Extend the romance!

Slowly reveal your talents to a new ♥️POI♥️

My friend of more than 3 decades has invited a new ♥️ “POI” ♥️ (Person of Interest) over for dinner.  It will be the first time she cooks for him.  It is Tuesday and she is telling me about the menu over WhatsApp Video.  We spend many evenings chatting this way since we live in two different countries. I can hear the excitement and the nervousness in her voice.  I know she wants to make a good impression.  

“I’m going to make pasta for dinner”. 

“Nice.” I respond. 

“And an apple cake.” She tells me, excitedly. She’s a great baker. 

“I’ve made the pasta dough once before”, she continues.

Wait a minute, she’s not going to just make pasta by boiling the water and dumping in dried pasta.  She is going to MAKE the dough of the pasta.  Like, she’s going to take the flour and the eggs, and make the dough, and then put it through the pasta roller thing.  OMG.

“Making pasta takes a long time, like, there is a drying time involved.  Are you sure you want to be rushing around making pasta on a Friday night, after a long day at work?”

“Well, maybe I will make the pasta dough Thursday night.”  

Now this dinner is a 2-day event.  🙄

Over the years, I have seen my friend frazzled at 1am making cookies for her son’s school bake sale.   Dishes piled high in the sink, flour in her hair - because store bought cookies for school is an absolute “NO”. 

I can just imagine if she settles on making this homemade pasta.  It won’t be pretty.  She will be running around her kitchen like her hair is on fire. 

She works in a demanding job that takes a lot of energy.  I tell her to “dumb it down”, to make dinner simpler.  Dinner will be great with some fresh simple ingredients. While I haven’t been on a proper date in years,  Dinner doesn’t have to be a Michelin Star menu. 

Early relationships should be fun and lighthearted.  She shouldn’t have to worry about the dinner being “perfect”.

I know her well enough that she will be overly critical about how the pasta turns out.  Too tough, too soft, too raw. Too sticky, too dry. Whatever it is, she will be hard on herself. 

“Keep it simple” I say to her repeatedly.   “Just make the apple cake.” You don’t have to reveal all your talents so early in this relationship.  Maybe it will keep the excitement of a new relationship going a bit longer. Reveal your talents in stages. Keep the mystery going.

I discovered this in my own relationship by accident.  

When I first met my now-husband, for some reason he concluded that I couldn’t cook.  We enjoyed romantic evenings cooking -  homemade (his) gnocchi (he peeled the potatoes for the gnocchi!) in my small apartment in Boston.  Whenever we had dinner at my flat, it was him cooking, not me.  Even back then, he was great at it.

He made an assumption. I didn’t correct him.  

My cover was blown when I brought him back to Toronto one Christmas to meet my family and friends.  The night he met my friends, they all asked him:

“Has Kristin made her fruit tart for you?”

 “Has Kristin made you her sausage ragout?”  

“Has Kristin made….”

“Kristin is the one who hosted all of our get-togethers during university” they told him.  

My now-husband’s eyes were wide in disbelief the whole night.  He was “mad” that I had lied to him. 

But,  I didn’t lie. I just didn’t correct him!

My best friends had outed me. 🤬 

As for my lovely husband and his early great impression of making homemade gnocchi?  It took 15 years before he made gnocchi for me again.  

To my friends, embarking on new relationships - don’t disclose all your talents at once.  Reveal them slowly over time and this will keep the romance alive!