April in Halifax is a time marked by three resurgences: Cruise ships, potholes and Haligonians venturing out of their homes for the first glimpse of sun in weeks. It’s a cold, wet and windy place to live from December through March, which makes Halifax a good place to hunker down if you’re looking for a partner to keep you warm through the winter. (Small and isolated outposts can be cozy, or so they say.) But—like the potholes that litter Halifax’s streets—that same smallness can feel awfully bumpy when you run into an old flame. And there’s a whole lot more potential for those run-ins when you can’t hide behind a toque and three layers of Gore-Tex.
In our annual Halifax Sex + Dating Survey, we asked Coast readers to share their most awkward run-ins with exes. Here’s a handful of our favourite replies:
“At a nudist resort with a boner”
“While on a date that was clearly a downgrade”
“At work. Every day.”
“Will never happen because my deep-needling fear of it happening will lead me to fling myself behind the nearest shrubbery before I can be spotted. The social anxiety commands it be so.”
“At my bedroom door while another partner was in my bed.”
“At a show at the Rebecca Cohn. She’d started secretly dating my best friend months earlier, then they ended their ‘official’ relationship. But they were continuously hooking up for years after that, thinking they were keeping it secret.”
“Saw her at a cafe with a girl I was hooking up with within weeks of us breaking up”
“When I needed help moving furniture in the campus area and he ran to help a damsel in distress. He helped me lift, then went, ‘Oh, it’s you,’ and dropped it.”
“The words ‘No one will ever love you as much as me’ crossed their lips. My response: ‘But definitely better!’”
“Train back to university in a snowstorm a couple months after recently breaking up and also having to stay overnight in a hotel together (and making university roommate drive in a storm to come pick me up)”
“When I was younger and babysat for him and his wife’s child”
“At the therapist’s office”
“At a restaurant in my neighbourhood days after our break up. He was on a date. He lived 30 minutes away.”
“At a swingers club”
“Church”
