for what they meant to you once. This is the kind of love that doesn’t begin and end with a title.

If you can learn to offer love like that, if you can concentrate on the lesson and not the hurt, then all that fear just disappears.

Because maybe, just maybe, that’s the way that other person loved us too. And that, when we lie our heads down at night, there’s someone, somewhere, wishing us the very best.

Love Apptually Part 2: Clowns and Pirates and Fishermen oh my!

April 7, 2015 By Emma Gillies in Humour Tags: Humour, Relationships, Singlehood, Tinder, Writing Leave a comment

In Febraury I shared an emotionally crippling tale (cue the dramatics) about my own embarrassing incident with Tinder. But save a 20-minute involvement that turned me off dating apps forever, my experience with any sort of technologically assisted dating has been sporadic and always secondhand.

This doesn’t mean its existence and effect on human relationships doesn’t continuously intrigue me however (this is “Part 2” for a reason).

I majored in Psychology and Criminology in University, so the social sciences have always been my bag. Living in this crazy online world where face-to-face human interaction is becoming more of a choice than a necessity, it’s hard to ignore that little Freudian voice in the back of my mind that wonders what is becoming of the world and what inevitable impact technology will have on the way we relate to one another.

I remember being 19 the first time I encountered the wonder that is Internet dating. Working a summer office gig at the time, I had a 31-year-old male colleague who regaled me with tales of his experiences with Lavalife (for the youth, Lavalife is a washed-up attempt at adult dating that I now believe is entirely reserved for low-end escorts and gigolos who don’t want to advertise in the back of NOW Magazine).

At 19, I was but a wee nugget fresh out of high school and also recently out of her first relationship. The idea of going on a date with someone I didn’t have at least a 2-year personal resume for and 20 mutual friends who could vouch for his character was unfathomable to me.

The notion of meeting said person through a computer was absurd. At at the time it took me at least two hours bi-weekly to come up with a sassy and hilarious new MSN name, and here was someone telling me to put up an entire profile? For other people to actually see?!?

I quickly shelved Lavalife to the back of my brain as reserved for the very old and highly desperate.

Fast-forward 11 years and everyone and their grandmothers are partaking in online dating of some kind. There is a dating website for every genre and sub-genre of human.

Pirate looking for love? Sure, there’s a website for that.

Fisherman in search of a Fisherlady? Check.

And in case you’re looking, these also exist:

Equestrian Cupid: For those passionate cowboys just looking for someone to ride bareback with.
Amish Dating: Perfect for those who value hard work and candlelit dinners.
Clown Dating: If you’re down for being constantly fucking TERRIFIED because why clowns WHY!?!
Gluten-free Singles: So you can tell each other every single day that you don’t eat wheat and leave the rest of us out of it.
Hot Sauce Passions: I cannot tell you enough how into this I am.

So it was only a matter of time until someone thought, “Gee how can we take this huge industry and make it faster, way less personal, completely unauthentic, and ideal for absolute perverts?”

Enter TINDER. We are now at the point where people consider the hour-long eHarmony questionnaire too much of a time dedication to find a partner. I mean, why consider frivolous character attributes like family values, religion and interests when you can cover WAY more ground by swiping left or right based solely on a bikini photo and some strong eyebrow game?

It would be naïve, therefore, to think that this method of romantically relating wouldn’t filter into out expectations and desires in a relationship. We live in a society that respects and values quantity over quality; we are judged by how MUCH of something we have. Online dating in general and Tinder specifically appeals to this propensity; it makes the quantity of potential relationships exponentially higher. And with this it necessarily makes it near impossible for someone to invest any real time or energy into just one relationship.

Quantity up = quality down. It’s called a CORRELATION people. First year stats whaddup?!

And I know what you’re going to say: “Well that’s stupidly naïve Emma. People on Tinder aren’t interested in dating; it’s a hook-up App and who says a healthy sexual appetite is a bad thing?”

It’s not of course. Have an insatiable appetite for hook-ups you little minxes, and more power to you. I just don’t believe that every user on Tinder is there for the same reasons or with the same zero-expectations. I think many of them are there trying to wade through all the sexual innuendos and terrible examples of humanity in search for an authentic connection.

I have never witnessed a world that makes it more possible and feasible to connect with other people socially and yet is paradoxically making us all antisocial, starving us of quality human interaction.

We are not a generation of need but a generation of want. And with this comes the refusal to wait or fight for anything.

