The West Coast Deal
I'm nearly positive this happened after date #4. I'm sure it happened before we moved in together, though if was before or after we decided to move in together, I couldn't say.
Either way, things were clearly pretty serious between us and I felt that I needed to communicate something to Hillary.
Obviously exact wording is lost to distant memory, but I have related this to enough people over the years that I can get pretty close.
"At some point, I am going to move back to the west coast. Most likely somewhere in Greater Vancouver. I don't know where or when, but me being in Ontario for the rest of my life isn't an option. I don't need an answer now, but if moving that far away from family and what you've known here isn't something you can do, I understand."
As this was somewhat early in our relationship and we didn't totally know each other yet, there was some back and forth about what I really meant. But at the end, she got it, I was letting her know something that was critical for me and my life and if it was fundamentally incompatible with her, I was giving her an out.
I've never shared her response to this conversation before. As far as I know, she never did either as this was one of the Stories that Warren Tells.
"Okay, I'll think about that. But you should know I want kids. Two of them."
Over the next few years together we ironed out the details. I would accept that we would do a five year trial period. If we weren't happy in BC after five years, we would move back to Ottawa. It would be up to Hillary to determine when would be a good time in her career to move to a different department in the federal service.
Kids came up often. To Hillary's credit, that was never added as a stipulation of The West Coast Deal. That worked itself out in other ways.
