Getty Images"I opened the door for her, and then something happened."There comes a moment in every relationship, however brief, when you realize that things are destined for failure. Sometimes it’s something you do, sometimes it’s something she does, and often it’s nobody’s fault. Either way, these moments ?remain with us, seared into our memories, as testaments to our deeply personal journeys through romantic life. This is one man’s attempt to share some deeply personal moments of his own. This is the third in a series of five we'll be running in the coming days.?
As any right-minded person should be, I’m always skeptical when my mother or one of her friends tries to set me up with someone. The girl in question is inevitably “gorgeous” and “brilliant,” ready for love, but destined not to be my type. I’m just too picky for these sorts of arrangements to work out. Years into my dating life I can count on less than half of one hand the number of times I’ve willingly met a suggested “match.”
One of the few times I’ve given it a shot was about a year ago. Just like a certain population of New Yorkers who migrate to the Hamptons for the holidays, or Bostonians to Cape Cod, my family belongs to a fairly tight-knit community of Montrealers who migrate to Florida for a week or two every winter. In any case, I was in Florida with my family, facing the specter of a planless New Year’s Eve, when my mother’s friend told me that her daughter was going out with some people, including a “gorgeous” and “brilliant” girl that I should most definitely meet. Any plan is better than no plan, especially on New Year’s Eve, when I would have felt guilty doing nothing, so I hastened to the bar to meet up with the group. The “match” turned out to be rather attractive, in fact, and pretty cool, too, so I was glad I went. We had a fun night in a loud bar, exchanged details, and when I got back home to Montreal a week later, I gave her a call and we arranged to meet for dinner.
When I picked her up at her house, she was dolled up and pretty. We had a nice chat on the way to the restaurant, and must have discussed the weather, because I remember driving through a lot of snow that night. She was wearing some awkwardly high heels, which made navigating the space between car and restaurant rather precarious, so my chivalrous instincts were activated. As we approached the restaurant, I opened the door for her, and then something happened: “Thenk yew,” she said, in a nasal, high-pitched, snooty voice that’s typical of girls from the community in which I grew up. The familiarity of it stopped me in my tracks, and although my body carried on into the restaurant, my spirit and enthusiasm were left back at the door. No matter how many nice things I discovered about her that night, I had already learned everything I needed to know at the doorway: that home is sometimes not where the heart is.
Check our When Things Fall Apart Part 1 and Part 2.?
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