In October of 2017, a 24 year old university student, with two names that I wouldn’t dare to try to pronounce upon reading them, hired me for a coaching session through my website.
When we hopped on the call, she seemed to be someone who was wanting to break free from doing what she was told was the correct way to do life, and to begin to truly listen to her heart’s desires. She wanted out of the arbitrary university path she was following, and she wanted to follow the path of what was actually calling her.
Our call could be summarized as her saying, “I hate being in university… I actually want to do what you do and be a coach”, and then me saying, “Okay, then do that.”
And do that she did.
Shortly after our call, she dropped out of university, focused only on the drastically more soul aligned coaching program she was in, and never looked back.
The first thing that struck me about Demetra was her courage. Her willingness to follow what she felt.
She dropped out of university and then started writing powerful poems and articles.
Early on, I remember feeling a deep sense of, ‘Whatever it takes to support this woman in the world, I am here for it.’
Somewhere within the next year, she asked me to be on her podcast.
Having put my energy into too many podcasts that went absolutely nowhere, I had a personal rule of never being on anyone’s podcast unless they had already released at least 50 episodes. But when Demetra asked me to be on her brand-new podcast, I was an immediate yes.
Our conversation flowed effortlessly and we ended up talking for nearly three hours.
A number of months after that interaction, Demetra reached out again for some short-term business coaching as she was now out of the program she had been taking and she wanted some guidance on early-stage brand-building.
Again, I was an immediate yes.
‘Whatever it takes to support this unique and courageous woman’s genius in the world, I am here for it.’
This round of work largely, again, centered around permission.
Demetra: ‘I hate feeling like I have to fit myself into a tiny box to be successful. Do I have to pick a niche and stick to it?’
Jordan: ‘No, you definitely don’t. Don’t put yourself into any box. Be all of you.’
As usual, Demetra grew by leaps and bounds, and her writing even went viral several times because of the topics she was spearheading.
A couple of months into this round of working together, Demetra told me that she had a crush on me.
I told her that she was most likely just projecting, and not to worry… that it would simply go away in time.
Well, it didn’t. And she told me several more times over the coming month that she had feelings for me.
Personally, I was nearing the tail end of a practice of being single for an entire year. In fact, I was in month 11, so this random admission of ‘feelings’ was not convenient for me, because I didn’t feel that I could entertain the thought for at least another month.
When she double and triple checked in with herself, she confirmed that, yes, she did in fact have feelings for me, and they were not projections.
Truth be told, I had been having increasingly frequent dreams about Demetra over the previous few weeks, and I tend to give my dreams a decent amount of weight, especially when they’re showing me a consistent theme.
The most telling dream was one in which I was living in a frat house of my guy friends, and a pristine package of warm pastries arrived for me from LA, sent by Demetra. The dream really needed no interpretation. At the time, I was living in a four-suite apartment building with five of my guy friends… spending my time working, working out, running a weekly men’s group, and almost exclusively hanging out with men. The package of pristine pastries was the feminine essence that I felt, and was receiving, from my real-life calls with Demetra.
So yes, I absolutely knew that I had feelings for her. AND… I treaded ridiculously cautiously in admitting that to her.
After her third admission of expressing her feelings for me, I basically said, ‘Okay, well, in order to tell you whether or not I have feelings for you, our professional relationship has to be ended for life, right now.’
She agreed to these terms, and I immediately expressed my undying feelings for her, and how taken by her I felt.
Or something like that.
In actuality, I said something along the lines of, “I am just coming out of my year of being single, and while I am not actively looking to date right now, if I had to date anyone in the world, it would be you.’
Now, how we each interpreted what I said is important here.
From my perspective, I had effectively just admitted that, ‘You are my favourite person that exists. I literally want to date you more than any other person on the entire planet.’
And from her perspective, I had simply said, ‘I’m not really dating right now, but if I had to date anyone, I guess it’d be you…’
Very different interpretations, but there we were.
In time, Demetra got the clarity that she sought, and we were both clear that, yes, we both had feelings for each other, and we should explore them.
Thus began a multi-week streak of 4-8 hour Skype video calls.
We talked about everything.
Life, sex, death, desire, work, friends, our childhood, our families, music, poetry… the list goes on.
