I remember when Jacinta planned to come see me in New York. It was her first big trip to come visit me on location. She was a little nervous, so I created a website called convincingjacinta.com, where I cryptically laid out a series of clues about the adventures that awaited. She loved the mystery and didn’t come close to guessing what the activities were. (A medley of visits to the Central Park zoo, an escape room, an archery range, and one of the oldest pizza joints in the city.) One thing I quickly came to know about Jacinta was that if she had to choose between her love for me and her love for pizza, she’d have to think about it.
Every minute we spent together left us wanting to spend even more. We’d alternate who got to plan each reunion. We relished the challenge of keeping it a secret and surprising the other with the most random, unique experience we could think up. We’d also leave hidden notes in each other’s suitcases, which sometimes wouldn’t be discovered for weeks. We both love the little signs of affection and, even more than the grand gestures, I think they’re the key to making a long-distance love work. A carefully conceived gift out of the blue shows how closely you listen to your partner’s story, picking up the subtlest clues to recreate a favorite memory or fulfill some long-ago wish. Finding a sweet note in a coat pocket is a reminder that you’re thought about, missed, considered when you’re not around.
It was only six months into dating when it was my turn to plan a trip to Vancouver with Jacinta. Highlights included taste-testing the world’s best bagel in Granville Island and a run through Stanley Park, which was as selfless a romantic concession as it could be, since she loves running and I hate it. I hate it more than blind dates. The pièce de résistance had us picking up a small boat and sailing to various nearby islands in search of the home my parents lived in before I was born. It was something I’d always wanted to do, and Jacinta shared the same excitement. It was important to her, because it was important to me. That was when I knew.
I was in love with this woman.
I’m not the type of person to hold in my feelings, but with a lifetime’s worth of relationship perspective behind me, I knew exactly what my feelings meant. That night at dinner, I spoke those three little words again. Only now I understood their true meaning. And of course, as if to only mess with me just a little bit more, it took Jacinta three days to respond. But you know what, I’m fine with it, because she’s got my attention for the rest of my life.
I even agreed to run a marathon with her.
Jacinta
Before I met Jonathan, I was in a comfortable stride in my life. I was enjoying my career and my friends, family bonds were strong, and I had time to volunteer, dance, make pottery, travel, go hiking, and otherwise pursue my passions. I was actively disengaged from dating. I had my own momentum and didn’t want a relationship keeping me from what I wanted to do.
My parents always taught me to live boldly, with integrity and self-respect, and that you will get what you give. My attitude toward life and love was lovingly described by family as being “very independent” (and not-so-lovingly referred to by friends as “deliberately self-sufficient with the determined freedom of a wrestler stuck in a headlock.” Or something like that).
That’s where Jonathan came in.
It proved impossible to convince myself otherwise of what was so obvious when we first began seeing each other. Things didn’t feel forced or unnerving; they felt joyful and easy. He was smart and quick-witted, qualities I needed in someone so I wouldn’t fall asleep at the table and dream of pizza, sweatpants, and Netflix. I adored the moments I didn’t have to explain myself because he already understood and the little jokes between us that would have us giggling to ourselves. His character and integrity showed in everything he did. He felt like home. I no longer felt scared to make a leap with someone. Although I was scared to say “I love you” first. (A glass of wine or three might have made me dreamily say it to him, but a fake sneeze covered that right up.)
Moving over to work with his company, in the same field I was before, is a benefit we are fortunate to have. Career and passions are very important to me, and I am thankful I have a man who respects and values that. I love being able to talk about the weird world we work in, like why all PAs have to be awkward, or they aren’t a real PA. We smile and talk about how easy it was to bridge our lives together when there are so many moving parts. Jonathan’s nonstop work schedule is crazy, but somehow fun always manages to find us.
I now know a relationship is about sharing passions and pursuits, not compromising them. I am sincerely grateful for the man he is, and that I get to have him in my life. I never expected to meet someone who had the same outlook on life with the same determination to make the most of it. Which feels really good. And nothing like a headlock.
