relationship Archives

Editor's Journal May 29, 2018

Am I missing the bride gene?

I’m getting married. It feels strange to be engaged. Don’t get me wrong, I love my fiancé and am over the moon that he put a ring on my finger. I just never thought this time would arrive for me. When growing up friends would share excitedly about what kind of wedding they wanted and the style of dress they liked best — but when asked, I would shrug my shoulders and simply say, “Hadn’t really thought about it.”

What I have always known is that one day I would like to marry my best friend and build a life with him. I thought when the time came, it would be like that wedding planning bug that seemingly every one of my friends had, would come out of its dormant state in me. It’s not the case. I’m excited for the day I put on my wedding dress, but I’ve always had the mindset that it’s just ONE day and it’s the adventure that follows which I’m most excited about. I also hate being the centre of attention, so, of course, I am not one who has ever wanted a massive traditional wedding.

From day 1, Cody and I both admitted we wanted a stress-free, fun, destination wedding with our nearest and dearest. I’m an unconventional girl and despite the expectation to plan a massive wedding at a ornate church and a reception at a lavish ballroom, it’s just not my style. I woke up at 5 am for coverage of the Royal Wedding and loved every moment, but fascinators and Cinderella carriage rides, just aren’t me.

I have to admit it’s enjoyable witnessing my mother’s excitement since I told her Cody and I are engaged. She has waited decades for this time to arrive and as soon as I announced the engagement, she began busily planning as if it is her own wedding on the horizon. She set us up with a destination wedding coordinator, took me to find the perfect dress (which I did. it’s straight off the rack, without a need for alterations. Thank goodness. I hate extra spending on alterations.) and spread the word like wildfire to friends and family, all within 48 hours of the ring being on my finger.

Mom clearly has the wedding planning bug. Why is it missing in me? I can’t pretend to feel it when I don’t. I wear my feelings on my sleeve and my opinions on my face, so feigning excitement is not something I can do. Whenever I worry that my interest in wedding planning isn’t what it should be, I realize that my excitement triples when I think about the future Cody and I have planned after the wedding. I think all too often we put too much emphasis on the immediate. On the one day , the one dress and the first dance. I understand that maybe I’m a bit different in many ways, but I’m not strange or missing the bride gene. I’m just looking with more excitement at the journey and the future.

Editor's Journal May 1, 2018

London Calling

Over a decade ago I packed up my things at my childhood home and moved to London, U.K. It was a sudden decision and one that my family-especially my parents- were surprised by. Up until that point I had always lived in Ottawa and never thought I’d leave. I had a happy childhood and a great group of friends, but after finishing my post-secondary education, relationships changed and I was looking for adventure.

Newly out of teacher’s college, I found opportunities were scarce in Ontario, but the U.K. was looking for new teachers. So I jumped at the opportunity, signed a contract and boarded a plane within three weeks to the city I would call home for 8 months.

Those 8 months were the most challenging and exciting of my life. I was enthralled with British culture up until heading there, mainly because of my mother and her love for British dramas and the royal family. I had fond memories of a childhood visit and at 24, I felt like I was once again a wide-eyed child, but this time could appreciate it fully. The busy city streets and vibrant red double-decker buses, the vintage-style cabs lined up at Charing Cross Station, the cobblestone streets and quirky fashion, and sights like the London Eye and the Thames, all fascinated me on my first journey through the core of the city.

The central portion of London proper had an entirely different vibe than the area that I ended up finding a flat-share in. It did not take long for the novelty and excitement to ware off and for me to get saturated in the day-to-day responsibilities. I lived with two Londoners in Hither Green- at the time, a “dodgy area,” as they say there. I taught in an even dodgier area on an estate in Abbeywood.

The novelty of being in a city I had grown up fascinated by quickly fizzled, and days swiftly passed. I enjoyed a romantic relationship with a homegrown Brit, finally became used to the food and cultural differences, and became comfortable in my role as a nursery teacher.

That’s not to say the transition wasn’t rocky. I experienced severe homesickness and talked to my parents daily for the first month, caught a terrible flu that I just couldn’t shake for well over that same month, was mugged twice-once at gun point – and hated not having my usual drip coffee to sip every morning before work.

