Rob McCormick

Rob McCormick is the textbook nondescript type.

He’s a stocky 5’7, with sharp blue eyes, receding ashy blond hair and a boyish face matched by an equally boyish joie-de-vivre. He’s a happy-go-lucky type so when you’re joking around with him, shooting the shit and having a good time, you might miss the way he’s constantly scanning his environment, taking in new information and filing it away in his head. Chalk it up to his training in military intelligence or a childhood marked by sudden changes and upheaval but Rob possesses a heightened sensitivity to others.

I can’t pinpoint the exact moment I met Rob. One minute he was just another wise-cracking middle-aged guy in the office that I wouldn’t have been able to pick out of a line-up. Now he’s become one of the first people I text when I’m in need of some raw perspective.

His brand of advice is the equivalent of ripping a bandaid off — he’ll do it ever so gently but it’ll smart something sharp and leave you thinking about it for days on end. In the years that I have known him, I can confidently say that Rob McCormick has never given me any bad advice.

Rob McCormick in a nutshell? Loves beer, loves his kids, loves his friends and loves his wife. But more than just that, he has a unique, off-kilter way of looking at things. He’s intimately familiar with loss, hitting rock bottom, picking up the pieces and puzzling things back together again. He’s always managed to come out the other side of the mess more or less intact, armed with a story to tell. If there is anything I love in this life, it’s a person with a story to tell so Rob and I made fast friends. 

The universe has a funny way of maintaining its balance. What you put out into the world is what you will inevitably get back. Energy is magnetic. It attracts and it repels. This same logic can be applied to friendships. Like recognizes like. You attract into your life the kind of people who align with your value system and beliefs. In that same vein, you repel people who don’t align with your energy.

There are some people who will cross your path and for whatever reason, you just can’t quite cut it. The vibe isn’t there. The energy just doesn’t fit. It’s two foreign value systems that will never be at home with one another so you cut your losses and you keep it moving. Then there are other people where one conversation is all it takes for the pieces to naturally fall into place and come together. One conversation and you just know that the person in front of you is your kind of person. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. Sometimes it just clicks. 

Rob and I have similar minds so when we met, it clicked and it clicked in a good way.

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Part I: Childhood, Trust and Learning to Roll with the Punches

I know we’ve spoken about many of these things in the past already so thank you for humouring me. I’ll kick-start this by asking you what’s a childhood trauma that fucked you all the way up? 

When you told me we were going to talk about a trauma, I did a little research about what trauma actually is and I found six different definitions so I think that there’s a pretty wide chasm you can fall into. If we’re going to talk about what I absolutely hated about my childhood that fucked me all the way up, it was a lot of things that were persistent throughout my entire childhood that I didn’t realize until way later when I was in my thirties.

Moving around all the time and the lack of options I had in my childhood, that still echoes to this day. My parents split up when I was four and my mom remarried pretty much right away and we moved outside of town so I wasn’t around my family as much. It was with this guy that had been around my entire life but he wasn’t really dad. I mean, yesterday he was dad’s best friend and now all of a sudden, he’s dad.

Wait a minute, your mom remarried and it was to your father’s best friend?

Yeah. I was four and I remember thinking, there’s nothing I can do about it so I might as well just roll with it. That’s what I’ve chosen to do with pretty much everything in my life. There’s no point fighting it but yeah, there was a whole lot of upheaval. And then there was living in a small town.

What town was that?

It was a small French town called Ile-des-Chênes. We lived there for three or four years and then we moved to London, Ontario and we lived there for two years and we moved to Edmonton and we lived there for two years and finally we moved back to Winnipeg. Between the divorces and moving, it was a lot. After living in Winnipeg for a little while longer, my parents split again and then, after all that, my step-father, who was basically my father, dies. It was just this non-stop upheaval that really bred in a sense that you can’t ever rely on anything that’s going on. Everything is very, very temporary. I’ve gotten a lot better because I’ve been living in the same house for ten years this year and there is a lot more normality. I’ve known people for longer.