If the researchers who famously calculated how many words the average person speaks in a day (15,000!) had hooked me up to their electronic trackers, I definitely would have landed on the upper end of their grading curve.*
*You would’ve broken it.
Whether it’s small talk, a deep discussion, or some quick-fire banter, I like to keep the convo going. And let’s not forget that it takes some silver-tongued talent to negotiate million-dollar deals, entertain audiences, and keep Jonathan in line. To be honest, thinking way back, the only time words failed me was when I wanted to make an impression on a member of the opposite sex. If my radar locked on an attractive girl with that “je ne sais quoi,” I would hang back so long—trying to craft the perfect ice-breaker—that she would be gone by the time I was ready to say hello. Or, I would just walk right up and blurt out whichever words made it from my brain to my mouth first. But on October 23, 2010, after years of refining my approach, I concocted the perfect six-word combination to make contact.
“Hey, where’d you get that water?”
I was backstage at a Fashion Week event in Toronto during our first year of filming Property Brothers, and the random stranger holding the bottle of H2O I wanted was, it just so happened, gorgeous. The moment I walked in, I heard her infectious laugh and could tell by her personality that this was somebody I wanted to know. She flashed a dazzling smile and told me where to go. For the water, I mean. Then she sealed both our fates with a meaningful question of her own:
“Where’d you get that pizza?”
I try not to be obvious when it comes to flirting. Jonathan, Pedro, and JD dubbed me “The Robot” when I was in ninth grade because I never showed much emotion. It used to take weeks, if not months, of angst and mental rehearsal for me to work up the nerve to even approach a girl I found attractive. At 32, I was long past that painfully awkward stage, but I still wasn’t the type of guy to go in with guns blazing. I was more strategic. My m.o. was to start a conversation with some generic question or comment, keep it light, and see where it led. But, standing in front of this woman now waiting for me to tell her where I’d found the pizza, I was frankly awestruck. I’d never felt this kind of instant connection before. Don’t let her go, urged the voice in the back of my head.
We introduced ourselves, but we both had official duties to attend to. I was in the show, and Linda was on patrol as the “fashion police,” wearing a big badge and carrying a pad of tickets so she could cite fashion offenders. I escaped that fate, naturally.
I kept my eye out for Linda all night, making a point to say a word or two to her each time our paths crossed. When the event ended and everyone shifted to the after-party, though, I lost her.
Hopefully scanning the crowd at the second gathering, I kicked myself for not sparking up a great convo with Linda earlier. Now I couldn’t get her out of my mind, while she probably already had me archived in a file labeled, “Tall Guy Robot, Dry Mouth.”
I was on the verge of turning the after-party into my own private pity party when she appeared out of nowhere, like a magician without the smoke. She had this playful, vibrant energy that I could feel from halfway across the room
, where she was . . . talking to some other guy. Damn. The one night I forgot to accessorize with a claymore from my sword collection. Good thing I’d studied improv. I would vanquish the interloper with my sharp wit instead.
I walked over and planted myself between Linda and my presumed rival, making an exaggerated show of rudely giving Linda my back as I pretended to be chatting up the guy. I played it off as a joke, which was my in. And, by the way, did I happen to mention that I was Tom Welling’s body double on Smallville? Truth. So it couldn’t be that bad of a view.*
*I’m assuming she needed something for her nausea?
Linda wasn’t offended, confirming my hunch that she shared my twisted sense of humor, and the guy she was talking to turned out to be just a good friend. Linda and I chatted here and there throughout the night about everything from volleyball to movies to the fact that she lived in Toronto and did drafting for an architectural firm. The most important discovery was that she was seeing someone. I recall feeling disappointed, but still happy to have made a new friend since I was just starting out in Toronto, and she seemed like she would be a great tour guide. Linda’s date that evening was her older sister, Wanda.