It was like we packed several months of dating into our calls.
We laughed, we cried, we somehow didn’t get tired of talking even when it was 4am…
It eventually became clear that we needed to meet in person. So Demetra booked her flight and away we went.
This is a photo I took of Demetra booking her flight to come and meet me in person.
She booked it for July 15th, 2019.
Leading up to her arrival, we both saw endless angel numbers everywhere.
Every address I saw was 555, 888, 1111, 1010…
Every time I looked at my phone it was 1:11… 3:33… 4:44…
Leading up to her arrival, I spent two full days cleaning my apartment top to bottom.
I scrubbed the toilet, did all of my laundry, stocked my fridge with her favourite drinks and snacks, and even bought two hot water bottles (because she warned me that she would likely be getting her period as soon as she arrived in town, and I didn’t know what kind of cramps she would or wouldn’t have, and thought it best to be prepared, just in case).
Demetra’s flight landed at 4:21pm, on July 15th, 2019. Which, in itself, was significant, because my birthday is 4/21, so of course her flight to come and meet me landed at 4:21pm.
I remember, before meeting her, one of my biggest fears was that she wouldn’t be as short as she said she was.
I have always liked shorter women, and so when I saw her emerge from the international arrivals gate and definitely be close to the 5’3 she told me she was (she looked about 5’4 because she had a slight platform heel on), I was overjoyed. And also terrified.
Overjoyed because ‘Oh yay she’s short and really even more beautiful in person’, and terrified because ‘Oh shit I still have a few days left in my year of being single and we have so much in common and what if I fall in love with her and she lives in the states and then what we’re going to do a long distance relationship I don’t even like being on airplanes…’
Then we hugged, and I picked her up off the floor, and I smelled her hair and I thought, ‘Well, I am fucked. This is just going to be my life now.’
The first month of Demetra being in Vancouver (what we refer to as our ‘first date’) was a whirlwind.
It felt like life was lovingly thrashing us at our roots.
So many layers of subtle falseness was stripped off of each of us.
We cried so many tears. We stared into each other’s eyes for hours. We slept on my sunken-in, much-too-old Queen-sized mattress in my shoebox of a bedroom.
Really, there was no stopping any of it.
It was the most calmly, grounded-ly in love I had ever felt with someone in my life, by a landslide.
There was no cocaine-high dopamine rush. There were no games or headiness. There was just this deep, steady, beating thrum of warmth, love, and connection underneath it all.
A deep knowing of, ‘Yes, this is it. Here we are. Keep going.’
At the end of the month, she flew back to LA, broke her lease, sold her truck, got rid of 80% of her things, and then flew back to Vancouver and moved in with me full-time… with the plan of, ‘Okay, we’re just going to do this and be together now.’
Would it have been more logically sound to maybe not move in together right away? To perhaps get separate apartments so we could date and do the rational thing? Sure, maybe. But that wouldn’t have been honest. It wouldn’t have been aligned with what was actually happening for us.
Having never lived with a partner, ever before, the transition was surprisingly smooth.
I just… simply… liked spending time with this person…?
Fast forward two years, and I kept finding myself thinking, ‘You know, I would like to do this forever.’
And so I had a mini existential crisis and talked to friends and journaled a lot… and then after dying a thousand deaths, I bought an engagement ring.
I then spent an amount of time I shall not disclose practicing the exact words I would say when I proposed, and also countless getting-into-positions to ensure that I could get down on one knee with zero chance of me falling over and generally flubbing the whole thing.
I proposed, she cried through the whole thing, and now here we are… just two young pups still in love, living on magical land, and publicly declaring that we’re going to be each other’s ride-or-die until we’re old and wrinkly.
Honestly, the last three years have been like being in a cocoon that’s being tossed around in a tornado.
Everything false about my ego-constructed old self has been thoroughly smashed to pieces… and now I’m just a squishy, service-oriented man who is increasingly proud of who I have become.
The gifts that Demetra brings to my life are truly innumerable.
Nothing in my life is what I would have predicted it would be five years ago… but I am confident that I wouldn’t have even known to ask for the blessings that I now experience on a daily basis.
There isn’t a single part of my life that her presence hasn’t helped to transform for the better. And I will never take that fact for granted.