The 8 months came and went and I was asked to stay on at the school for another year. I initially said yes, but then retracted. I realized that I had experienced all of London 20 times over and a number of the other British regions– – Cornwall was my favourite.

But with that trip to Cornwall came the starting point to the end of my relationship. My partner at the time was so immersed in his own life and family, and proved to not be very interested in mine. My father offered to fly him to Toronto for my brother’s wedding, and when he said no, I knew that the relationship would not work. The distance from my family made me appreciate them all even more, and if my boyfriend at the time couldn’t, it was time to go home, just as I had planned all along.

Eleven years later, whenever I am asked about the most interesting experience of my life, or the one that made the biggest impact, I always think back to those days in London. I was once a quiet and meek woman, nervous to go shopping at the mall on my own. That experience caused me to cross the pond solo to take on a city that is 10 times the size of Ottawa. Naturally, my next move was to Toronto.

Love & Sex April 11, 2018

How to maintain a relationship after children

When my husband and I first started dating, the world felt like ours. Time was just a mere construct too limiting for our love! We had forever ahead of us! And then…we had kids.

Too soon, the once endless expanse of our universe slowly contracted and time suddenly became very real. We turned our skills at researching the best weekend getaways into researching the best pediatricians, instead. Our pillow talk turned into shop talk as we managed pregnancy symptoms and a barrage of obstetrician appointments.

Our perfectly planned pregnancy became a high risk pregnancy when the preterm labor symptoms predicted by a test I took turned into early labor, adding a new slew of challenges, worries, and fears – all competing for our collective time and attention.

If you don’t decide what your priorities are, something else always will. Our new health concerns with this pregnancy consumed us. We tackled each obstacle with the kind of ferocity and naivete that only first-time parents can have. Our relationship became reactive instead of proactive, draining our reserves and leaving us depleted. We had to face the paradox that even though our family was growing, we were growing apart as a couple.

We needed structure, some scaffolding to hold us up. We realized some of the things that had come naturally at the beginning of our relationship, we now needed to deliberately do to keep growing as a couple. Here are a few things we learned that brought us closer together.

Make time for each other. We were busy before we had kids, but there still always seemed to be enough time. But our time slowly became scarce, and we felt stretched thin, handling each new thing that came up – feeling run down rather than replenished. It became easier to put off date night because we were too tired (or busy with our favorite kid activities) until the occasionally missed plan became habitual. We realized that replacing date night for a doctor’s appointment didn’t replace the closeness we felt when we took time for just us. Now, we make it a priority to carve out that time together, because there will always be something vying for our attention if we don’t: work, chores, soccer games, homework, you name it. We find little ways to check in with each other, whether it’s having coffee together before our day starts or cuddling at the end of the day to unwind. There are more minutes in a day than hours, and it’s the small, everyday gestures that make up a relationship more than the big, occasional ones.

Don’t get used to each other. There’s that notorious sliding scale of effort that exists in the first year of a relationship; the dichotomy between wanting to impress each other and becoming more comfortable with each other. Skinny jeans turn into sweatpants. Going out turns into staying in. You both exhale a silent sigh of relief at not having to try so hard anymore. It’s natural that with more intimacy comes less mystery; your pre-date ritual is no longer top secret, and you now know what happens when they eat Indian food – intimately. But getting too comfortable can turn into taking each other for granted. Sometimes all it takes is a little shift in perspective: remember how you felt when you saw your significant other for the first time? Or when you only saw them once a week and wished you could see them every day? Well, now you have what you wanted. But don’t get used to it. Look at them like the rare being they are and see if it doesn’t ignite some of the feelings that sparked your relationship in the beginning.

Connect with each other. I mean really connect. Physically and emotionally. When time becomes scarce, the quality of your time together becomes even more important than the quantity. Don’t stop doing the little things that strengthened your connection at the start of your relationship, whether it’s kissing at red lights or just texting them during the day to tell them you’re thinking of them. And yes, be intimate. Have sex — even if you have to schedule it. Spontaneity sometimes has to die on the altar of adulthood, and if it’s choosing between scheduling time to be alone together vs. waiting for the right moment, sometimes the right moment never arrives.