We still both had official mingling to do, so we agreed to stay in touch and went back to working the crowd. When Jonathan and I were ready to call it a night, there stood Linda waiting outside for a cab with her sister Wanda. We could not in good conscience let our newfound friends venture home in such an insipid fashion, so we offered them a ride. Linda later confessed that the only reason she broke the cardinal rule about never getting into a car with a stranger was because “there were two of us and we were pretty confident we could kick your butts if you turned out to be creeps.”*
*Whoa, whoa. We were being gentlemen. Maybe we should’ve charged for gas.
When Jonathan and I wrapped up filming in Toronto, I invited Linda and her sister to the party we were throwing before heading home for the holidays. They were busy, but Linda asked me to let her know when I was going to be back in town so we could get together then. I remember turning to Jonathan and saying, “You know that cute, funny fashion police girl from the runway show? She’s single now.” And I was right.
We finally managed to have our first date on January 21, 2011. It was actually three dates in one, because a) I wanted to make sure she didn’t get bored, and b) I wanted to delay saying good-bye for as long as possible without raising any alarm about a possible hostage situation. First, we went out for sushi, a favorite food we were happy to discover we had in common. Then it was on to a hot chocolate café Linda had mentioned when we first met. After that, she had plans to go to her best friend’s birthday party at a karaoke bar after the cocoa date-within-a-date, and I invited myself along. Hey, it was karaoke! She didn’t object, and I figured fate was rooting for me when the guest of honor couldn’t find his own party, and I got another 45 minutes of Linda time to myself. We crushed Lonely Island’s comedy rap “I’m on a Boat” and smoothly sailed right into Grease, a transition that should not be attempted without emergency karaoke personnel on standby. For the record, I sang Sandy’s part and Linda brought out her best Danny.
We’ve been inseparable ever since. (I’d say “attached at the hip,” however my hips are at her shoulders, LOL.)
Lame as my water pickup line may have been, Linda truly was my oasis in the desert.
In theory, I should have had some swagger in the romance department. Even in the notoriously self-conscious teen years, I was totally at ease performing in front of a crowd, whether it was onstage in a high school musical or on the gym floor at a national karate championship. And I’ve always thrived under pressure and enjoyed the thrill of competition. When we went out to some club, I could be my talkative self as long as we were socializing and joking around, but when it reached the critical moment of asking a girl for her phone number or a date, I was like a deer in the headlights. I’d completely freeze.*
*Watching Drew try to flirt was like seeing a Ben Stiller movie play out before your eyes.
I think I was emotionally scarred by a star on the girls’ volleyball team when I was a freshman in high school. Tall and lean with short blond hair, she was popular in the athletics crowd. I spent a few months devising and discarding clever ways to get her to go out with me. I was on the boys’ volleyball team, so I could suggest we practice together after school. Or I could ask her if she needed any help with her algebra homework, what with me being a numbers nerd and all. Because who wouldn’t jump at an invitation to go on a math date? In the end, I ambushed her one afternoon outside the gym and mumble-stuttered my carefully crafted question:
“Will you go out with me sometime?”
“No thanks,” she said. It wasn’t mean so much as lightly dismissive, which in a weird way probably shredded my confidence much worse. If she had recoiled in horror and said something like, “Why would anyone go out with you, you hideous blob of protoplasm?” then at least I would have felt . . . acknowledged. Instead, I had all the impact of a dust mote.
The last thing I ever wanted to do was come across as desperate and/or delusional. I would fall in “like” with a girl, and instead of cranking up the charm, I’d find myself formulating an exit strategy to escape embarrassment or rejection before even approaching her in the first place. In my skewed logic, merely walking up to a girl to test the waters seemed like an invasion of her privacy, even in a crowded singles bar.*
*Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto.
