When Love Makes You Redefine Your Terms

When you are (were) single and dating, do you have certain qualities or factors that are “deal breakers”? Something that you know you can not accept or get past? Maybe bad teeth or ugly feet? One of my deal breakers was smoking. I refused to date anyone who smoked. Long distance was another.

Back when French Charming and I were using Tinder it had a 90 mile radius for seeing potentials matches.  For me, I rarely swiped right (or is it left when you are saying “yes”) on anyone outside of Houston.  The logistics of seeing each other were just too difficult.  French Charming had said the same about Tinder in France.

In fact, he had matched with a woman who lived in Agen, a city about an hour and a half away from Bordeaux.  When he realized how far she was, he told her that it would be too difficult.  She suggested meeting somewhere between their two cities.  His response was “Where?  On the side of the highway?  No, thank you, Agen is too far away for me.”  He refused to meet her and that was the end of that.

After French Charming and I met in Houston and hit it off superbly, we had our next meeting/date in LA.  Even though this was only second time for us to see each other, we felt as though we had been dating for months because of the daily contact we had established.  Even before our first meeting we had both deleted our Tinder accounts and agreed that we were only interested in each other and seeing where things might go. Just like that, we both threw “no long distance” out the window.

Being that I lived in the US and he lived in France, it never occurred to me that we may cross paths with one of our exes.  However…….

LA would only be our second date but our first to last more than one evening.  He was arriving in the evening and so I scheduled my flight to arrive there shortly after.  He had just checked into the hotel and waited for me in the lobby.  Yes, we were crazy excited to see each other again. We had already made plans to rent a convertible the next day and drive all over seeing major sites of LA:  Hollywood including the Hollywood sign,  the Chinese Theater, Beverly Hills, Venice Beach, etc.

French Charming works for a huge airline company.  There are more than 15,000 employees.  He rarely flies with the same people more than once in several years.  On this particular flight from to LA, he saw a woman’s name on the crew list which rang a bell.  However, there was no exchange of words before or during the flight.  I guess you could literally say it was one of those French deja vu things!

Our first morning in LA, prior to renting the convertible, we went down to have breakfast together.  Some of his colleagues were already there so he introduced me when we approached their table.

I sat at our table while he had gone to one of the stations to prepare some toast.  One of his female colleagues got up from her table, approached him and asked, “So your girlfriend lives in Houston?”  “Yes”, he replied.  “Oh, and Agen was too far away from Bordeaux!” she stated angrily as she stomped away from him.

Ding Ding Ding  At that moment he remembered why he recognized her name….she had been a Tinder contact!  The one he never met in person….because she lived too far away.  Of course, when he came back to our table he told me the whole story and we had a good laugh.

Neither of us had intended to date anyone who lived so far away.  However, once we had established a dialogue the rest took off from there.  Long distance is never easy, even if you are only 30 minutes apart, but when the connection is there and if both people are willing to put in the effort it can be amazing!   It just goes to show that love can make you redefine your terms.

In the almost 4 years we’ve been together, he’s never crossed paths with her again.