In the last part of the story, Chris and I matched on Hinge but couldn’t meet because he was flying in the exact same day that I was flying out. 

We exchanged a few messages, and he let me know that he used to have clients in Toronto and would travel there for work and loved it. 

After learning my lesson to not keep an open loop with guys, and to not create a whole story about what could happen with them, I responded: “Great! Here’s my number….let me know if you ever make you way back to Toronto.”

I got on the plane and decided to leave any expectations about Chris in NYC. 

I got home and went on a second date with another Hinge Toronto guy who was so interesting and a Detective.  I naturally had 39349 questions about his career, which he kindly let me ask every time we met up.

I decided to just focus on the Detective because he lived in my city and was unlike anyone I had ever dated… and let Chris go completely. 

That was, until about a week or two later when I got a text on my phone.  “Hey Cutie! It’s Chris.  I forgot you gave me your number.”  

Followed by… “Shit! Catie! Damn autocorrect.  But I guess, Cutie too!?” 

Ughhhhh, butterflies again.  My crush!!! 

I responded, and from there we started to text back and forth. 

 Even though I was still exploring the connection with the Detective, Chris and I had the best banter back and forth just through text from the beginning.  He was so easy to talk to, so fun, and seemingly a really interesting guy. 

You know how that is?

Honestly having good text banter was so important to me because this girl loves to chat, and so while I conceded that the guy I was calling in didn’t have to be good at texting, it was definitely on my list of ideals.

Here’s the issue though: aside from the fact that I was casually dating the Detective, about a year prior I had found myself in a back and forth messaging game with a guy from another American city, who later did fly to Toronto to meet me, only for it to nearly immediately blew up in my face. 

The Legend of the Iceberg

I refer to him as the “Iceberg.”  There was a whole lot of danger going on below the surface that I couldn’t immediately detect.

That’s a whole story for another day, but basically we chatted and Facetimed for three months before meeting, he came to Toronto, and then as it turned out was not at ALL like who I thought he was based on our talks, his instagram and podcasting persona made him out to be.

 Thinking that he was going to be what I expected, I had invited him to come visit Toronto for a while, and then within 24 hours we couldn’t stand to be around each other, but he, due to some other circumstances, wasn’t able to leave Toronto right away until he figured out where he could go next.

 What I learned from the Iceberg were a whole lot of lessons including: the universe often shows us an extreme of what we do not want so that we can focus on what we do, don’t get blinded by the story of who someone is as opposed to seeing clearly who they really are and how they make you feel (see how I had to learn this lesson literally 17 times?!), trust your intuition, and be careful with your heart. 

Back to Chris and No Expectations

So fast forward to Chris… while it seems all fun that we are chatting back and forth, I’m cautious.  I’m also totally unattached and surrendered.  

I’m letting myself text with Chris because it’s genuinely just so fun, but I’m also not creating any story about where it’s going and I’m trying to steer myself to focus on dating guys that actually live in the same city as me. 

The Detective Dissolves  

Fast forward a month and a half, Chris and I had been messaging more and more, and the Detective and I didn’t work out.  Sure, part of the reason it didn’t work out was because I was crushing more and more on my text-pen-pal Chris, but also…

Detective was another lesson in learning to accept someone where they are at, having to garner the courage to openly communicate, and letting someone go with grace when you know it’s not aligning.  

He was in a crazy busy season in his career, and wasn’t emotionally available, so it just didn’t align.  I let him go and told him to circle back if things in his life shifted in the future. He was happy I had the courage to just communicate about what was going on and felt relieved since he had felt conflicted.

(BTW: he did eventually do that, more than once, but I was with Chris). 

The Full Moon Moves it Forward,

 The exact day (which was obviously a full moon for all my astrology girls) that I had that conversation with the Detective and moved on….  

Chris, who had been away for a work training in London, UK the last 3 weeks, messaged me and said that he was thinking he should just book a flight when he was home for us to meet. 

The whole month and a half we had been chatting I had been letting Chris lead. 

I wasn’t interesting in trying to get him to come to Toronto, but was in the space of “allowing.”  I was deep in my feminine energy, and leading from that place.

This just meant, if he wanted to come to me… great.  I was in a space where I was over ever trying to make something happen, and so if it flowed, that was excellent. 

Masculine/Feminine Energy at Play

The feminine energy is all about allowing, receiving, and magnetizing… which leaves room then for someone else to step into their masculine energy to go, do, make happen, and more forward. 

So Chris stepped right into his masculine and made it happen. When he arrived back in NYC, he booked a flight to come visit for 24 hours, arranged for a hotel, and came to visit two weeks later.

The weird thing about this is that Chris and I never once spoke on the phone or Facetimed before we met.  Looking back, both of us think this is weird, but it just worked out that way I think mainly because he had been in UK time for the last few weeks before we met.

It’s kind of fun, because both of us then met with no idea of what we were about to get into or any expectations when he met. 

Chris Comes to Visit

 The days before Chris came to visit I’m excited, but I’m also veryyyy grounded.  That would situation last year where the guy ended up being the worst really helped me to never have any preconceived notions of who a person is going to be, or what the connection in person will be like.

But then… the day arrives.

Chris’s flight lands and since I live 15 minutes away from the airport I walk to go meet him.  He zips through customs and arrives early, so starts walking to me. 

We both meet on the bridge halfway between the airport and my place.  I see him from afar and ohhhhh my god I just have the biggest crush.  He is so cute and I’m just so happy.

We walk toward each other and then he gives me the biggest hug.  In that moment, I knew.  And you know why I knew? Because that was the exact energy that I had felt even before he arrived.  That was the energy of my soulmate.  That was the energy I was calling in.  