If my husband and I have learned anything from our challenges, it’s that lasting love is an action. It’s like Newton’s first law of motion: love at rest tends to stay at rest, and love in motion stays in motion. Love with purpose, not passivity, and take back your time together.

Living September 21, 2017

Love will conquer all

Today is our 15th wedding anniversary and my husband, Greg Thomson, started our day by playing a video on his Iphone of the Flintstones singing “Happy Anniversary, Happy Anniversary.” Like our wedding day, today started with reckless giggling.

My husband is an amazing man. In that quiet time just before we get up in the morning, I sometimes feel as if there is an angel beside me. He is man who has made it his goal to balance compassion, tenderness, strength, wisdom and grace — and he has succeeded. Greg has never chased after power or fame, and he doesn’t need social status or wealth to define him – but he makes allowances for those who do.

Greg is rarely critical of people or ideas, he doesn’t possess the arrogance that too often develops in men who achieve success. Greg believes in human potential – in that ability people have to achieve things that others think impossible.

Greg would never hurt anyone and he would never try to limit or undermine someones confidence. He is wise and knows that those who think they know best are fools (although he’d never say that to them). He is a man who feels a duty to give back the world, to tackle mediocrity, and conventional thinking. In his work, he studies the social impact of charities hoping that he can help the small charities who have a large social impact. He gets frustrated over the amount of funds that get wasted by charities that have little social impact, but are filled with influential board members.

When I think about our marriage, I believe our happiness rests on our willingness to give up our individual selves to become part of something bigger. I remember when we were just married, I used to write about my love for him; about the things he did that inspired me, about the awe that I had over this man who chose to share his life with me. Today, I realize that my love is now weaved together with the love Greg has for me. It is constantly expanding. It encompasses our children, and, like a warm breeze, it spreads out over our family and friends. I think our love grows with the choices we make, with the friendships we have, and the experiences we gain. By living up to the people we want to be we are able to feel more deeply, and experience things more richly.

When we were first married we talked about what we wanted in our future. Greg wanted to feel more, to do more and to make a difference in the world. Back then I couldn’t understand what Greg meant by ‘feel more” because I had been raised to put both my heart and mind into everything I do. At the beginning of our marriage I realized that Greg put his head and thoughts into what he did, but not his heart. He learned to be cerebral, to hide his feelings, but part of him knew he was missing out on something. Over time as our love weaved together Greg let himself feel more, he put his heart and not just his head into everything he did. He allowed himself to go beyond just thinking about the world to sensing it. I learned to see the world through Greg’s eyes just as he learned to see it through mine. Our world became much bigger, more vibrant, sensual, and beautiful. We are soaring above the ground we walked as individuals.

A few months ago a man told me that I should be much more afraid of failing than I am. I’ve thought about his words a lot since then; about what he thinks is failure, and about the limitations his kind of thinking has placed on him. In the world of keeping up the Joneses he’s succeeded, but in the world that Greg and I live in, he seems shackled by fear, limiting his involvement in things that might expand his world because he fears failure.

The love that Greg and I have has allowed us to embrace the world. Together we can take on any challenge. And the only true failure that either of us could have is to fail to live up to the moral code that guides our lives. Our love has made us free, and has given us confidence. Together we experience life, we set out to achieve our dreams and we live every moment to the fullest.

When our eldest son was born, I remember sharing that moment when we both realized that our duty extended beyond just what we could give to the world, but to provide our children with love, compassion and a value system that will allow them to find the love we have managed to build.

Everyday I wake up and I know how lucky I am to have such an amazing man in my life. Greg is the strongest man I have ever met. He would never compromise himself for gain, or use “business” as an excuse for hurting someone. I think he would actually be physically sick if he thought his words had hurt someone. He is kind, compassionate and every day he defines what it means to be a gentleman.

The vision of who Greg wants to be captures all the qualities that go into making a true hero. He is a part of how I define myself, the pulse inside me that drives me forward and makes me want to put everything I have into everything that I do — so that one day I just might be good enough for him.

Sustainability June 8, 2017

The power of connecting with your vagina

One Word: Vagina.