I remember just after meeting Mel, I would lay awake in bed with my heart pounding thinking it’s just a matter of time before the other shoe drops. That it was just a matter of time before everything gets twisted and turned over again. Now I know it doesn’t necessarily have to be that way. All that moving around, it introduced one of the greatest lessons I’ve ever learned. When you realize that you are not going to fit in and that you never will, it is intensely freeing. It’s like, yeah, of course I’m not going to fit in because who’s going to be able to share these experiences with me?

Have you ever crossed a moral line fully knowing that you were doing the wrong thing?

I’m in London, I would’ve been eleven or twelve.

Some of the boys on my street, for some reason, got into coin collecting. One of us had gotten one of those coin books so we had those little binders and we used to get together and swap. There was a boy down the street who didn't go to the same school as us and he used to live with his mother. I don't remember why, but I remember thinking that his life had a level of complication that mine didn't. His grandmother had bought him a 1967 uncirculated set, like, real nice and I traded him some bullshit fucking worthless coins for his fucking beautiful ‘67 uncirculated set.

I knew that what I was doing was wrong and I did it anyway because I knew this kid had a hard time making friends. I still have them. They’re twenty feet away from me right now and I still feel sick every time I look at them.

At what point did you realize that you can’t just trust everyone? A moment that marked a complete one-eighty and you were just like no way, I can’t operate like this anymore? 

The day Brian Mulroney was elected Prime Minister in 1986. I was in grade three and I met Amy Patchulak on a field trip to the museum. She was cute, she held my hand and she told our friends that I was her boyfriend and I just felt so accepted.

I had never seen girls in that light before and I remember thinking that I wanted to feel like this for the rest of my life but it only took a couple of weeks before it had run its course for Amy. I went out to see her on the slides one day and she just told me that I was not actually her boyfriend and that it was all just a joke. Her and her friends were dancing around in a circle yelling, “The jokes on you! The jokes on you!” 

I was in disbelief that somebody that I had let in, who I had never let in that way before, could do something like that. I just remember sitting on the swings by myself going over the whole thing in my head. You know when you have a broken computer and it just boots up in cycles? It just keeps booting up over and over again? My mind just kept doing that. I couldn’t fathom how this person could be doing this.

I was going over things in my head wondering if I had said something or done anything wrong but no. It’s just the way it is. I learned this lesson in grade three. It doesn’t matter how well you think you know somebody, they can flip on you, man. It’s a young age to be learning a lesson like that but almost everything goes right back to early childhood.

I had a picnic with my girlfriends a couple of weeks back and we got to talking about our childhood. I realized that our formative years are formative because we literally spend the rest of our lives unpacking them. We spend our entire lives unpacking the shit that happened between the ages of five and seventeen. 

Yup. Trying to make sense of the things that were done to us and the things we did to people. I’ve thought about people that I dated after and yeah, in the back of my mind was the thought that they could do what Amy did. I think I went in a direction most people wouldn’t go. I think people would go, “Amy did that to me so this other girl could do it to me too and because of that I’m not going to put myself in a position where it can happen again. I’m going to just close myself off.” I never did that.

I was always a person to let them in but at the same time, it was a caveat to myself — if this person flips, you shouldn’t be surprised and you shouldn’t blame anyone but yourself because you know this can happen. It ended up happening more than once but that’s just the way I chose to look at it. If you stick it out there, sometimes it’s gonna get whacked.

Part II: About Young Love and Heartbreak

What did you think love was back when you didn’t know shit about shit and were pure and innocent? When did you figure out it wasn’t whatever you thought it was?

My first girlfriend. She was definitely my first love. I was seventeen and it lasted about eighteen months. I had girlfriends before her but not girlfriends who were around, you know? She was the first girlfriend that my mom would buy things for when she was grocery shopping. Lise liked to have apple juice when she came over so even though we never had it before, we would always have apple juice in the fridge just because Lise was coming over.

What did you think love was?

I think it’s tough to articulate. What caused us to break up was we were just too young. I also had this notion that I had somewhere picked up that once you told somebody that you loved them and once they said it back to you, that was most of it right there. I took a lot of liberties with that. Now I know that you’re barely going at that point.