No one seems willing to dedicate the time to actively wooing anymore, or to being wooed. We have all become such easily distracted individuals, constantly drawn to the next shiny object with nice abs and a tight ass.

And, as one would expect, this propensity naturally filters into our face-to-face interactions and our expectations for said romantic meetings. I have a guy friend who takes home a lot of females. I mean, a warrants-his-own-personal-STD-PSA amount. And sure, he’s a good-looking dude with adequate sex appeal, but he’s not particularly suave. His method of picking up amounts to a series of grunts and a reliance on spending his limited amount of energy on a girl with just the right ratio of alcohol consumption to daddy issues.

Ladies, I am all for being a strong independent female who wants to get theirs, truly. Go forth into the night you self-assured, beautiful, toned ladies and give your nether regions a good meal at the 3am buffet! But at least make the guy utter enough full sentences to ensure he is both English speaking and has an IQ above borderline deficiency. Don’t let this weird technological world force you to forget that you are worth some goddamn full sentences!

And don’t mistake this for some feminist rant. Yes I think a woman should demand to be pursued. But similarly, I think men should want to have to fight for her a little. I mean gentleman, do you really want the foundation of your relationship to be a series of vodka-infused six-word conversations that only confirm you two are equipped with the right anatomy to roll around together for an evening?

…. Ugh, I KNOW!… the answer to that question is always a resounding YES.

I really don’t have an issue with online dating or even Tinder. Treat it as entertainment, or as a distraction so you don’t drunk-text your ex, but don’t treat it as a true microcosm of the dating world.

Mostly because in the unfortunate circumstance that I ever find myself single again, I can’t accept that a 5’4” 24-year old accountant intern who offers to slap me with an avocado as his go-to pick-up line is all the dating world has to offer.

And fellas, the next time you get a female’s number, do the unexpected and actually CALL her. Don’t text, don’t Facebook, and definitely don’t send her a direct message on Instagram (I just found out this was a thing).

A phone call. I swear she’ll be so shocked her pants may literally just fall off.

You’re welcome.

Love Apptually: A Tinderella Story

February 24, 2015 By Emma Gillies in Humour Tags: Humor, Humour, Life, Relationships, Singlehood, Tinder, Writing 1 Comment

Once upon a time in a land far far away, sat a princess in her castle, carefully setting up the timer app on her iPhone camera. Once considered the fairest in all the land, long ago a fairy, fed up with the princess’ new-age vanity, cursed her with the inability to take a good selfie.

Banished to the land of poor lighting and double chin angles, only by finding true love (despite many an #instagramfail) could the curse be broken.

And so she sat, in the highest tower, of the tallest castle, on the largest hill in all the land, methodically swiping right on Tinder, hoping and wishing that her Prince Charming would see through her crossed eyes and duck face, and that he too, would swipe right….

…Ok, so a little dramatic sure, but tell me that isn’t a little bit more relatable than leaving behind a glass slipper or having to let down your long golden hair?

Dating in 2015 is a strange little monster isn’t it? In my last post I covered how I think the dating scene changes as you move from your 20s to 30s. But regardless of age, technology has entirely changed the way in which we find, forge and maintain relationships.

For obvious reasons I’m not on Tinder myself, nor have I ever been; I imagine my relationship would be a little less stable if I were constantly on my phone perusing half-naked bathroom mirror selfies of bachelors within a 2km radius of me.

Ok, part of that was a lie.

I was on Tinder once.

For 20 minutes.

And it scarred me emotionally.

It was two years ago, when Tinder was but a wee babe fresh out of the Silicon Valley womb. It was one of those, “let’s go out for one drink” kind-of evenings with a girlfriend that had quickly morphed into 3 hours and 2.5 bottles of wine.

Following numerous in-depth conversations on world news, Canadian politics and the state of Syria, our conversation pivoted to men.

Translation: we had been talking about men since glass one.

After a lengthy summary of her most recent escapades and a synopsis of my at-the-time battle with deciding whether to opt for monogamy or singlehood, she starts telling me about this hilarious new dating application that is, in her words, “Essentially a combination of Hot or Not, but with a location based component.”

I mean, how could I not be curious enough to check it out?

So I download Tinder, and her and I sat beside each other shadowing each others right and left swipes, until we ended up in a conversation with the same two guys, laughing as they fed us both the exact same cheesy pick-up lines.

For those who don’t know, part of the joy of Tinder is depending on how close a location parameter you set, you know if who you’re talking to is within a 10km radius of you, a 5km, a 2km, etc. It took about 6 minutes for both guys to begin vying for an in-person meet and greet with both of us, having no idea we knew each other.