Do I have your attention yet? Or better yet, how are you reacting to the word? Are you cringing, panicking, or is it arousing?

Discussing the vagina can cause various reactions. Rarely is it a topic of open discussion at the dinner table. In fact, thinking about this vital tool of female sexuality as a powerful source of healing, creativity, and happiness most often causes nervous giggles or averted gazes rather than furious clapping or high-fives. How is it that we regularly listen to men drone on about their penis sizes (and even use it in pick-up lines with expectations of rousing applause), yet any mention of female genitalia must be avoided at all costs? Society is abysmal.

In an effort to reinvent the wheel my fellow women, prepare yourself and get deeply excited about the secrets I am going to divulge in this article. If you want to giggle or roll your god damn eyes, get out of here! Otherwise buckle up and come for a ride.

The first thing you need to understand is that women deserve to have a relationship with their vaginas. I don’t mean the type of partnership that comes from a 20-year marriage where you sleep on opposite sides of the bed. Instead, each and every woman should strive for a thriving and vibrant connection with her vagina because it holds the secrets of our “yoni”, a Sanskrit word meaning source of origin. Ask yourself, how do you feel about your vagina? When you feel aroused by someone or something (or you don’t), do you listen to that intuition? If we pay attention to the signs our bodies are trying to give us, we can learn a lot from our vaginas. Pay attention, listen, feel, and, you will be surprised.

Holistic sex and relationship coach, Kim Anami, has several free videos and immersive courses that explain the importance of how to vitally connect with your vagina. With meditative work and focus, it is possible to harness your creative sexual energy and use it to heal your body and promote creativity and new ideas. Whether through masturbation or sex, allow yourself to come to a point of almost orgasming and, instead of achieving climax, breathe slowly and focus the energy inward. This practice is known as manifesting the microcosmic orbit, and can be a healing practice for the body. When channeling the energy inward, simply visualize a ball of energy moving up the spine to the crown of your head and back down through the front of your body back to your pelvic area. The energy will help promote healing in areas of your body or chakras that need energy or attention, and you will feel an increase in creativity and inspiration from the practice.

Want more? A daily yoga-like practice that will help further create a connection with your vagina and inner-creative power is a 5000-year-old traditional Tibetan practice known as the five Tibetan rights. These five exercises should be done daily while meditating on the power of your pelvic core. Begin by spinning in a ‘dervish whirl’ until you are slightly dizzy and then lie down on the floor. The second exercise includes lying down on the ground and bringing your legs up together to a 90 degree angle as many times as comfortable. The third rite is to kneel with your toes curled up, and place your hands on your outer thighs as you stretch your chest towards the sky, stretching your back. The fourth repetition involves lying on your back and raising your body to a table-top position. Lastly, complete the cycle by doing downward and upward facing dog repeatedly. These practices promote clarity and open up the chakras to receive the sexual energy from the microcosmic orbit.

If you are having trouble focusing or manifesting creative energy, invoking the powers of the vagina will help regain the inner power to create and inspire. Instead of struggling for several hours to focus on a project, simply enact the five Tibetan rights or practice the microcosmic orbit, and you will be surprised how much energy comes out of the experience. Sexuality is empowering and enlightening, if used in a healthy way, and manifesting a personal relationship with the vagina is an inspiring path towards self-love.

Love your vagina, love the power of creation it has, and most of all, don’t be afraid to shout the word from the rooftops. It is about time we open the floor to a conversation about the power of female sexuality and all of its potential.

Love & Sex June 4, 2017

How rejection has humbled me

So get this. During your lifetime, you will come across people that won’t exactly love you. Heck, they won’t even like you. The very thought of you doing well in life will cause anguish in theirs. And while some people have come to terms with this very early on, realizing it’s just a part of life, I, myself, am just learning this. And dear Lord, it’s quite the humbling experience.

I try to be a good person. Plus, I’m cute. So my first wave of rejection came as a shock. What’s there not to love about me? I carry myself with poise, demonstrate kindness and sincerity, and have just the right amount of confidence. I bring this confidence to all my relationships. I made sure he saw it. I wanted him to. I had feelings for him after all. But after a couple of months, we decided a romantic relationship wasn’t going to work out due to a number of uncontrollable reasons, including distance. Despite the circumstances, we continued speaking anyways. I was hooked. He was my drug. I told myself he was hooked on me too. He had to be.