There’s so much that happens after an admission of love [but] I think I thought of it as an endpoint. I don’t know where I got this notion from but I thought it was something you just got out of the way and it gave you license to be reckless with their feelings. 

How were you reckless with her feelings?

Just making a lot of assumptions. I expected her to be there for me when I needed her because we were a couple but it was only for my convenience. I never really took her needs or feelings into account. You can’t be like that. You have to tread lightly with people’s feelings. You have to be very mindful of their feelings and you have to be mindful that you might not fully understand your own feelings. I was seventeen and she was a little bit younger than me and once I hit eighteen I wanted to go to the bars and do these things that sounded like so much fun so I ended up breaking up with her. Of course, when the bar wasn’t everything it was cracked up to be, I wanted her back. She was just a distance far enough behind me.

I learned that if you love someone, you won’t shit on them repeatedly and just because they love you doesn’t mean they’ll take your abuse with good humour. I guess I figured it meant that she had to take shit from me at my convenience. It was a couple of sad years getting over her.

Who broke up with who?

I broke up with her twice but she put the final nail in the coffin, the biggest nail, when she didn’t take me back a third time. I would always go back with the usual, “I want you back, I miss you, I love you.” All those things we had said to each other, I just played heavily on that as if it makes any difference when you’ve been an asshole. By that time, she’d just had enough of me.

We had some friends that were pretty ingrained in the Mormon church. I guess during one of our break-ups she became more active and she replaced me with religion. Maybe that’s arrogant to say but in my absence, she had turned a corner and at that point there was no turning back.

What did that first love feel like and how was it different from other loves? How does young love feel different from grown love? 

Some people you just have a connection with and other people, no matter how much you try, you don’t. I don’t know. I really adored her. She was a good sport. I was arrogant and had too much energy but she was always willing to go along. It was immature. Your expectations aren’t reasonable and not necessarily healthy. Young love comes along and needs to burn itself out because it can’t go any further. At seventeen, she was still in high school when I graduated. We were both living at home and had no means to support each other so we weren’t going to move in together. There were a lot of adult things in our relationship, we went places together, we hosted dinners parties, things I still do today. It was the first relationship I had like that.

You put a lot more weight on three months in a relationship when you're seventeen. Back then it was like, “Oh man, we’ve been together for six months, I'm not ready to throw that kinda thing away.” Your notions are still immature. You think this person is going to put your life in order, that things are going to make sense now that you’re together and you’re not going to have all these problems but no, you’re just the same asshole with a girlfriend. 

Now it's like, seventeen? Man, I have scotch older than her…

How did you meet Lise?

We were in a high school musical. You put fifteen to seventeen year old boys and girls together, they’re going to pair off and tomfooleries are going to happen. I paired off with her.

Just because the lessons came didn’t mean I learned them right away. There was two years I would have taken her back in a heartbeat. A lot of the other girls I was dating were her height or her shape or had the same colour hair. There comes a point where you just stop and start to grow up a little bit. You start looking for a different person. I wasn’t just trying to replace my high school girlfriend anymore.

So that’s the story of Rob McCormick’s first broken heart. Did you cry, Rob?

Yup and boy was it a good one. I was demolished. Oh, it was so bad. I have never been a crier but I had a couple of good cries on the shoulders over that one. Buddies were telling me, “Hey man, we like you and we liked her but you gotta fucking stop talking about her.”

Anyone else break your heart?

Probably Kristy, it was harsh. She was just this cool girl who came from a cool family. She had five brothers who were super nice guys. We’d go over for dinner and you would never know when duck-duck-goose would break out. The parents would get involved, the mother would start running around.

They were just really happy people and they enjoyed being together and they loved each other. I remember thinking that I wanted to be in that family. Then one day she came over and she told me she couldn’t do it anymore. Between baseball, work, volunteering, family and going back to school, something needed to go and it had to be me. It was definitely a bomb dropped but I had to respect it.