That was about the time that the red wine buzz started to wear off, I became acutely aware that I was speaking to real humans somewhere within a 2km radius of me, both of whom I had mutual friends with on Facebook. I immediately deleted the application, curiosity satisfied and only mildly creeped out by the entire system.

Fast forward a mere TWO DAYS after said interaction, and I am with one of my best guy friends, watching a concert at the Rivoli. I turn and look at the door, and Tinder Guy #1 walks through…

…Followed directly by Tinder Guy #2.

Let me repeat, the only two people I have ever spoken to on Tinder, walk into the incredibly small, packed bar TOGETHER.

Now, despite only having had engaged in a 10-minute discourse with both of them, and having none of these messages include even the mildest undertones of the sexting or inappropriateness, I FREAKED OUT.

Looking back, I assume anyone who saw my next movements must have assumed I had lost complete control of my limbs, or was suffering an epileptic seizure.

Upon seeing both these men, I hurled my entire body down under the crowd, and crouched on the floor with my hands over my head mumbling various obscenities and threats to God.

My friend, standing beside me, was of course generally confused by my insane person behavior. I barely had time to hear him say, “What the balls are you doing?” because I was too busy forward crab walking, still below the crowd, to the bar’s washroom.

There I sat alone in a stall for 10 minutes, texting the friend who introduced me to Tinder various overly dramatic rants about how I will never EVER drink red wine again, how I plan on lighting my phone on fire and how I can now understand the plight of people who live in war-torn countries because isn’t this basically the same thing?

Her supportive reaction of course, “This is the best story ever, I want to marry your current situation and have its babies” and an equally supportive, “Well good luck, let me know how it works out. I remember the brunette being hotter if that helps.”

Some would call my frantic ground crawl and bathroom stall stay an irrational overreaction; others would call it a ridiculously irrational overreaction.

In retrospect, of course I realize it all sounds very illogical and over-the-top; like someone caught me white girl dancing to Alanis Morissette so I threw myself in front of a car. But as I said, I grew up in this city. My world already feels so exponentially small and I do everything I can to not to make it feel smaller.

And this made it so small I felt like I was wearing a parka in a phone booth.

I felt like I had just rolled over first thing in the morning, faced not with just one but two bad decisions from the night before lying beside me, and I wanted to chew my arm off rather than wake the beasts.

In short, Tinder made me feel like I had been part of a threesome gone wrong and I was traumatized.

Let’s also remember that Tinder was still so new at this point. There was no cushion of, “Well everyone’s doing it.” Walking back through that crowd, forced to make eye contact with my two Tinder BFs, I could only assume they were thinking, “Oh, how nice of her to leave the comfort of her home, her collection of stamps and 42 cats to come out for an evening.”

It didn’t matter that to know I was on Tinder they had to also be on Tinder. My brain at the time was not processing basic reason and deduction.

In short, I am chalk full of vanity and was just hugely embarrassed.

As it turns out, I think way too highly of myself, or the memorability of said 20-minute interaction because when I walked through the crowd- in what I imagined to be slow motion- the theme song to The Walking Dead playing on loop in my brain, they looked up, took me in, paused for about three-tenths of a second, and then turned back to each other and continued their conversation with ZERO semblance of recognition.

That’s right… I was the member of the threesome that no one even remembered being in the room.

It looks like they weren’t on Tinder some good banter and solid use of puns. Colour me shocked.

And although I was momentarily so outraged at my text game not making a lasting impact that I thought about walking up, licking both their faces and saying “How’s THAT for a right swipe?!” I realized the value of anonymity was too good and rare to pass up.

APOCALYPSE AVOIDED.

I know this is a relatively PG story. I’m sure reading the title you thought you were going to get a way more risqué tale, like, I don’t know, an actual threesome.

But I never really got to delve into the full gamut of what I hear Tinder has to offer. No one has ever offered to drink my bath water, told me about the toy hat that fits on his penis, or inquired about my desire to have them sit on my face. I’ve never gone on a Tinder “date” at 3am or had to stumble across the profiles of all of my exes on a particularly lonely night at home.

But for one brief moment in time, I got to be Tinderella in a not-so-Prince Charming sandwich.

To those still fighting the good fight, swiping right in the hopes of finding someone you’d gladly have sit on your face, I wish you a most sincere Appily Ever After.

The End

Vodka taught me how to dance

The random musings of a city girl in pursuit of the rad life.

Tag Archives: Relationships