Then, fate took over. I came across his profile on a dating app my friend had recently signed up for. I read his bio. I read his willingness to move abroad. I read he was looking for a confident, ambitious, smart, funny, and crazy woman. Confident. Ambitious. Smart. Funny. Crazy. I read it over and over again, never feeling smaller then I did at that moment. The confidence I brought to that relationship wasn’t enough. Neither was the ambition. Nothing was. He didn’t find anything he was looking for in me.

It was humbling.

The problem is, I’m a people pleaser. I will bend over backwards to get people to like me, sometimes putting my own priorities at jeopardy. I’ll let my own deadlines slide, or sacrifice that one thing I was saving up for to do something for someone else. It’s the norm I’ve grown up knowing. So after putting in 110% to a relationship that was never really a relationship to begin with, I realized how much I cared for him. What I didn’t realize, was that I was expecting something in return. What I didn’t realize, was that, instead, I was being used as a scapegoat to fill the emotional needs of this person while he was searching for something better.

It was humbling.

I wasn’t as selfless as I thought I was. As I heard in a movie once (because romantic comedies are always credible), unrequited love is actually an immensely powerful feeling. Because unlike other relationships, it doesn’t need to be shared by two people. You have sole proprietorship over it. I gained a little strength from this, but I quickly concluded it was complete bull sh*t. Love feels better to share. Love feels better when its reciprocated. There’s something about it that makes you glow. Inside and out.

Unfortunately, its human nature to want what you can’t have. Even if you were blessed with anything you’ve ever wanted and more, you’ll still want that one thing you weren’t meant to obtain. Your heart will tell you he’s the only one for you, and you’ll genuinely start to internalize this. But then you’ll come to realize….maybe you’re not the one for them.

And its humbling.

Uncategorized July 4, 2013

Relationship deal breakers

Recently one of my closest friends has been arguing with her manfriend of two years. She doesn’t want babies and he does; is that a deal breaker? They seem to think that it might be and I don’t blame him or her because how can she be the girl that stops him from being a father? The resentment and the guilt would ruin whatever love they have for each other, maybe not today or even a couple years from now, but eventually they would hate each other.

I don’t know if I want babies, I don’t think I do, and I’ve told Boyfriend that from day one. Children are not in my plan and he seems to be okay with that. But every once and a while I worry that maybe one day that will be a deal breaker for him. Maybe one day he’ll want to be a dad and it will feel like it’s too late to make that decision.

It’s strange that I’m in this place now, that at 25 I think about the wedding and the babies and I wonder what I want five years from now. Do I want to be a mother or a wife? Or will fur babies and common law do for me?

I think about a future with Boyfriend a lot; he’s my person and a future without him seems impossible to imagine, but I could do it if it meant that he got what he wanted or needed out of life, if it meant that he was happier then I could do it. But I wonder what his deal breakers are. Is there something that he needs as much as my friend’s man needs to be a father? I like to think that we’ve been honest enough with each other these past nine months, that if there was something he needed that I couldn’t give that we could end it rather than stay together and hurt each other.

When I imagine our future I think about the little things: moving in together, getting a puppy and enjoying the day to day. I’m not excited to walk down the aisle because who knows if I’ll ever make it there but I’m excited for the day when we wake up together and neither of us have to rush home. I’m excited for the day when we do the IKEA trip — partially because we need furniture and partially because testing your relationship in the hell that is IKEA is fun in a sick and twisted kind of way.

Maybe we don’t have any deal breakers, maybe we won’t have to worry that we love each other but want different things, but if that day comes I hope I’m strong enough to say goodbye. I won’t lie though: I think Boyfriend and I have a bright future ahead of us, many stupid IKEA arguments, late night conversations about nothing and breakfasts in bed. We can do anything and we have all the time in the world to figure it out.