If there was one that got away, it would have to be Lise. I just learned the most from her. I learned the most about what a relationship could be and what it feels like to really trust somebody and have somebody really looking out for you. I could be one hundred percent candid with my feelings and what I was thinking. I didn't have to hold anything back out of fear of who she might tell or what she might do with that information. She was just a really good person. Mostly things that had been largely absent from my life. 

So you never felt a heartbreak like Lise?

No. Even when I broke up with Bonnie, it wasn't that bad.

Part III: The Army Years

Why the military?

I needed a job.

That was it?

Yeah, there was no deep meaning. I had to quit Staples. I was working as an outside sales representative for Staples and I just could not fucking do it anymore. I don’t know if you’ve ever worked commission sales but it's a cock-sucking world. I wanted out of there. I was already more than halfway done with my Commercial Pilots License so I went to the Manitoba Metis Federation looking for money to finish my certification. Before they would give me any money, I had to sit through orientation from these different people.  

The railroad was there, the North West Company was there and the military was there. I was like fuck it, I can give this a shot. I ended up getting in for what I wanted, aced the aptitude test and they told me they would give me any trade I asked for so I took signals intelligence. That was in February 2003 and by May, I was gone.

Why did you pick the military out of the three?

There was no grandiosity to me joining the military. I didn't feel a calling, I just needed a good job. Most of the guys that were there felt the same thing. When you join, it's just a job but that changes over time. There’s a certain gravity to the work and a certain mindset that comes with it. There’s a certain way the work is approached and a certain way you approach the people you work with, which is entirely different from anything you get on the civilian side of things.

What did you learn in the military that you don't think you would’ve learned anywhere else?

My breaking point. My family is my breaking point.

I learned that I do have a breaking point and normally I’m pretty far off but there are certain things that I couldn't put in the balance and my family was one of them. Especially after the divorce with Bonnie. A lot of that had to do with my being away in the military. I was really gun-shy coming out of that marriage. I was hearing that I was going to have to be posted for six months and the cold sweats and the shaking would start again because I did not want that to happen again. You know, the upheaval? I wasn't in for it, I didn't want it, the constant threat of being posted and wondering if I could even bring my family with me.

I didn’t marry a typical military wife. I married a career woman, which can be a real problem when you want to be posted somewhere. She won’t just pack her t-shirts and her flat shoes and move on to the next base just because your boss says you have to. 

The military also gave me additional perspective into real loss. I lost friends who were killed in battle. Some friends got shipped away and when they got out and came back, I just knew that I’d never see them again. There were some suicides. I already had a pretty good idea about loss but I learned a lot more about loss.

Do you think the military does enough for mental health?

No. They do a lot more than they used to. It’s a lot better. Somebody who is truly mentally ill needs a profound level of care. Most people aren’t prepared to deliver that level of care. They don’t have the skills, or the inclination or the time.

In the military’s case, there are probably many able-bodied and sound of mind people who, because of the things they experience, come out the other side profoundly altered. Their mental illness is a result of the work they did. Perhaps the organization is unable to provide the level of care that is necessary but it is the military’s responsibility because these people were otherwise perfectly fine. 

You’re right. I’m not speaking from a place of expertise but I’ve noticed that the people who really get better are the people who are able to get to a certain point with some help and recognize that they are able to help others who haven’t been able to reach that same point. They recognize a responsibility to help people.

I can think of one guy who was just a great guy and his life reflected it. He had a lot of friends and this beautiful girlfriend that everyone wanted. Things were going great for him. Then he went to Afghanistan and he witnessed something appalling. He was posted in the middle of nowhere, near some remote village and he would always see these kids playing. One day he came back from Kandahar Airfield with a soccer ball and he gave it to the kids and they went kicking the soccer ball around the field. One kid stepped on a mine and it killed them all.

His survivor’s guilt was off the charts. He basically saw himself as being responsible. When he came back, he just crawled into a bottle. He lost the life he had and became suicidal. He ended up seeking help and now he’s very outspoken about mental health and how it’s everyone’s responsibility to help if they are able. It's a channel or a method he sees to repair yourself and heal. Healing is rooted in helping others heal. 