When I forced myself to at least try, the result was always stilted. That reaction might have made some sort of sense if I’d been drawn to aloof supermodels who only dated music moguls, but my type was sweet girl-next-door or athletic and adventurous. My celebrity crushes were Tiffani-Amber Thiessen from Saved by the Bell and Sporty Spice. (Jonathan leaned more toward Christina Applegate or Tyra Banks, whose posters he kept hidden in his room on the back of his closet door.* Still might, come to think of it . . .)
*Umm, Tyra was behind my college closet door! And by the way, thank you very much Sports Illustrated, winter ’97 swimsuit edition.
As soon as we hit the legal age (in Vancouver) of 19, Pedro, Jonathan, and I started hitting up a popular downtown nightclub called The Rage. With multiple levels and an aircraft hangar–sized dance floor, the club was massive, capable of holding over a thousand people. That had to improve our odds. The three of us looked like extras who wandered off the set of A Night at the Roxbury. Pedro and I dressed in tight, shiny shirts, while Jonathan was more likely to channel the violet suit/black turtleneck/gold chain look. And no, we weren’t trying to be ironic, in case you were wondering. Whereas Jonathan and Pedro really played their parts, I merely dressed it. Even with my how-could-you-not-want-this outfit, I still felt out of place. I spent a lot of time standing by the bar drinking water and nodding my head to the beat of the music. The only pickup game I excelled at was on the basketball court.
Even though there were hundreds of presumably eligible women at The Rage on a weekend night, Jonathan and I would inevitably end up interested in the same one. Then, in some sort of strange bar scene deposition, we’d instantly claim we each had seen her first. More often than not this debate would carry on until the girl had disappeared into the crowd, or found another dance partner.
Jonathan insisted my dating downfall was that I was “too nice” and just needed to chill out.*
*You’d always instantly enter the friend zone. That’s a one-way journey.
When I was 21, I decided my best course of action was to challenge myself once a day to talk to a girl I didn’t know in a manner that wasn’t awkward. Though initially there was some rejection, I discovered that most women were more than willing to participate in a little idle chatter. As soon as that felt natural, I would try talking to two female strangers a day, then three, then four, and so on. I wasn’t hitting on them; I was just trying to get myself to a point where one-on-on
e conversation would be easier. The conversations kept growing longer and the responses continued to get better. I discovered I already had the humor, the wit, and the social skills women wanted . . . I had just been lacking the confidence. Gradual exposure: That was the key. I think that approach is usually used to help people overcome their phobias of things like spiders, cottage cheese, or down escalators, not help someone get a date—but who cares? It worked. My theory might as well have been published in some relationship journal because I had personally proved it over the course of a couple of years and had more date offers on the table than I knew what to do with. My insecurity was banished. Delusions of grandeur took its place.*
*Ugh . . . enter “The Coach.”
Drunk on my own success, now I was convinced I was some kind of relationship guru. I appointed myself the resident relationship expert among our friends, and proceeded to offer advice.*
*Even when no one was actually asking for it.
The main thing I was trying to do was help these guys so they didn’t have to suffer through the same awkwardness that I had. I could see myself in them. I couldn’t bear watching idly from the sidelines as my buddies fumbled.
“Hey, don’t you think you should ask her out?” I remember prodding our friend Jodi when I thought he ought to be making a move. My newfound soulmate Spidey-sense had sounded an alert that a potential love connection was within our strike zone . . . no one was going to become the 40-year-old virgin on my watch! I could see the girl in question was showing interest in Jodi when we struck up a conversation, but then he just shut down while I continued to talk.
“She said she was interested in rock climbing. You like rock climbing. Talk about that!” I suggested. “Really listen to what a woman says and take your cue from that,” I added. I thought I had unlocked the Da Vinci Code here. The brain cells I reserve for minding other people’s business were already registering Jodi and the outdoorsy stranger for wedding gifts. Could carabiners be engraved? Needless to say, Jodi got the date, and I was still the reigning champ of love/lust connections.
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