Uncategorized June 21, 2013

Shannon Hunter: The perfect time to say ‘I love you’

There have been a couple of moments recently where I’ve realized that I’m not just in love with Boyfriend, I’m head over heels cartoon birds singing me songs when I wake up IN LOVE. But I still don’t know how to say it; probably because I’ve spent the past couple of weeks trying to find the perfect time to say the words, “I. Love. You.”

I don’t think there is a perfect time though, I don’t think that we need to be on the island with all of our friends, or on a trip to the beach or anything other than with each other; as many times as I’ve said it to the air for it to count he kind of has to be in the same room and within hearing distance.

I’ve taken to poking at him and saying his name but every time he says, “What?” I sing-song, “Never mind,” which drives him mad but it’s become an inside joke between us; it reminds me of The Princess Bride, never mind is my as you wish.

I was afraid before, afraid to wait the eons that exist between, I love you and I love you too, but now my fear is outweighed by my desire to tell him how much he means to me. I’m a lucky girl, how I ended up with someone who can make my heart speed up and slowdown in the same breath I don’t know. But I do know that I am a lucky girl. I never thought I would find someone who fit perfectly in to my life and into my heart.

I’m terrified that he won’t say it back, I’ve never been more afraid of anything, but I don’t need to find the perfect time to tell him that I love him, I just need to tell him. I can tell him when we’re making dinner, when we’re going for a swim at my pool or when we’re sitting on the couch watching more HBO than we probably should; because there is no perfect time to tell someone that your life is better with them in it.

So my life is better with Boyfriend in it and I need him to know that because the words are practically bursting from my throat, because saying it is better than not saying it, because even if he doesn’t say it back I’m the happiest I’ve ever been. But he better say it.

Maybe I’ll say it tomorrow, maybe I’ll say it the next time he wears the blue shirt that makes his own blue eyes sparkle, maybe I’ll say it the next time I fall asleep next to him after a day in the sunshine or maybe I’ll just say it the next time he smiles at me. I’ll never find the right time and nothing in life is ever perfect but maybe I’ll luck out and find a slightly more appropriate time than while playing video games or falling asleep.

Uncategorized June 13, 2013

I Picked You

Last weekend Boyfriend and I got into a bit of a tiff. I had jokingly said, “Let’s talk about our relationship and the future and be all romantic and stuff.” To which he responded, “We don’t need to talk about the future. We’ll just keep having fun and petting kittens and being together.” Aside from noticing that we tend to speak like children of the internet on a regular basis, I was a little put off by the idea that he just saw the future as same old, same old and never moving forward because that is definitely not what I want our relationship to be.

Having grown up in a household where yelling was how most discussions happened I am always a little nervous to have a real discussion because I don’t like yelling and I don’t like fighting. Because of this, I avoided having a conversation about why I was upset and I just let it sit for a day. The next day Boyfriend came over and insisted that we talk because I had been acting “weird.” And he needed to know why. So after a lot of avoiding I finally told him why I was upset and his response made it all better.

When I told Boyfriend that I was upset because I was afraid he was just passing the time with me and it wouldn’t matter if I was me or any other girl he responded by saying, “Shan, I picked you. I could have been with someone else but I wanted you, I picked you.” So we’re not perfect and it isn’t easy but we picked each other and even if the future is uncertain I think it’s worth figuring it out together.

I wish I wasn’t so afraid of confrontation. I can do it at work, in interviews and on twitter but when it comes to someone I care about it’s really hard for me to say what I think when I’m upset. I’m afraid that with one wrong turn he’ll leave me because everyone who came before did. But that’s kind of how it works isn’t it? All the ones that came before were wrong because you have to wade through all the bad relationships to find the good ones.

Whatever happens in the future with Boyfriend I know that he chose to be with me and doesn’t want to be with anyone else and for now I’m happy with the plan for the future which is simply to keep being happy and having fun. Eventually we’re going to have this conversation for real and without all the interweb speak, except that there totally will be interweb speak because we’re nerds of epic proportions. At that point we’ll have to see if we’re ready to go in the same direction because a year from now I’m going to want to live together and in two years I’ll want to think about other options for our future.

For now the future is a little bit uncertain but at least I know I have someone who gets the joke when I ask husky owners if their dog’s name is moon-moon.

Follow Shannon on Twitter at @Shananigans.