Part IV: The Ex-Wife, Infidelity and Regret

I’m surprised. We’re an hour into this and Bonnie has barely come up. There’s nothing you want to say about your ex-wife and your first marriage and how it changed you? If I’m going to write about you, we need to talk about Bonnie. 

I wish her all the best. We’re friends on Facebook. She has a one-year-old daughter. She’s a cute kid.

I need a little more than that. What did you learn from that first marriage? What did you think marriage was when you walked into it with Bonnie?

If you act like somebody’s bitch, they’ll treat you like their bitch.

Marriage ended up not being what I thought it was going to be. It made me more willing to accept that I might not know myself. When I came out of that marriage, I wanted to start dating again, that’s just how I’m wired. But I didn't know what I was into anymore. I had to fully embrace the possibility that what I was into before was not what I was into now. I decided that I would just go out with anybody who would go out with me. I was willing to listen to everything they had to say and do the things they wanted to do. Let’s just fucking open the doors up and let all these possibilities come into my life.

Mel was not somebody I would have gone for before. She’s very quiet, very reserved. It opened me up to the possibility that I may not know myself as well as I thought. There's a period of self discovery and I was just ready to figure out what I like. I was willing to learn anything about myself. 

How did you find out Bonnie was cheating? 

Gut feeling was telling me that something wasn’t right. Those gut feelings are usually right. It's not something you think one day and then think, “Oh no, it’s fine”. It's something you try to rationalize a million different ways and it just doesn't go away. By the time she finally moved to Ottawa after I got posted here, I had gotten really good at catching people doing bad shit because it was my job and I caught her. 

How did you catch her?

I hacked her email and then saw correspondences between her and her best friend's brother. She was sending him naked photographs. This is a woman I had been with for six years and I had still never seen her naked with the lights on and she was sending photos of herself to this guy. I remember my blood pressure going up so much that I saw red and got tunnel vision. I’ve always been good at keeping my countenance and calming down and thank fuck too.

She came in from outside, she’d just been  talking to our neighbours and I asked her, “Hey, want to still go back to Winnipeg this summer? We can see my mom, we can see your folks, you can see Chris.” She sat on the couch like a coiled rattlesnake.

I remember feeling like, why? I had given her so many outs. I was just mad. I got so many offers in Kingston from these really cool girls, like med students at Queens. To this day, I’m just like, “Fuck, I really wish I cheated on her.”

I think most people come close to crossing the line, if not actually crossing the line. Sometimes it’s blurred and I don’t think that it makes you a bad person, it's just complicated. Shit happens. Is being monogamous an ideal we should even attempt to attain and maintain? You might not even be the cheating type but in the moment, it might just make more sense than it doesn’t. 

I’ve said to people, and it always goes off in a weird direction: I have never, ever, ever cheated on anybody and I totally wish I had. If you ask me if I have any regrets in life, yeah, I regret I never cheated on anybody. Fucking number one. That’s my number one regret because it fucking almost never works out anyway. That’s the thing about relationships, it works out so seldom.

I remember going over to my cousin’s who used to have this house right outside the city, it was perfect for bonfires. We’re all sitting around and you could tell that there was fucking palpable tension in all four couples but they’re all really trying to work through it because they figure that’s what they’re supposed to do. None of them are together anymore. They’re all like, “Goddamn it, son of a bitch, I should’ve left so much earlier.”

I never met anybody who was like, “Man, I’m really glad I stayed in that shitty relationship longer. I’m really glad I stuck it out for another five years of abuse, tiptoeing around that person.” Just fucking grab the opportunities as they come. Bonnie is a bit of an extreme example but goddamn it, I wish I cheated on her. I’ve never cheated on anybody and fuck me for it.

I think maybe what you're saying is not that you want to cheat because that would entail wanting to harm another person but maybe you wished you fucked around a bit more and you weren't so quick to settle down.

Yeah and she wasn’t just some chick. I had been with Bonnie for years. I didn’t cheat because it wasn't the deal I made. 

Did you love Bonnie? 