While my conscious mind was still like “you don’t know this person….” my soul-self, and my intuition immediately and right away was like “this is your husband.” 

This is something that’s often referred to as soul to soul recognition.  I can’t explain it any other way other that I had this deep full body knowing in a way I had never, and since have not, experienced before.  

 Chris has a really fun, outgoing personality and so after that we just started chatting and walking toward his hotel.  The whole thing was easy and fun.  

 We got to the hotel and he went to the washroom as he checked in.  You better believe I checked his driver’s license he laid out on the desk while he was gone to confirm that his name, location and birth date all matched up. 

PHEW. 

We basically just had the most magical 24 hour date.  We went to my favourite park and had a picnic, cruised around my favourite parts of Toronto, and then went to dinner at my favourite restaurant. 

 Because Chris and I had spent so much time chatting through text, we knew a lot about each other, but were able to dive in really quickly with one another. 

 I guess the thing that impressed me most about Chris from the beginning was his openness.  He shared with me on that first date all about the journey that had led him to that moment of being single, 38, and in a place where he was open to just hopping on a plane and meeting someone he thought he had a connection with. 

(The short story of that is that his best friend very suddenly passed away the year prior which made him re-evaluate everything and truly remember that life is short, so to take chances….and that he needed to go through relationships to eventually get clear on what he did want).

It became so clear to me that day, based on what he had told me, and when I reflected on my own journey, why we hadn’t met until then. 

That first date was pure magic, and then next day, as his flight got nearer and near…. I started to get sad that it was over.

I left for a few hours to go to see some coaching clients, and when I got back I decided I would tell Chris that I thought I should come to NYC for a few days to keep it going.

Except since it’s me, and I have about two setting from 0-100, I suggested that I come down for a few days so we could spend longer together.

Just like that, we looked at flights, and I booked my trip out there for 5 days.

 Our Second Date – 5 Day Date

The next weekend, I arrived for another magical 5 day adventure.  It was on day two of that second-date-5 day-date that I told Chris that I was really falling for him, and that since we lived in two different cities, that we kind of just had to decide to both be all in, not date either people, and figure out a way to try and make it work… or to walk away before both of us got too attached.

“In.  So in.” was his response.

Easy as that. 

And then we were together… The End

And that’s always the underpinning of the relationship… easy. 

Everything that would have consciously felt like a hurdle or an issue to align just always fell into place and felt easy. 

I think the reason that everything WAS so easy was because we had both done the necessary work to clear space in our hearts and in our lives, get clear on what we wanted so we could recognize it when we saw it, have a general openness and ability to follow the flow if a connection did arise, and the emotional maturity and intuition to be able to trust ourselves enough to know whether to trust one another. 

I’m lucky that I created a life where I could coach others from anywhere, so travelling back and forth between the two cities was easy. Plus, Chris and I both had been independent for so long that having built in space actually really worked for us.

I had already booked a trip to France for the summer as a gift to myself earlier in the year, and Chris was able to co-ordinate a work trip of his own there for the same time… so a month into dating we got to adventure through South France together on our first vacation.

Just before that, I remember calling my friend and telling her that I was feeling super vulnerable and anxious while on my second trip to NYC to visit him and her response was: “well, it just kind of sounds like you’re in love with him…”

I let those words sink in, and then went to meet him near his office after work for dinner.  As he walked in I thought “yup – she’s totally right.  I am in love with him.”

The next day he and I went to his favourite place, where that night he told me he loved me and instead of being able to reply I said: “YOU WON’T BELIEVE IT I WAS JUST THINKING THAT BUT THOUGHT IT WAS TOO SOON TO SAY.”

 Again – Chris’s response was: “well, I could’ve waited to say it, but that’s how I feel…so why wait?”

Basically everything since the beginning has been easy, supportive, and totally in flow.

I’ve never dated someone who was so similar to me, but in the opposite, masculine form.  In that way, it’s made everything really easy because we are pretty much just always on the same page about what we want to do, go, and what we want for our futures.

Interestingly, in being so similar, I can see myself more clearly.  I can see where I might overthink things in the same way Chris does, or see where I get stuck too.

From a soul contract perspective I find it pretty fascinating how similar we are, and how we’ve had similar karmic lessons despite me growing up in downtown Toronto and him in small town New Jersey.

I know that our soul contract together has a lot of different facets that will continue to be revealed.

What I want you to see from my story is: divine timing matters.  Chris and I met at the right time for both of us, and at a time where both of our lives were set up in a way such that we could make the unique circumstances of our relationship work.

I also want you to see that it’s entirely possible you meet someone and it is immediately game ON and you fall in love almost immediately.  Over time, that love has only deepened.  It’s like my soul knew I loved this soul, and then now it’s an ongoing game of understanding all the reasons WHY from a conscious perspective. 

The inner work that we both did is what allowed us both to be able to be so open, take risks, and keep our hearts open to each other.

The person can come from the most unlikely of places.  Even though I had intuitions that my person was based in NYC, there was no proof of that, but I stayed open and trusted the guidance that came through as it did. 

Similarly, in the moment I was in NYC deciding to go on Hinge before dinner one night, Chris was in Belize, staying solo at a diving hotel, feeling bored before his dinner, and happened to open his phone to check out Hinge.

Stay open, and trust the process.

Your big love is out there and looking for you too.  Trust that the invisible cord that ties you two together will eventually bring your hearts together.

If you want to dive into doing the work to clear YOUR heart to call in love, you can sign up for the Big Love Course! You can learn more HERE.http://www.catiefenn.com/biglove