I think so. I can’t say no. I mean, I did. I think I loved the person she could be to me. She was a really fun, life-of-the-party type of girl but I knew her very well and I was a threat to her because I knew her very well. She was never going to be that person to me but I wanted her to be that person when we didn’t have friends around. But that was impossible.

When you say you knew her so well do you mean you could see through the façade? 

Yeah. I knew that she was a deeply damaged person just from her upbringing and her family stuff. When we were out with friends was never going to be the way she acted when it was just the two of us. She had a lot of hang-ups. Yeah, you know, I did love her. I think, maybe, I loved the idea of Bonnie. I think a lot of people love a certain idea of a partner.

Part V: About the Wife, Dusting Off and Finding Love Again 

Mel is really cool because you have a bunch of twenty-something female friends. This is a comment not a question. She’s very relaxed about it.

Yeah, you’re totally right. 

What’s the moment you realized that Mel might just be the one?

First meeting. It was just comfortable. It felt the way I needed it to feel. It felt like I was coming home to something. It didn't feel threatening. I didn't fully understand it but I knew it wasn't bad and that I didn't have to fear it and that if I just went along with it, it would probably be okay. I didn't see any danger. I saw someone who was very similar to me. I think Mel would probably tell you the same thing.

I kinda want something a little more concrete. You're describing the feeling of coming home, which is in line with that theme of Rob McCormick has never had a home.

I knew you were going to ask me this kinda question but the only thing I can come up with is, if you have to think about it, you’re overthinking it. We don’t have control over what we feel about people, we just do. There are people I don’t like and there is nothing I can do about it. I can tell myself they have redeeming qualities, I can make excuses for them, it doesn't matter. It’s just not going to change what I feel about somebody.

Sometimes I feel good about people, sometimes I feel bad about people. I’ve never really stopped to think about it.

Was it a love at first sight type of thing?

No. I definitely didn't walk out of there in love. I remember I went to a midnight shift that night. My partner at work was this guy called Damian. He was asking me what I had been up to and I just told him that I had coffee with a girl, it was going good, I was going to do it again and I don't know where it's going to go but I'm pretty sure it's fine.

I had this feeling that all I had to do was be present. I had this feeling that life was never going to be the same again. That would've been 2005 so fifteen years ago. I was twenty-eight, Mel was twenty-five.

On our second date, I’ve told you this before, she sat me down and said, “I’m twenty-five and I want to be married with a kid by the time I’m thirty.” That’s all she said. Basically, the inference was either I was onboard with having a kid and being married in five years or I was not. I was like, five years to be married with a kid? Yup, sounds about right for me.

So you immediately felt like this was going to be a forever type of thing?

I’ll never say I’ll never leave. I can never say I’ll always be here. I do know that if I ever left and came back into the house a few weeks later to get my stuff, I would look around and go, “Fuck. You had it.”

The house would feel different and I like the way it feels right now. It's the whole package of things. I'm comfortable with my role and with how things are working. The kids are doing great and I get to see them every day. Mel gives me the room I need to maneuver. I get time to myself but she’s right here when I need her. If I have something to say to her, I can say it. There’s intimacy. 

Think about the dude with his loveless marriage who knows that he can leave but if he does, he’s gonna be broke for the next fifteen years or until his wife gets married again. All he wants to do is connect with somebody. Like, what are you waiting for, man? Go fucking get some strange. People need to connect. There’s nothing that’s gonna take that need away from anybody. I have that right now, I’m getting everything that I need right now. 

You’re saying your needs are being met but talk to me about passion.

That comes and goes. Passion comes when you haven’t had a date night in three months and you go somewhere and all the jokes between you come back. All the inside jokes start coming back and it’s like, yeah my wife is pretty fucking cool. Get a few glasses of wine in her, bring her home and you know … etcetera, etcetera. There’s your passion, it's still there.

You think you’re going to be changing a shitty diaper and at the same time a pot is boiling over and your husband is running around chasing the other kid and you both haven't showered in two days and on top of all that, there’s passion? You are sorely mistaken. It's still there somewhere but you need to find the time for it.